Core Skills
Written Communication
This Artifact that demonstrates my skill at written communication was the course paper for my MUS-111: Music Appreciation class. The paper was about the opera and how this piece of music has changed over the different musical periods. I selected this because I think that this portrays my thoughts about how the Opera has changed over time. As someone who is very attuned to music, I have always enjoyed writing about things related to this field. I learned so many different things about the Opera that I did not originally know like what some of the key parts to it are. This was at a time where I was not improving musically and by writing this paper, it helped develop me further as a musician as well as helping me overcome a roadblock in my musicality.
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Oral Communication
For my Artifact that represents Oral Communication, I chose my informative speech from COM-231: Public Speaking. This speech was about alcohol and Addiction and the effects that it had on the brain. I have always been fascinated with how the brain works and how humans are attached to things that are normally bad for them. I think that I learned way more than I thought that I would about this topic and I think that it has made me a better person for it. I challenged my self to give very good and insightful information to my audience and I think that this opportunity in my life to present this has made me a more effective speaker. When it comes to me learning in general, I think that we often take for granted just how important the information we are given is. Addiction is clearly something that is not talked about and that is especially true for different kinds of addiction with some being more serious. I also used this speech to help bring awareness to this topic because if we just simply talk about this more, then we can help push forward our society and the individuals who are plague with these mental ailments to being their best self's and being the people that they wanted to be. we are all human beings and we all deserve the absolute best for ourselves. That means we should not be having this kinds of substances in our lives. We must cut them out in order to live the life we have always and wanted and most importantly, to feel human again.
Critical Thinking
The artifact that best represents the skill of critical thinking which I have gained here is that of my ENG-112 proposal paper Which is about data breaches in information technology. Along with my AA, I had also taken up a certificate in a field related to cybersecurity. One of the many topics that I learned about there was that of data breaches and how we can defend against them. I came here to SPCC without that much knowledge about how information technology works. Thanks to the first classes in my first fall semester, I was able to learn much about how data breaches occur. This field of work is always changing as new ways of hacking and data breaching are always being invented. This makes the job of a cybersecurity specialist quite difficult as they are always trying to stay one step ahead in the game. Not only do they fight for us, but they show us methods on how we can reduce the chances of the integrity our data being used by other companies being violated and abused by people who either wish to profit or just mess around. That being said, there is always a risk present and absolute safety can never be guaranteed when it comes to protecting against these threats. This assignment taught me to think very critically about a subject and the things related to it so that I could help create some solutions that help to protect and mitigate the effects of this. This has made me better at thinking hard about certain subjects and will help me to form my own opinions in the years of my life to come.
Intercultural Competence
I selected to represent this core skill of Intercultural Competence my course paper of PSY-150: General Psychology which was about gender theory and Its place that was in school. We live in a culture today where people can decide to be whatever they want to be because of the freedom that we have been given. This ideology eventually found its way into people thinking they could be whatever gender they wanted to be based upon how they felt as a person. While that is a personal decision that any adult should be allowed to make, it poses the question on whether something like this should be taught in school, especially in kindergarten and the first couple of years. Imagine it was like the parents finally having the "Talk" with you but at a much younger age and being taught by a teacher. This paper dives in this topic and critically reflects on whether this is a good idea or not. I was genuinely surprised that stuff like this was happening in school and at times was quite shocked at the things that they were doing to help promote this. In the composition of this, I gave many sources of evidence and examples to help examine the topic further. Along with this, since this is such a sensitive topic, Attempted to remain as objective as possible without inserting my own bias. This topic made me find a way to tackle, study, and present information that was based upon a very sensitive and controversial subject. This has made me more culturally aware and more confident as a person and will help me in the future the examine the state of our society and make decision based upon it.
Information Literacy
For my final artifact that concerns my core skills which falls into that of information literacy, I picked a case study assignment from my CCT-231 which was about protecting yourself online from any fraud attempts. This paper discusses a recent fraud bust that was known a Suntasia. These people had disguised themselves as a travel company but the people were just a bunch of scammers who were out for other peoples money. After the FTC busted this company, two of t he former scammers tried to start up another scam but were eventually caught a punished by the FTC for disobeying a court order. I did not know much about fraud up until the time I wrote this. After writing about this, it has made me think about being careful for fraud just about wherever I go on the internet and has made me warry to phone calls that come from places that I am not accustomed to. Since this was one of the first papers that I created at this institution, I was still learning how to put together information and share it effectively and factually with my audience. The challenge behind this assignment was trying to do it well and to the best of my ability. I was not pushing my own ideas or thoughts and had to keep this as factually correct a possible. This assignment helped me learn how to organize information effectively and would be a building block into how I wrote assignments for future classes. It would ultimately set a precedent for my college assignments going forward and taught how to present information that I was given which is a very usefull skill to have.