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Alterra Apartments, South Prudence Road, Tucson, AZ

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One of the very first assignments of this course we were given the option to write about home, I wrote about where I grew up in Peoria, Arizona. Now it doesn’t seem too far but at the beginning of the semester it felt farther. I am slowly accepting Tucson as my temporary home while I complete my degrees. As I learned to find a new place as home we read about immigrants accepting Tucson as their home too after fleeing Mexico to find a better life. In some ways I guess I’m creating a better life for myself at UA too. In my writing I stated that I longed for my home, for my family and for familiarity and I can only infer that they felt the same way. Before this course I had never had education about the borderlands, I had basic knowledge about the native tribes of Arizona but never about our state being a borderland or what that meant. Tucson is very rich in culture and I believe that is due to being a border city. In my own reflection of home and how my definition of home has evolved I have an understanding of why we learn about the borderlands and how UA is a land-grant institution. I hope to use this relation to make my writing more versed and my overall understanding of the world greater than it is now.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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In the assignment U1A4, we reflected on our own writing and one of our peers’. I unfortunately did not get any feedback on my writing but in the assignment I had my own reflection questions to answer. I reflected about my motivation as a writer and that made me a weaker writer. I like to use strong words to help my writing and sentence structure to get my point across. I need to work on quotations and punctuation. I am used to revising my work by myself and having a specific rubric to change my writing since I work better by myself.  I hope to reflect more on my writing and get more feedback to allow me to become an even better writer.

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Barnes & Noble, East Broadway Boulevard, Tucson, AZ

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My U1A1 essay probably got the most revisions I had on my essays throughout the whole semester. Many of my revisions were either taking out words, fixing my punctuation or asking ‘Where does this quote come from?”. I feel like my writing got better throughout the semester with less revisions and questions about my work. I learned more about citing sources and the specific methods of quote integration. I also changed my diction a little, less scientific sounding and more like a writer in my opinion. In my future work I hope to use quotes better and more often. I will also hopefully use better punctuation.

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Richard A. Harvill Bldg, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA

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In this artifact I demonstrated my use of conventions by properly using a semicolon “These media are all centered around the Borderlands; the area where the United States meets Mexico.”. I know that I could always use work on my conventions, it’s a never-ending process learning and writing fluently. I definitely have my basic conventions down but sometimes I’ll add a comma where it isn’t needed or capitalize something that doesn’t need capitalization. As I continue to write I hope to know when and where to put punctuation and other mechanics to help make my essays well written and professional.

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Desert Survivors Native Plant Nursery, West Starr Pass Boulevard, Tucson, AZ

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This artifact showed how I’m able to find a text’s purpose and compose an analysis of the composition of the text. I researched about the author and then connected that to the author’s story, “Luis Urrea was born in Tijuana, Mexico but soon came to the United States. He strives to, “ use his dual-culture life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss and triumph.”. He wrote The Devil’s Highway to connect readers to the immigration crisis and tell the story of the men who dared to trek the Sonoran Desert.” (Rinaldo, 2023). At first his ‘about’ page said he was living in Illinois, so I wondered about his connection to the Borderlands. I then dug some more and found out he was born in Tijuana and lived in Arizona for a period of time. Being able to critically think and compose will help me understand authors and the texts better

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Union Pacific Railroad, Aerospace Parkway, AZ

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This artifact is showing my rhetorical awareness across 3 different medias (a website, a novel, and a movie.). This showed that I was able to find rhetorics easily and effectively. I chose to analyze the website No More Deaths (2022) and one of their rhetorical moves, “A reoccuring theme in No More Death’s website is the empty gallon jug. This is an emphasis and stands for how the immigrants carry their water. It is pictured empty to symbolize their need and that they will more likely than not run out of water in the desert.” (Rinaldo, 2023). This will help me understand all forms of media and effectively write about them.

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Villa del Puente Dorm, North Highland Avenue, Tucson, AZ

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My first two semesters were honestly a struggle. I have had a very hard time balancing school with working, extracurricular, mental health and just life. I find it hard to say I have had any progress made this semester. I enjoy writing and have always gotten good grades or have been told I’m a good writer. My main block is that I only write well when I’m passionate about what I’m writing about. Last semester I wrote about the careers racehorses had after they retired from racing, and when I took ENGL 101 in highschool I wrote about Macbeth or horses or mental health issues. I was able to passionately write in some of our journal entries this semester.

(Papelito ) When we were asked to write about home I easily filled a page about Peoria. I love my family and I’ve grown up there my whole life so it’s easy to write about. Home is not only a place, it's people and places. My mom, my boyfriend, my grandparents, the trails right by my house, the shopping centers, the lake.

In another papelito, (Papelito ) I wrote about my habits- good and bad. I tend to leave assignments to the last minute but sometimes my last minute assignments are the best work I do. In the entry I explained that I prefer to leave my assignments to do at night and I’d rather take it easy and be able to use the daylight hours for other things. After these entries is when my attendance got bad. If I remember correctly I felt under the weather at first, and then I started to have problems with sleep again (I suffer from insomnia and cannot sleep unless I take medication and when that medication fails I’m just up the creek.). I also got a stress fracture on my sesamoid bone that kept me in bed with pain some days. I was excited to do the Fotonovela even though I didn’t exactly understand what we were supposed to do: I was struggling to find inspiration but then one weekend my roommate and I went to Rillito Race Track and I decided I’d do my project on the racehorses! I gathered my photos while I was there and tried to come up with a narrative.

By the time the final project was due, it was also time for me to go to Zones. I am on the University’s Hunt Seat Team (competitive college horse riding), I was really nervous to go because I had a great season. I brought home all firsts except for one when I got a third. I was very distressed and I just wasn’t able to do anything. When I got home from Zones everything seemingly got worse. I placed third so I won’t be going to nationals and I was and am very disappointed in myself. I’m now trying to pick up the pieces. I feel like I did progress as a writer through this. I persevered and I’m still trying. I’m writing now. Hopefully I’ll be able to learn not to take things so hard and to have more fun with writing. I also hope that eventually I will be able to write about different things without it being a chore.

The final papelito ( Papelito )I’ll share in my testimonio, is the one where we tried to explain what our testimonio will be. I feel like I have achieved all that I hoped my testimonio would be. It’s honest and shares what this semester was like for me. I hope to take these hardships and maybe let them not affect my school work as much. I hope to write more about my studies with animals as I progress through college, maybe some research papers about the topics I’m passionate about. I’d love to write about dressage or racing or nutrition. I hope that I become a stronger writer and do the topics I’m tasked with well.