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A reflexivity statement is something a scholar or a researcher writes in order to explain their identity and how it relates to their studies.

I chose to pin the country of Israel, specifically kfar saba because this country is the place that shaped me to be who I am. It was actually the main point of my reflexivity statement describing how my whole life including my personality, hobbies, and habits was shaped by Israel. This is the county where my parents were born and carried on traditions into my life.

Before writing my reflexivity statement I knew that I wanted to describe how I became who I am today and brainstormed all of the things that did that. When looking at all my favorite foods, hobbies, and places I came to the realization that it all started with one country and that is the country of Israel.

When revising my statement I originally just read it out loud and realized that there was a lot of formatting that needed to be updated such as splitting it into paragraphs that correlate with each other but overall just the main theme. When reading it for my portfolio I changed a couple vocabulary words to make it flow better but overall didn't do too much.

This assignment really allowed me to show my writing style and skills while talking about something that I already know enough about. It felt really good to write about myself as my ideas just kept flowing and finding my paper.

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Mexico border parking, Camino De La Plaza, San Ysidro, CA

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Hidden troubles: A Borderlands Synthesis

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Hidden troubles: A Borderlands Synthesis

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My Borderlands Synthesis essay is a research paper that uses multiple different sources to describe people's opinions and descriptions of the issues surrounding the border in different forms. The project is an “essay that weaves together your analyses of these various texts and how the purpose, audience, and context of each text matter to you and to larger conversations about the Borderlands”(Martinez).

The place I picked to pin for this project is the US Mexico Border that I am familiar with growing up relatively close to it in California. This is something that I have seen on Tiktok and the news and has been embedded in my brain growing up.

The texts that I chose for my borderlands synthesis essay were chosen solely based on my interest in them. After looking through several provided options I was able to choose two of my own options which came from a list provided and a film which we watched in class. While I took notes on the movie, I based my research on my other sources straight from the text while writing my paper.

This essay is where I finally learned what rhetorical analysis really is. I learned that the three main parts include purpose, context and audience and that each of these three things are what define each piece of writing.

This writing was very different from what I am used to writing. I dove really deep into the background of each source rather than going so deep into the information that it provided. This is something that I am glad I learned as it definitely will come up again in my writing career.  Unit 2 Part 3 Digital Story Cover Page

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The Digital Story and Cover Page go hand in hand with each other to describe the purpose of my story. The cover page plays the role in telling how I came up with the story and all of the techniques and resources that I used to create it. While the digital story spreads a message about keeping the environment clean while using a place that is very dear to me in Newport Beach.

I chose to pin my house in Newport beach for this artifact because it is where the entire story is based.

Research in this unit was very different from all the other units as I got a first hand view of everything I talked about. I used photographs that I took myself and got information from an interview that I had with my friend that now goes to school in the area. I also used one outside source to make my story more credible, utilizing a picture from their article in my digital story. I learned alot about how important and helpful first hand research can be to someone who is writing a paper.

While examining other fotonovelas and cover pages I found so many different conventions that I had to choose between in order to create my own story. One that I chose for my cover page was beginning by introducing myself at the start. A convention that I found very useful in my fotonovela was using speech bubbles for dialogue as it helped my story identify as a fotonovela.

This assignment was one of my favorites as it was based on something that I love to talk about which is my time at Newport Beach. I am also a pretty artistic person so I had a really fun time creating the fotonovela itself.

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Ben Wolf TEMPLATE Unit 2 Part 3 Digital Story Cover Page 

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The artifact I chose is Papalito #10 and it is an activity that we do at the end of every class that acts almost as a journal. This specific topic asked me to describe whos shoulders i've stood on growing up.

I chose to pin my grandmas and grandpa's house for two reasons. First being that I was raised in that house for three years after a traumatic event left my family with no other option. The second being that the city of Encino itself is where I grew up until I was about 14 years old. I was changed and shaped by every single thing there and have learned so much from my surroundings in that area.

The borderlands in general to me are any place that may border something different around it. For example the beach borders the land and the sea or more literally the border between the US and mexico.

While it may be a little abstract, this activity has helped me be aware of the different ways that people in different lands grow up. For example, discussing my heroes has helped me understand that things might be different in other lands and their shoulder to lean on can be something different relative to their surroundings.

This activity gave me a sense of belonging in the journaling world. It taught me the importance of reflecting on your history and learning from it. For example, I never really appreciated all of the help I have received and how far it brought me but this activity taught me to.

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My name is Ben Wolf and “I am the first of my family to go to college”. While it may look like I've always had everything I wanted throughout my life, that fact is far from true. Growing up in the city of Encino I was living the average life of a child when everything changed. When I was about ten years old, my life took an unexpected turn, throwing me into a tornado of events that would change the course of my future self. It started as just another regular day driving on my way to my taekwondo lessons with my cousins. I spent the day playing sports with my cousins on our front lawn and eating countless popsicles with funny jokes on the stick. Approaching the end of the night, my joy was shattered by the popping sound of gunfire, six loud shots. I remember my confused and startled face, turning red with the rush of adrenaline. Stepping over my dad to get out of the car as my mom came out to the driveway to call me is something that will stick with me for the rest of my life. Following that terrifying experience, I was left with so many unanswered questions and feeling so many emotions including fear and confusion, just grateful that the one percent chance of my dad surviving has become a reality. Each aspect of this experience was a stepping stone towards my healing and ultimately helping me grow into the better person that I am today. Throughout this, I discovered a strength I never knew I had, a resilience that would carry me through the worst times of my life and take me to my best. As the weeks turned into months, I found myself learning and changing, growing substantially from my experiences. This was all thanks to my grandma whom I had to live with following the incident; “even though she is not very wealthy and not the healthiest person, whenever I need anything she would do it for me”. This taught me to be a giving person no matter what challenges you may face because you never know when someone will need it more. I learned to appreciate the simple joys of life living with my grandma without all of my normal hobbies and games. Through my pain , I began to appreciate the world through a new set of glasses.I I learned to cherish each moment because you never know when your life can change in an instant. Another lesson that I learned is how to adapt. Moving out of my only home until that age I did not really know what to expect when I moved into a whole new city. I had to learn how to change according to my surroundings, changing who I am as a person. Moving from Encino to Studio city really “shaped me to be who I am”, surrounding me with new people and forcing me to adapt. All in all, my whole life was shaped by an incident that helped me learn and become who I am today.  I have learned to look at the bright side of horrible situations, taking advantage of every lesson that I can and growing to become the best version of myself.