A Work in Progress

"The only journey is the one within"-Rainer Maria Rilke

In the past, when someone said to me the word “Journey”, quite frankly, I thought that it was the band. I mean, who wouldn’t, right? That band is amazing. But that isn’t the case since it has a lot of deeper meanings. In this class, “Journey” was the principle theme since it relates to everything that’s happening around. The first assignment that I had, was to write an essay about the definitions of journey and I wrote two. The first one, I basically wrote “a journey is when you travel from one place to another”. For example, Kiara is going to a journey in Spain. Quite like that. The second definition, to me, is the one where “you find yourself’. This one is my favorite. We see it all the time, where you basically swim to unknown to know a little bit about yourself. The reason why this is my favorite is because I did this for this class. I was so afraid to take English literature seeing that I don’t dominate the language very good. Well, I am good is just that I get so nervous talking in public that I sound like Sofia Vergara (no offense to her, of course). This exact thing is what I said to my friends when I was talking about my collage the journal project: “When I’m alone, I talk like Morgan Freeman; when I’m with other people, I talk like Sofia Vergara”. It is so weird how we can dominate a language so good but since is not our first, when we’re in front of others, we mixed our two languages (in my case, Spanish and English) and just speak gibberish. Or maybe that’s just me.

Quite literally, I went through an internal journey in this class. I was always so afraid to take an English class in the university so I always took the classes where “Spanish” was the first language. But I knew that it was important for my knowledge to take this class. Plus, I wanted to prove to myself that no matter the fear that you have of something, you can always overcome it. I learned so many things about myself that I didn’t knew before. Like how I can just feel so much better when I’m writing all of my worries in a journal or how my mood has improved because of that. Not just that. But in this internal journal that I experience, I discovered that when you’re a tourist, you tend to ignore all the problems that are happening in the place that you’re visiting. How “home” is different to everyone depending on their life experience. It can be a place, a person, thing or even a smell. How amazing is that? That our ideas, thoughts, our tastes in music, films, clothes shaped the identity represent us. I loved hearing all of the essays of the students in this class about how many of them traveled all over but they they still considered themselves puertorrican. The ones that will always be in my mind are from Angela and Isabel. I was so touched by the vulnerability in them and I hope to one-day write as good as them. The friends that I gained from this class are so amazing that I hope to keep in touch with them forever. In conclusion, this class has helped me so much in gaining some of the confidence that I thought that it was lost forever and becoming a better version of myself. But as I always say, I’m still a work in progress and I know that this wont be the only internal journey that I will experience seeing as life consists of just that.

The Holistic Nomads

Whenever a professor says “Lets get together, group project time”, all of my neurons die. I hate working with a group because I’ve had some bad experience. The most recent one was that I had to do the work all by myself because my fellow companions didn’t want to do anything and I didn’t want to get an F. I hate getting a bad grade on something that I can do really good. This happens all the time but there’s also when the people of my group don’t know the material of the presentation so they read all of the slides from Power Point. This proves to the professor that we weren’t at all ready when in reality I was but the rest of them were just plainly irresponsible. So of course it got to my head that maybe I’m just not good enough to work in a group project and all of these bad experience unmotivated me. There’s also the fact that I’m really shy and I don’t like with people that I don’t know because I feel that I can’t be myself. So when my English professor said that we were going to do a group project for her class, I groaned internally. But this turned out to be the the best thing of this class.

When the professor began to assigned the students for the group, I became really nervous thinking that I was going to get to stuck in a horrible group. Turns out that it was all the opposite of my thoughts because I was put in a group with the most funniest and down to earth people that I have ever met. My group is called “The Holistic Nomads” and it consists of Sergio, Anthony, Miguel(Scott), Isabel, Alondra and me. For the first assignment, we had to write our numbers, emails and the part the we were going to take in the group. I was the researcher seeing that I’m always with my computer. We immediately hit it off that we didn’t finished the assignment on time.  For all the assignments, we were the only group that you could hear laughing but that didn’t mean that we weren’t doing any of the work. That’s the best thing about this group, we knew how to have fun with each other and also do work. Throughout all of the hell that was this semester, I was always looking forward to working with these amazing people because they would brighten my day with all of their craziness. This is the first group project that I enjoyed and loved doing it. So I guess that maybe group projects aren’t really all that bad. It just depends on the people that are in it and if you’re lucky like me, pray that you get great ones. I’m goanna miss seeing my group every Tuesday and Thursday but I know that we will see each other on the university and remember all the great times that we had. It was a privilege working with the Holistic Nomads and to them I want to say: “Thank you for making this trimester fun and I hope to continue this friendship with all of you”

Literary Contest 2018

I got so excited to get to experience this contest because I have never been to one where you get to get compete with poetry, essays, mini saga and short stories. Also because my friend Isabel won second place in the category of essay and Angela who won first place in the same category. So this whole thing was new to me and I wanted to see how it was organized, how it worked, see just about everything. I arrived at the Amphitheater No. 3 and it surprised me that there was food. It’s so obvious that I tasted everything in that table because food is amazing. When Alondra, Francellys and I ate just about everything, we entered the amphitheater cause the contest was about to start.

I listened to all the welcome and opening remarks but I really loved the speech by Elidio La Torres Lagares, who was the special guest speaker. I am not someone who loves to write because I find very difficult to organize my ideas and thoughts into words. He motivated me to not use this as an excuse seeing that I have the duty to tell my own story. To never stay silence no matter what. “We are made of tales, pigments of imagination”. We, humans, wouldn’t be anything without the ability express our own story. I want to stop being so insecure about my writing and just embrace it, so that one day I could be standing on that stage.

The first category presented by the Awards Ceremony was the “Mini Saga”. I didn’t know anything about this so I had to google it. “A mini saga is a piece of writing which has exactly fifty words” (One Stop English). I got amazed by how much you can say whit a small quantity of words. The first place was “Missing Place” by Lesmalee Gonzalez Esquilin; second place, “Clinging to Life” by Sonia I. Neris Alicea and third place, “Sixty Nine Bucks” by Jeaneishka Ruiz Vazquez. They were all really good but the next category really stuck to my heart. This is because it was poetry and Sheila M. Figueroa Suarez for her work of “A Challenge”. It was such a beautiful and moving poem and I was glad that she won third place. Finally, the next category was “essays”. Alondra and I immediately started to get ready by grabbing our phones to take a lot of pictures and to, well, scream our hearts out. So as they were saying the names and all that, I got really nervous and excited that I couldn’t take it anymore. Then they said “Isabel M. Bravo Carretero for Proud to be Puerto Rican” and all us began screaming so much that I’m pretty sure that we embarrassed Isabel but sorry not sorry.  We screamed and cheered again for Angela because she won first place for her essay of “About Home”. Both of this amazing essays were about how “home” can be different for each of us but that no matter where they are Puerto Rico will always be their home. My favorite thing is that they both finished their essays with “Yo seria borincano aunque naciera en la luna”.