My Time in 101

Welcome to my English 101 blog. My name is William C. Sanowski. My new bride, Amy, has a seventeen year old son and eight year old daughter to add to my sixteen year old son and fourteen year old son. I think seeing me in school has inspired all of them to do better and set some goal for themselves. I’ve currently served 21 years active duty in the U.S. Coast Guard as a Mechanical Technician Senior Chief. At 38 years old, the Coast Guard has granted me a two year period to attend a college and get an engineering degree. I chose Everett Community College because it was close to my home and it provided a respected program that easily transfers over to a four year University. I was raised on farms and ranches in Montana, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, but I call Ephrata Washington my home town (go tigers!). This background in farming has given me a unique perspective on engineering issues that the Coast Guard has used to their advantage for many years.

I was immediately intrigued with the guidelines of this class. When I joined English 101 I was expecting to learn more about sentence structure and have my writing critiqued for those errors. I will have to admit that the class really had none of that and was more focused on writing about a subject. Analyzing these prompts has brought several realizations to mind that I would have never really thought about before.

Diversity has taken on a whole new definition for me and has become a difficult equation because I have discovered so many more elements to establishing diversity. Diversity is not just having a mix of different people in a place; it is having those people in a place or community and accepting their differences. It derives from people who have spent a lifetime establishing individual identities who join communities to share talent and information to accomplish goals for themselves and the people in the community. Online chat communities are almost perfect examples of diversity depending on the subject. Being online takes many identity issues out of the equation and allows everyone to have a voice because it is a community focused on an issue. In “Spanglish”, I saw a different view of diversity where a Mexican family ended up in conflict with a rich white family because they could not accept or respect each other’s cultural differences.

Communities bring to life a new culture which is a representation of the people. The culture is practiced through rituals that eventually become traditions. As the world changes, these traditions, cultures, and communities evolve through new ideas and influences. For example, the Amish are raised in a strict environment, are given a choice to stay as adults, and if they stay are required to practice their lives through the governing rules. The Amish, however, vote in new technology on a periodic basis which affects their culture over time.

I’ve also learned that communities aren’t always good for the people they serve. In several essays we read, some communities encouraged starving or caused people to lose human contact, yet they keep functional because they serve goals of those individual’s personal identities. In the movie “Off the Map” we saw that the family’s goals were not the goals of the daughter which impacted interaction between the parents and the girl and caused her to do some extreme things to continue with her goals. Being in a leadership role in my profession, it has opened my eyes to why some people are the way they are and how important that must be to them. As a human being, there are a myriad of outside influences that will either push back or guide a person into who they become socially, who they associate with, and what functions they do to preserve their identities.

I have included some of my work from this quarter. “Dinner with the Family” was from our traditions unit and I felt that I had enough information to really prove why family dinner has taken a left turn and what the effects are. Our paper assignment for the communities unit was a flop even in my eyes, so “Community Provides” will project my revision skills to make the paper reflect what I meant to say. “Welcome to America” was an early discussion board entry that generated good response and covered a topic I’m a not so sure I feel the same way about anymore. The final piece is one of my favorites. “What’s in your Wallet” was fun to write and a great assignment to ponder the question of what kind of things a person carries on themselves day to day that identify things about who they are.

I hope you enjoy my work and give me some feedback. I will admit that this class was very challenging for me. I struggled a great deal trying to understand how to answer the prompts given for the papers. I have learned a lot and thoroughly enjoyed my time with the professors both in person and online.