My name is Lisseth, if you could not already tell by the heading above. I am currently a junior political science student who transferred to CCNY from Stony Brook University last year. I was a journalism student until I changed majors after my first year there. I had huge aspirations to become a journalist after dabbling in my high school’s newspaper during my sophomore year. Those three years that I spent at the paper made me appreciate learning and writing about other people’s experiences that are different than my own.

I wanted to use those skills for the greater good. Being Latina made me realize that my identity prevents me from attaining certain privileges in this country as well as how others perceive of me. After the 2016 presidential election, the political climate escalated and divided the country. Public sentiment towards immigration became tense and soon enough, prejudice against Latinos became vocal and sometimes violent. Over the years I have read about several incidents involving somebody of Latino origin being targeted for simply being who they are. While these stories were disheartening, the journalists reporting on these events shed light on the struggles that many Latinos were facing amid the discriminatory policies set forth by the government. Nobody should ever have to endure these tribulations especially at the hands of government. As someone whose parents were immigrants, I witnessed their hardships and others acting unfairly towards my family because of their immigration status.

All stories reporting on this matter made me realize that these journalists were being responsible with their words by essentially giving a voice to those marginalized. To this day we continue to see coalition of activists who are sympathetic to the many immigrants facing adversity in their home country and in the United States. While I greatly admire the work that journalists do, it is not the career that I once wanted. I found that my writing was limited by journalistic standards, which stifled my voice. Writing had always been an outlet for me and resulted in an everlasting joy for it; however, I found myself dreading my deadlines because it meant composing an article that was so tedious to complete. The monotony of article writing was not worth losing my biggest passion.

Although I became disillusioned with journalism writing, I still had a desire to give a voice to those who would not otherwise be heard. I scrambled to find a career that I could be happy with and ultimately decided to go on the path to law school. We like to think that everyone in this society enjoys a pretty good life, but if that were the case then the world would not have as many issues as it does. Coming from a disadvantaged group has made me realize that some people benefit more while others remain in the status quo, sometimes at the expense of the more privileged. Pursuing law can give me the ability to give someone the chance to improve their situation by presenting their case to an audience who is willing to listen.

I am taking this class because it is a general education requirement. Since switching over to political science, I had trouble writing my research-based papers at first since they lacked substance or failed to provide significant insight. During my journalism days, the research that I had to do supplemented information in order to clarify the material. Most of my professors when teaching us to write articles explained that journalists write as simple as they can so that the common person could easily read and understand what we wrote, which meant avoiding formal or academic aspects of writing. The stark differences between these forms made my transition into academic research awkward. Now that I am no longer a journalism student, my writing has improved but I believe I can refine it even more with this class. Last semester, my papers for most of my classes were some of my best. Despite this, my biggest issue was demonstrating how my evidence pertained to what I was arguing in my thesis. I thought that I was able to shake off the journalistic tendencies that I had, but that style did not shake off of me entirely. I would like to learn how to avoid explaining myself in an external manner so that I could instead write a sentence that is thought provoking and insightful. Another lesson that I am looking forward to in this class is learning about the different kinds of citation formats. Like any good writer who knows better, plagiarizing is something you avoid with your life! While I recognize the importance of citing all of my sources, I have a looming fear that one day I may not be as attentive and forget a citation. But it goes without saying that I always cite regardless of how I feel about it. I do think that I have a superficial understanding of citations and bibliography. It would be nice to gain a fuller understanding on the proper formatting of footnotes and bibliography, especially when it comes to online sources.