Hello there, my name is Samantha Villalobos and I am a junior at Rowan University majoring in English and Education. English as a subject has always been one of my strongest, I have always had an affinity for reading and writing. I realized I wanted to pursue education one day in a high school English class (taught by a Rowan alum, coincidentally) as I was imagining what kind of writing prompts and assignments I would want to give to students of my own. I am, admittedly, not as big of a reader as I used to be or wish I was, but I used to be a big consumer of horror and mystery novels like Goosebumps or works by Stephen King. Nowadays, my reading is mostly limited to the readings I am assigned by my professors and the news, with The New York Times being my preferred outlet. My plans for the future are to graduate from Rowan with a masters in Education and bachelors in English which I will use to teach English at the secondary level. I also imagine I will move to either the central or south Jersey area in order to be close to my boyfriend who is also pursuing a career as an educator.
As for our course this semester, I am hoping to take advantage of our seminar-style structure in order to expand my ideas and receive the opinions and ideas of others. This is one of the first courses I have taken where the classroom discussion is continuous and building off of itself, rather than students only directing their responses to the professor for participation credit. I am also hoping to finish this semester with an adequate paper that I can use in my portfolio and take pride in, since many of the papers I have written in my time at Rowan felt disingenuous or like I only wrote them for a grade (as opposed to public submission and potential publication). I feel motivated by the challenge this course proposes to me and I have a positive attitude towards completing it.
Leave a Reply