Sweet 16...

Posted by Dominique D.

Pages, that is. I finally finished my 16 page paper for my African American Family class. I have never written a 16 page paper before--but this was one of the challenges that came with taking a 300 level Writing intensive course full of juniors and seniors, and a few sophomores and freshmen.

This is SO how I felt..

I bet some of you are wondering why I would take such a challenging class...well ok you're probably not but I'll tell you why anyway! hehe =]

I wanted to be a Public Health/Africana Studies Double major when I first arrived. Now, I'm not so sure I want to double major in Africana Studies...maybe a minor. But the major may still happen--we'll see. Ok not the point. I took the class because it was in the Sociology Dept. and was cross listed with Africana Studies, and was a valuable writing intensive course. I need 4 in order to graduate with a Public Health degree, and I figured why not take one that sounded interesting, would count for the Africana Studies major, and count as a writing requirement? Also, having covered grades further encouraged me to take the class--I would have been too intimidated otherwise to it at this point in time.

So lemme talk about the class. Looking back, this class was my most intimidating and hardest one out of chem, chem lab, calc, and my intro African American studies class. People would always say "Dominique that class sounds so easy how can you be having trouble with it?" And blase blah....advice: DON'T let a name make you think a class is hard or easy. And DON'T think that because a class is in a certain dept. it'll be easier than others. Like I said, it was more intimidating than my ridiculously hard chem class (btw the average for the last test we took was a 49/100...just to put things in perspective =] )Anyway, even though it was tough, it was by far the most interesting material I've learned this semester. I have to say I have SO MUCH respect for humanities majors--what pre-med students get in math and science classes, they get in SO MUCH reading and writing. And many of those classes have no curve--you get what you get.

One of the books we used for the class--so much good info!

It's a sociology class--meaning we learned about the patterns in society and the interactions between people in a society. Specifically, our class examined the unique African American family, and its interaction with society and its members. What are some of these unique things?

-Reliance on extended family
-Extreme respect for elders
-Fosterage of children that aren't blood relatives
-Tendency to not be nuclear--diverse forms
-More egalitarianism in decision making
-Centered around children and community
                 -Emphasis on religion

And so much more. We learned about how African roots, along with the impacts of slavery, contributed to making the African African Family what it is today. African families tended to be formed of extended kin and wives of the patriarch, or more rarely, extended kin and husbands of the matriarch. Children were the most valuable parts of the family and the family centered around them. Age was important--elders and grandparents were seen as the most wise members of the family and as a result they did most of the decision making.

Random pic of some children in a compound in Malawi

We also learned about how slavery impacted family structure and function. This period of time created a number of single mother households--a phenomenon seen to this day. Slave masters placed more value on slave mothers because they could have children, which equaled money. This meant that the fathers were sold off more often for profit--which broke up families and caused African Americans to find ways to form new types of families, as an adaptation to their environment. The cool thing is that they did this while keeping many of their African roots. It was so cool seeing why black families tend to follow certain trends because of history.

So, like I said, this class gave me a tough time. I didn't do too well on the exams for the course, so when it was time to do the 16 page paper, I was a bit discouraged and questioned my ability to complete the paper properly. But, I sucked it up, consulted Dr. McDonald (the professor) for help as well as other students, chose a topic I liked (The effect living in a black single mother home has on children's educational and psychological outcomes, and how contact with the nonresidential father can positively contribute to the children's lives), and started. I researched, found books and journals, and just wrote. I must say, I am so impressed with myself. I don't know how good the paper is but I do know I deserve an A ++ for effort. I spent my weekends in the library at 8am and left at 1 am (of course I left in between for a few breaks  :P). I even spent some of Thanksgiving working on it. I wrote and edited and deleted and changed and edited and wrote and emailed my professor a bajillion times until it was FINISHED.  

And now I look back and see that though I questioned my logic for taking this class (while my friends were having much easier times in intro classes), that I am so happy I did, and I will never ever regret it. I encourage freshmen to take upper level classes they are interested in. Now, I (a premed student who doesn't enjoy too much writing) can say I took a 300 level writing intensive class as a first semester freshman and I finished a 16 page research paper. Now, 16 pages doesn't sound NEARLY as bad as it did when I first got the assignment, and I'll be ready for future semesters of upper level social science classes.

The only thing I regret is not being able to soak all of the info in--since I spent so much time wishing the class would end, I missed out on really digesting the information. It's like when people say, "don't wish college was over because it'll be the best years of your life." I need to learn how to appreciate school through the hard and the not-so hard. A lesson that I am sure will come soon.

And you know you start becoming a true student of academia when you actually want to keep your books and not sell them back. Over break I plan to read up more on the African American family and have deep discussions with my parents...hey I'm trying to become more 'mature' ...(meaning less Disney Channel) And that's a lot coming from a broke college student. :P

Now, I'm studying for my calc and chem finals--I am anxious to see how this experience will be. And I go home in one week! I LOVE CHRISTMAS BREAK!

Later dayz!!

Random Picture of the Day: I love tangerines.

Comments

[Admissions_Daniel]

I love this post. Isn't a great when the whole college learning thing just clicks ... even after a 16 page paper.

The spring semester of my sophomore year I had 130 pages to write for four classes (I never took classes with exams - long story). It was dreadful, but at the end I was proud of my work and actually it turned out to be my favorite semester of learning. I actually still have a ton of books from those classes.

Good luck with the rest of your work.

[JHU_Kate]

I think the only college textbooks I've sold back so far were my calc and stats textbooks from freshman year. I've kept the rest as future reference--and I *have* opened them from time to time to recall material I learned but forgot!

[Roxi Radi]

OMG I completely agree with you! After 4 semesters of intense sciency-ness This was my first humanities semester and good LORD writing is no walk in the park. And I wish someone had told me this when I first started out: there are no easy As at Hopkins. Oh wait...they did...but as a Junior I STILL had to work my butt off in 100 and 200 level sociology classes this semster. I'm glad you enjoyed your classes so much and learnt. It's the weird classes we take for our passion majors (I've come to believe) that we learn the most in and remember the longest, and I'm glad you had such a positive experience at the end of the day!