Haley Neusch

April 30, 2018

Reflective Writing Questions for the ePortfolio Project

Laura Williams SCM 3-175

Reflective Writing Questions for the ePortfolio Project

1. Describe your project.

(2 pts)
● My project was to Run the 5k Fearless Race for sexual assault victims and to reflect
on the statistics of these events then provide a visual aide to my classmates and tell
them about my findings.

2.What course theme(s) does your project relate to? (Critical Thinking; Happiness and the
Good Life; Responses to Nature; Freedom, Justice, and Responsibility; Identity, Privilege,
and Inequalities).
(1 pt)
● My project relates to justice and identity because many victims struggle with these
after a sexual assault event occurs.

3.Discuss in detail as many connections between your project and the chosen theme(s) as you
can. Include specific references to at least one text that we studied in class. Be sure to provide
the author and title of the text(s) that you discuss, and give page references for all paraphrases
and quotes.
(7 pts)
● In this class we have spoken about identity and expressing ourselves as human beings
artistically via different types of outlets such as music, writing, nature, philosophically
and much more. When someone is a victim of sexual assault more-often-than-none a
 psychological effect that occurs is the inability to continue to thrive or maintain one's
character. Often victims feel as though they have had their identity stolen and they
can not express themselves due to this betrayal. Running this race or participating in
this race was supposed to empower those those have been assaulted that they are
supported, they are not alone and as a group we are here and we will be keep moving
forward one step at a time for those who feel like they don’t want to because of this
horrific act.

● This relates more or less to Thoreau and his relativity to identity, unfortunately i
turned in my book prematurely but one of the quotes I found online that Thoreau said
that pertains to the loss of identity from sexual assault is “ ​Go confidently in the
direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” ​ I think using this quote as
a victim will encourage those to try and to continue to move forward and try to heal
from the event.

4. Discuss your learning process in the course in general, and this project in particular.
What difficulties did you encounter along the way, and how did you deal with them?
(2 pts)
● The learning process in the course was repetitive, I would read the required
assignments and then we would go over it in class and then i would do a paper on the
material… I found this kind of frustrating and difficult to stay on track with staying
focus on the simple subjects. I loved to the art portion of the class where we would
talk in detail about what we thought about certain pieces and then be told more about
them… but I guess that's more of an art interpretation class rather than a rounded
humanities course.
● This project in particular was difficult because when i was trying to sign up for the
race it wasn’t direct with where I should go, where the race started, what to expect.
Then when I prepared for the run and showed up it was unfortunately cancelled and it
made it very difficult to complete my final project with such little time with anything
else… It also made it hard to present to the class because I really had nothing to say
 about “ the hard work” I did and how I felt about what I did… because I didn’t do
anything other than walk around a park looking for a 5k race that wasn’t being held..
But I eventually did what I could with what I had.

What insights have you gained about your topic and/or yourself during this process?
(3 pts)
● While I was at the park, after I learned the race was rescheduled, I thought about
those in my life that have been affected by sexual assault and what I could do to be a
better friend and more supportive for these victims. When putting together the
powerpoint I learned a lot of unfortunate facts about the rate of sexual assault and
telling my classmates about these commonalities made me feel like I educated them in
a way that could potentially save them from a very bad situation.

5.How have this course and this project helped you to progress toward achieving your
educational and/or personal goals?
(5 pts)
● This course has helped me achieve my educational goal by giving me the ability to ​be
educated on the study (for the most part) of man-made "things" (this includes thoughts
and material entities) and understand a variety of subjects: art, history, philosophy,
languages, linguistics, anthropology, etc. In essence, it studies what we as humans do
and make rather than the material world independent of us (i.e., science). Knowing
more about myself and how I came to be this person with complex thoughts and
emotions has been enlightening for my educational success. “ I must understand
myself before I can try to understand another.”