“We tell our stories differently, don’t we, you and i?”

This is a quote by Paula Hawkins from her 2017 Thriller novel “Into the Water,” a novel that I can’t say that I’ve completely read despite the implications it has on my day-to-day life. Nevertheless, I thought it to be a good start to this introduction due to the message that it provides.

Hello, my name is Pamella O. Okolo, and through this segment of my U.S. Experience Portfolio, I plan to introduce myself to you. In the FIQWS course, students are pushed to meet the eight learning outcomes that this course provides in the name of academic development. Because of this, I can say that I’ve learnt a lot. As a student, I believe that reflective-thinking and self-evaluation are crucial in the process of learning and give one the ability to improve themselves with stride. However, prior to completing this program, it wasn’t exactly something that I could say I’d done often as a result of the nature of my personality. 

I believe that the act of reflection now gives me the opportunity to better understand the difficulties and flaws within myself that I uncovered during this course, and allow me to better ameliorate these issues as a result. Because of this, here I intend to evaluate all the work that I’ve done throughout this course, what it’s taught me, and how it connects to the learning outcomes the lectures of this semester have been built upon.

In writing the family narrative during class, I realized that the strategies that I used for drafting work on paper was insufficient, causing me to simply not finish the assignment and opt to create a paper outline instead. However, this outlining process, prior to this class, was something that was often dreaded by me because of the manner in which I wrote. Throughout this assignment, I learned that, outside of argumentative and research-related writing, the act of writing for yourself, something I have only done frequently outside academia, was possible. I was able to explore the act of writing creatively—the act of telling my story to a broader audience—and thought of it as exhilarating. I found myself making use of my theological knowledge and quoting Genesis 2:18:23 in my writing. 

 “And Adam said: ‘This is the bone of my bones; and the flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman; because she was taken out of Man.’”

Genesis 2:18:23

In writing the family narrative during class, I realized that the strategies that I used for drafting work on paper was insufficient, causing me to simply not finish the assignment and opt to create a paper outline instead. However, this outlining process, prior to this class, was something that was often dreaded by me because of the manner in which I wrote. Throughout this assignment, I learned that, outside of argumentative and research-related writing, the act of writing for yourself, something I have only done frequently outside academia, was possible. I was able to explore the act of writing creatively—the act of telling my story to a broader audience—and thought of it as exhilarating. I found myself making use of my theological knowledge and quoting Genesis 2:18:23 in my writing.