In this semester we faced a lot of hardships and distractions. There were events and new experiences that I learned to deal with. When this semester began, I was not sure if I would be able to understand college level reading but that was quickly pushed to the back of my mind. I remembered all the group work and sharing I did in high school was similar and actually very useful. The school I came from had a lot of group work activities and was always fun. I knew I didn’t read much during high school so I needed to start there and with books I would enjoy reading. Our first assignment (pick a book) made me realize I enjoy dark subjects in books because they are just so real. When I made this, I knew the writer and saw his social media. I recalled his story from the first internet search. He has had a very rough childhood, but he is now his own man and for the first time taking it all out honestly. He had been lying to himself all his life, the first words of the book are him accepting that he is not going to lie. Once I started to read this book, I found myself relating to him more than I thought I would. His mother’s relationship was raw and scary at times. In the second assignment (problem statement) I learned to relate my personal experience with the work I choose and am around. I chose the topic of avoidance in childhood since I could sympathize with him coming from poorer roots. There are events in this book that make you realize why traumas form. In group talk there were so many good points made about how discouraging some actions are as a result of mental health. The book made us understand how hard life can be for people with mental disorders and body problems. Kiese was bullied and harassed every day for every reason in this book. He is very insecure about his body weight and appearance. He dealt with a lot of racism and aggressions from others in school and through his early life that would shape him. He is strong but no one should go through that for any reason and still led to years of trauma and suffering. The third assignment (bibliography) was where I learned the most. I had done research for classes before and even thought I enjoyed it. While I still find it fun sometimes, I have never done more reading in my life. I used the CCNY databases for the first time and they didn’t all work as easy as I would like. There is so much information, I can never look over it again. This assignment made me understand how you read something for an hour, and it does not lead to anything while persistence is key. The book’s problem I decided to stick with was negligence and avoidance in childhood. I learned logistical situations since you cannot just ask to study a child that is suffering from these forms of abuse. What we can do is study and observe children in say an area that might be more prevalent, and use means to lure attraction. Many of the studies I read took place with the parents taking surveys over some years or through testing. There is usually money or product incentive to join or participate. The studies usually all led to saying the less anxiety and chaos parents show to a child the less the child will as well. Peaceful and nurturing environments are most optimal for children to show less symptoms. With this research I wrote our Fourth assignment (formal essay 4).I had a lesson on how to be realistic with paper and your workload. During this assignment I originally planned a huge grant proposal for an observational study. This did not go well since realistically someone asking for tens of thousands of dollars would not write a short 5-page essay but most likely a whole book.  I decided that since this book is also highlighting people of color that we should advocate for proper representation of situations like this in the media. This book was incredibly honest and over the last few years there has been almost a romanization of terrible living conditions. Mental health struggles, physical struggles and time wasted is what comes from painful childhoods. Finally, this final post itself, I have put my most valuable picks from this semester and how to improve next semester.  I am a more complete writer and social science thinker because of this class and all we learned from it.