eportfolio

About Me
      Hi my name is Stephanie and I’m currently a freshman here. I am from Berwyn, IL which is only about an hour and half away from here which is not too bad. I come from a family of five my mom and dad Mitzy and Sergio Cardenas. I have two brothers named Sergio and Gabriel I am the youngest of the 3. I like to take my education seriously I feel that Its important and you can never learn too much as long as you pace yourself. Growing up my parents always told me to "get good grades" "make sure you do your best" "always aim high". Throughout high school I would feel pressured and stressed to always not aim any lower than a "B" because I didn't want to disappoint my parents. Im grateful for them always pushing me to do my best because it got me into the school I wanted to come too. School has always been something I liked doing because I'll get bored easily so going to school helped me a lot to keep me busy. Ever since I was little writing has always been something important to me. I would always carry a diary with me and either stuff a napkin inside or write what it was about. Writing has always been a good way for me to express myself and just write what I’m feeling. Growing up in a house where I couldn’t really express how I felt I would be writing helped. Throughout English 103 I learned a lot about rhetoric and how to use it. Thanks to the examples that were shown in class and the activities we did as a class. We worked on our micro theme, personal essays and lastly our exploratory essays. Although that was not all we did we also wrote in our blog. The blog helped a lot because I learned how to put my thoughts into actual words. I’m going to be reflecting on my blogs, writing the micro theme and our in-class activities. We did a lot of work with our micro themes and it the end I feel that my micro theme was good because of all the back and forth we did with it and all the editing we did.
My Writing
      In class we did something different than what I’m use too. We got to make a blog which was a fun way to put our thoughts about class or just in general about life. I like how Kyburz let us write about what we felt like writing about instead of limiting us to just about English. This blog helped me express myself even when I was stress. Although some post were related to English like our reflection about our personal essay we still had some space where we can do our own thing. Writing blogs helped me write in more detail so when it came to be writing our personal essay it wasn’t that hard.
During our personal essays we did an activity where we just listen to different scenarios like imagine what it was like? what did you see?, what did you smell?, who was there? , did you hear anything? This activity helped me think about what was going on and give like a closer look into detail. It was hard for me to write my personal essay because it was so personal but I like how it came out I still wish I added more detail and got to use more pages maybe but overall I’m pretty proud of it.  I liked working on the personal essay though it challenged me to use new words and a different style. I though that writing about something so personal would have been hard for me putting my memories on paper and just talking about something thats still fresh to me in a way.  My personal essay is about my friend Jasmin who is like a sister to me and how she affected my life in the best way possible. She is just such a good human being and I don't know what I would do without her. (Even though that sounds super cheesy)
     What I learned

In this class I learned a lot about rhetoric writing which is like persuading people which is the definition I use when people ask me. In the beginning we got to learn more about our professor and she made us feel comfortable our first project we focused a lot on our microtheme essay which was hard cause I wanted to go in to more detail but it could only be 3 paragraphs so it wouldn’t have worked out. The micro theme was nice cause we didn’t have to go into detail but with the exploratory essay we did which was also cool because we got to do research and look into something that was interesting to me. My essay was about what its like for a child to experience a parent arguing and how it affects their mentality. It was a long long essay but in the end I finally finished it. This was probably the hardest just because of all the research but in the end I enjoyed doing it. During the exploratory essay I learned a lot about writing with sources and working with MLA format. It was new because in high school we just had to put the link but on this one we had to do that with the author and give a little description about each source. Adding sources wasn't something I was use too but now I learned to always cite and use the source so we can give credit to the author. This was also new to me because we had to use an academic journal which was different, I never even heard of an academic journal before, but I liked seeing peoples research and how they thought about the subject.
     In the end I really enjoyed this class because I liked how our professor made us feel comfortable in class like we would towards the end in of class get into a circle and talk about what we’re writing about and she always wanted to know how we are doing or if we were stuck on a specific part she would help us. I learned how to express myself more in this class. This helped because during these we would also do like peer review where we would get into a group of like 3-4 and get advice and like an audience there to like to help you through it.  It was nice to get advice about what needed to be fixed and like stuff to add.

Some of my favorite childhood things part 1

Here are some things I remember about my childhood and memories behind the items..

 -Lisa Frank stickers were very popular when I was growing up I remember I would take my new pack to school and my friends and I would trade stickers and decorate everything from our pencil pouches/containers to our folders and notebooks.

-The next thing are silly bands these range from different shapes to animals and etc. I loved collecting these and seeing what new shape I would get. I would go to school with my arm covered in these and it was just fun with all the different colors.

-I remember I would always ask my dad if I can use his phone to play brick breaker, honestly I wonder if that game is still available. I'll be down to play still. I also would take my moms phone so I can use her facebook account to play farmville.

Thanks Giving Break

Im excited for thanksgiving break because I'll be able to go home and spend time with my family and friends. My family is pretty big and I like it when we all get together since I don't really see them as much as I would like too. It's understandable because all my aunts and uncles have kids and everyone works so when we all get together its pretty cool.

A tradition we do in our family is we go around the table and say something that is important to us that happen and you want the family to know about my little cousin said she was happy that a girl in her class finally started talking to her and they are best-friends now. I talked about college and how its going for me.

Im also excited that when we come back we have like only a week or two left and then its Christmas break. We get a whole month off which is nice cause we can get a break from all the work we get. I think I can say that everyone deserves a break especially after working so hard this semester and all the work people put into their work.

What I wanted to be as a child...

(These are the type of books I would use)

Growing up I always wanted to be a fashion designer. I loved the idea of creating something new and using all sorts of different styles and patterns and making it into my own creation. 

My mom is an arts and crafts person she makes decorations, cards, cups, etc. Im pretty sure I got my creativity from her because everyday she was always making something on the dining room table or before we moved in the basement. As a kid my mom would always take me to stores like Hobby Lobby, Joanns or Michaels arts and craft store. I use to love going to the stores with her and buying books about making my own clothes or stickers to add to my designs.

For my 8th birthday my aunt got me a fashion designer book and a sewing kit. I would spend hours trying to create the perfect outfit, dress, skirt to a pair of jeans. I even would include pieces of fabric from Joanns store (In the store they had fabric where they had samples on the sides so you can grab it and take it to the front to show the cashier that was the fabric you wanted..I would take a bunch of those samples) and  paper clip them to my book of designs. Looking back my designs weren't that great, they weren't even good but I thought they were the best thing in the world.  I believe my mom still has the shirt I made that has like 20 different fabrics on it and pieces of glue on colorful dots.

As of now I feel like designing clothes will always be there in the back of mind as something I always wanted to do but right now I want to be a social worker and work with young children.

Where I grew up

I grew up in a town called Cicero in IL. I lived there for more than half of life before I moved to Berwyn which was only a couple blocks away. I lived in this neighborhood where everyone had kids I always had someone to play outside with. I had Jasmin, Natalie, Tony, and Alex down the block and on the other side was Ivan, Danny, Guero, Carlos, junior, Angelina and angel. Of course there's more but for now those were the main people I went outside with. There was a movie store in the corner where we would rent movies or buy movies every Friday and have a movie night at my house or Dannys house. My mom would snacks for us and all the kids.

There was a park not too far away from my house with a huge hill that you can roll down. My dad would take Jasmin and I In my wagon that fit 3 people. When we reached the park we would get out and go straight on the swings because those were our favorite. Now Jasmin and I take her sister on that wagon which is pretty good its like a tradition we started.

When I moved from Cicero to berwyn it was way different because in Cicero I knew everyone of my neighbors. In berwyn I didn't know any one of my neighbors nor did I try too. There weren't that many kids who were my age on the block. I liked going back to my old block though since it was where I grew up and was filled with people I knew.

Personal Essay Reflection

When writting my personal essay it was hard for me to choose one thing that I wanted to write about. I had may different things I wanted to write about like my trip to Disney world, moving homes, going to different schools, figuring out how to pay for college and more.

The reason I chose the topic for my personal essay because it was a big part of my life and made me who I was as a person today. One person taught me what its like to be thankful for what I have and never let a day go away without living it till your fullest, taught to be strong and not to fear the un known. Jasmin was the topic of my essay she is the best person in my life, my best friend she has her days where she can be feeling down but then other days where she is a ball of light. Those days you don't want to bring her down you just want to keep that smile on her face, on the days she's feeling down your want to just sit with her and let her know you're there for her.

The thing that was hard for me when writing my personal essay was trying to figure out how to put everything in like a story form. It was a quite a challenge for me because this was also a topic I felt strongly about and wanted to make sure the essay was well written. I must have revised this essay over 6 times I had a couple of my friends look at it, my writers workshop tutor and myself just rereading it, taking stuff out and adding things in. The things that helped me to write this was the in class activity we did where we just wrote whatever came to mind in like list form that helped me like just think about that instead thinking about everything all at once.

My informative speech topic

Selena is a person who lives on in me because she taught me that no matter where you come from or who you are you can do it. So for my coms class we are doing our informative speech and my topic is Selena Quintanilla. Selena was an American singer song writer and a fashion trendsetter, she also made music history.

A little bit about her she was born in lake Jackson, Texas and was in a band called Selena y los dinos which was managed and produced my her father Abraham. She really didn't have much of a childhood because the band took up most her time. While kids were playing outside she was at home practicing and trying to perfect her voice. She became more popular when she started singing at her family restaurant and soon started getting local fans.

She later on opened a boutique to sell her clothes in. She was into the flashy and outgoing styles like bright colors and different patterns. She won Grammys and she was also the first female Tejano singer. Her fans called her the "queen of Tejano music". On March 31st, 1995 her life was cut short when she was shot by Yolanda Salvidar. Who was her close friend, president of her fan club and managed her two stores. Later found out that Yolanda was embezzling money she took over 60,000 dollars. she is not in jail for life but is up for parole in 2025. The last words Selena said was "Yolanda room 158". She left behind her husband christian Perez who was her lead guitarist in the band. Her fans were in a state of shock since she died at a young age, Selena was only 23. Some of her fans flew thousands of miles to see where she died at and to pay respect.