Communication Competence

     I've written a fair amount of papers in my time at SPCC and this is one of my favorites. This paper was written during my first semester at SPCC in the Fall of 2017 in an in-person 12-week course for American Government. I never would have imagined that I would get the opportunity to write about a passion of mine involving healthy food and fitness and mix it with politics which made this an exciting challenge. In this paper, we were given the opportunity to write on a problem in our society or government and how it should be addressed or fixed. I feel very strongly about the importance and impact of healthy food and diet for people, especially when it comes to our children, so the war on obesity was the best topic for the paper. 

​

     This paper was challenging as it was important to show facts from an unbiased point of view. I broke the paper down by discussing the scientific evidence and facts on what obesity is, whom it affects, and its consequences. I also added the obesity rates in other countries year over year compared to the U.S obesity rates which are incredibly high. Throughout my paper, I speak to the programs the U.S. implemented to help these rates in children decrease but where they ultimately failed and how they can be changed. The research piece of the paper challenged me as I had to discern the credible sources from non-credible sources to make sure the facts and evidence I included were facts that would benefit and elevate the topic. This corresponds with my first goal which was effectively deliver a convincing stance with accurate and detailed evidence. I spent a good amount of my time throughout a 4 week span, reading news articles, medical journals, personal testimonies and scouring. ProQuest so I could ensure I had sound credible evidence and also show the topic as multi faceted. During the course of writing this paper, I did find my love of research which has helped me in papers in following classes, as I have developed the skill of discerning and directing core and sound evidence and facts for my papers to support my thesis.

 

     My second goal for this competence was to form a process to communicate my ideas in my papers thoroughly and effectively. I wanted to try new ways of brainstorming for this topic so I "cubed" my main ideas and from each cube, I drew conclusions or supporting evidence and then narrowed down those to 3-4 supporting statements. This challenged me to prioritize key research and facts and to trim away any "fluff" or "fat" from my paper to ensure I did not take away from driving point. I learned a lot through this paper and the skills that I developed to make sure it was a successful paper. My biggest takeaway is that sometimes, we are not always right, and that is ok if you can learn to put bias aside and dig to find the truth. I had many pre-conceived ideas before sitting down and writing this paper and I researched for days for evidence to help support some of them and there was no evidence to support it. Instead of just writing it in my paper because I thought I. was write, I did more research on what I did find and humbly re-shaped some of those preconceived thoughts. I think this is a good lesson for life as well, in every aspect, we can all take some time to dig deeper into things we may be wrong about it and see the evidence from the other side.