Final Reflection

Throughout this class, I have been bombarded with tons of information about various subjects. I am thankful for the opportunity to have taken this class because I got to hear the words of many prominent professors at this school that I otherwise would not have the opportunity to interact with. After leaving this class, I feel proud to be a Howard University student. Through the lectures, I have learned what it means to be a Howard student-through the legacy of the people who have come before me and through working with my peers on our group presentation, to name a few. This class has prepared me to continue my education here at Howard by giving me snippets of information in various subjects to encourage me to think more globally. At the end of the day, I am so thankful that I was able to accept the opportunity to study here, because I know that many of my peers do not have the same luxury. When I am stressing about homework or a big test or problems with the Administration building, I must remember that I am lucky to be a part of Howard University-despite all its flaws. Howard has a strong legacy and I am willing to uphold that legacy.

Erika Meijer

Peer Presentations II

Another peer presentation that I found really interesting was the one on teen pregnancy. It amazes me how prevalent of an issue teen pregnancy is, and this presentation opened my eyes with statistics and facts. The sad thing is, teen pregnancy is preventable. A lot of people get distracted with the pro-choice/pro-life debate, but I don't think that is the issue at all. As a teen, you can make the choice to be sexually active or to be abstinent. If you choose to be abstinent, there is no way you can become pregnant. However, if you choose to become pregnant, the chances are 50/50. You can protect yourself with condoms and birth control medication and be almost completely protected from accidents, or you can choose the dangerous path of luck-not using protection but hoping things will turn out alright. Since we are in college, we are exposed to a wide variety of sexual pressures, and it is important for us to recognize them and learn how to deal with them. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be sexually active-that is a choice meant for the individual. I'm saying that we need to understand that we are in college for a reason-to get a degree and become successful. If we get pregnant, the chance of that pregnancy setting us back are definite.

Peer Presentations

One peer presentation that affected me a lot was the one on teen suicide. It was easy to relate to, because I have had a few friends who have suffered from depression, and one of my friends even attempted suicide. I think the main focus of the presentation was that we often take the little things too seriously in our lives and let them pile up to create a very big problem. However, if we just sat back and evaluated the importance of all those little things in our lives, I think we would realize that everything didn't need to be taken so seriously. This presentation was really important to me because, as I stated earlier, one of my friends attempted suicide. I didn't know what the warning signs were and I didn't know how to deal with the situation, but now I feel that I am more educated and if the time should come again, I will be prepared with knowledge on how to deal with the situation.

Erika Meijer

The Stampede:Group Presentation

The Stampede's Group Presentation focused on the awareness of suicide and the factors that lead to suicidal attempts. S0me of the facts that were given by Stampede surprised me because I never knew some of the statistics of the people who commit suicide. Overall their presentation was very informational and I'm sure made everyone aware of how big of an issue suicide really is. The Stampede's presentation also listed factors that contribute to the rising rates of suicide, for example, partner or child abuse, depression, unemployment, and the list goes on. Because of the constant changes in America's society suicide rates have doubled, due to the recession that has last over the past couple years and the amount of people losing their jobs. Their group presentation also made it evident how serious an issue suicide really was when they stated that suicide is the 8th leading cause of death and that 5 people fall victim to suicide everyday. The Stampede's presentation was very informative and should encourage everyone to be on the look out for people who are very depressed or sad and to just look out for their possible suicide attempts. I believe with more awareness suicide rates could decrease. Overall the presentation was great and I really enjoyed learning.

Jahmonni Long

Peer Presentations

Another group presentation that I saw addressed Genocide Intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Genocide is defined as the systematic and widespread extermination or attempted extermination of an entire national racial, religious, or ethnic group. In the Congo the mineral Coltan is the main reason for the killing of many civilians.While the Democratic Republic of Congo features the world’s second-largest peacekeeping force, MONUSCO, these peacekeepers have yet to bring peace to that area. Civilians in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo remain victims of mass killings, severe torture and widespread rape at the hands of numerous armed groups operating in the provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu and Orientale.  Conflict in the DR Congo has resulted in an estimated 5.4 million civilian deaths since 1996. The Congolese Army, known as the FDRC, engages in looting and gender based violence against civilians that they should be protecting. The group provided a video for us to watch however time ran over so we were no able to see the whole video. I would have liked to see more of this group.

Peer Presentations #1 The Stampede

The

The presentation by the Stampede addressed suicide among African Americans: Ages 15-24. I feel like it was necessary to discuss this topic seeing as though a student had recently committed suicide and suicide is not something that is discussed often.  They started by defining suicide as the taking of one’s life, but that it not all it is; it is the severing of social ties from the family, church, and other social aspects of life. Today the leading cause of suicide is due to unemployment. This creates a sense of helplessness in which people feel they have no other way out than to take their own lives. Other reasons as to why people commit suicide are incarceration, stress, few ties to the church and social group, and childhood maltreatment. Something new things I learned from their presentation were that more than 30,000 African Americans commit suicide annually. There are more than five African American suicides per day, and for every successful suicide the ratio is four to one, men to women. Suicide is the third leading cause of death in the world today and I feel that if we are able to recognize the signs of people in distress then more lives can be saved. It is very important to be aware of the people around us and to monitor their behavior. Most people who commit suicide are the people we would never expect too, and that indeed is a tragedy in itself. I just feel that we should always be conscious about what we say and do to people cause our actions can really affect someone to the point of wanting to end their life.

Self Assessment

After being in freshman seminar I still feel the same way as I did going into it. I did not feel like it really served a purpose as a class. The lectures were given were about random topics and I don’t see how they are going to help us progress in the years to come. I guess I would say the research project was useful in helping us learn how to develop research questions properly, and execute the correct steps to successfully creating a presentation. I think one reason why I did not really like doing the research project was because everything was so unorganized. I like things to be clear so that I know what is supposed to happen and when. I also don’t see why we have to do blogs when we do the mbongi forms in class and it’s basically the same thing just in a different format so I feel it’s redundant. One thing I did learn from freshman seminar was that I need to be more present in all my classes mentally so that I can really absorb the information being given to me. I did learn a few things, but most of them won’t be used later on in my life I don’t believe. I also could have tried to take the class more seriously.

Research and Methodology

Dr. William’s lecture on Research and Methodology was one in which the concepts discussed were already familiar to me. I already knew that in order to do research there has to be a purpose for doing it. The main purposes are to solve a problem and to gain knowledge. Specifically during this lecture I was looking to gain more insight into how we were suppose to create a research question based on the prompt we were given. The prompt stated "In what ways is knowledge generated by various fields of study used to develop solutions to human social problems and challenges? Each group will explore a different social problem or challenge." When given the prompt I was confused as to what was being asked. I felt like the prompt had to deal more with our specific fields than anything else. I knew that we had to have sources and research and all that, but I still didn’t know what our question should be centered on. Even when doing the project I did not feel that it fit the criteria for the prompt, but according to our advisor we were on the right track. What we chose to research was the effectiveness of HBCU’s on the success of African Americans. We made sure we covered all the parts as far as getting visual data, primary data, and secondary data. We made sure that we had a problem that could actually be used as a full on research study and made sure that it was a study that can be replicated.

African Burial Ground

The trip to the African Burial ground was one that I was skeptical about taking. Slavery is a sensitive subject to talk about to me, and it’s not that I don’t care about what our ancestors went through it’s just something that I’d rather not talk about. I’ve never been too concerned with getting to know my ancestry and things like that because I am comfortable with what I already know. However I did like when we went through the “ship” that was outside with the sankofa sign on the side of it. I like the concept of sankofa which means “go back and take”. I do understand that in order to understand where we are today we have to know where we came from. I also believe that in order to prevent the events of the past from happening in the future we have to assess what went wrong then and fix it before it gets out of hand. The trip to the Burial Ground was not as depressing as I thought it would be. The thing that interested me most was looking at the bones that were discovered and the ages, weight, and gender of the people extracted. I was also fascinated by the replica of the burial that we saw in the video because it seemed so realistic. I thought it would be more to see in the museum than there was, but all in all the information presented was enough.

Power of Young People

During the civil rights movement young people played an important role in the journey to gain civil rights for blacks. They participated in sit-ins, marches, and worked to desegregate schools, libraries, and other public establishments. An example of nonviolent resistance in the United States was the Greensboro sit-in which was executed by four Greensboro students. On February 1, 1960 Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeill, and David Richmond, four Greensboro students, staged the first successful sit-in of the 1960’s civil rights movement by taking seats at a “whites only” lunch counter in Woolworth’s and asking for service. After this sit in Nashville students followed suit and staged a sit-in that used rotating protestors for when the police arrested protestors sitting at the counter. As time went on more and more sit-ins occurred. In the spring and summer of 1960, white and black youth participated in similar protests against segregated public establishments with sit-ins at white libraries, wade-ins at white beaches, and sleep-ins in the lobbies of white hotels. Students also formed a civil rights group, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The members of the organization branched out into smaller cities and towns and worked to organize local blacks, teach nonviolence, and encourage voter registration. The journey to gain civil rights for African Americans was not an easy one and to me it took way more courage for youth to participate in the demonstrations than it took for older people. The youth made a voice during the movement and they made an impact.

Self Assessment

After spending a semester in Freshman Seminar I have acquired a lot of knowledge. Freshman Seminar taught us about awareness and remembering our past. A word commonly used during our freshman seminar lectures was "Sankofa," which means in "Akan language of Ghana that translates in English to "go back and take". Literally meaning to learn from our past and take it with us into our present times. I thought that "Sankofa" was a powerful meaning because it allows life to transcend into greater things with using the things from the past. I believe that from Freshman Seminar I have learned something small about African culture and will be able to take it with me and be able to expand on it throughout my journey at Howard University. Freshman Seminar also The most important thing I learned from Freshman Seminar was that we have to remember our past to realize what our future may hold. Freshman Seminar changed the way I thought of Howard University itself and even what I thought about Howard University's legacy. Knowing all of this allowed me to change into a better and more informed individual about the history that is being made on this campus everyday.

Jahmonni Long

Research and Methodology

Dr. Dana Williams' presentation was called Research and Methodology: Inscription as a Liberating Practice. She tells of the purpose of freshmen seminar she specifically names the goals are "One of the goals of this course is to encourage every student “to pursue a lifetime of independent discovery, including the appreciation of the importance of research.” Dr. Williams' also states that "the commitment to academic excellence is successfully cultivated, students begin to see how intellectually liberating it is to conduct meaningful research with integrity". An inspirational statement that is in all ways true, once you have made the commitment to higher education you can being to have a true commitment to your learning and education with research.

Dr. Williams' names that the primary objectives of Freshman Seminar are "to identify the principle components of research" and "to relate these components to the group project." She also names that the complete research for Freshman Seminar was "In what ways is knowledge generated by various fields of study used to develop solutions to human social problems and challenges?Each group will explore a different social problem or challenge." She gives the 6 components of research as Statement of the Problem/Challenge,Review of what’s been said (Literature Review/Review of Scholarship), Methodology, Framework, Development of Thesis and then developing and writing your Conclusion.

Dr Williams' also makes it evident which lectures fall into certain categories of the seminar; Memory and Awareness of Freshman Seminar. The memory of Freshman Seminar is the "Learning, Wisdom, and the African World Experience" and "Abandonment, Dismemberment, Re-Awakening:The History of Howard University." The awareness of Freshman Seminar was "“The Eloquence of the Scribes”:

Initiation, Expectation, and Mastery—Continuing the Legacy of Howard University," "Practices of Freedom and Justice: Representative Thinkers" and "Omoluabi: Self-Actualization and Communal Responsibility."

Jahmonni Long

African Burial Ground

Our trip to the African Burial Ground was one of the most astounding things I have ever experienced. It was an amazing feeling to almost feel connected to the Africans who were buried right in the middle of New York. It was also surprising that many people had walked the streets of New York millions of times and had never known what lay beneath their feet. Although it was extremely cold that day I felt somewhat of a calming feeling come over me once we chanted "ashay", as if an extreme bond had been built. After walking through the sculpture of the door of return, the burial site became even more interesting to me, all of the religious texts or scriptures that had been engraved into the monument were intriguing and were even exciting to learn the meaning of most of them from Dr. Carr.

Other than the sight itself what also amazed me was the Howard University's Anthropology department was able to be apart of this amazing discovery. A fact that Howard will always been in the memory of the African Burial Ground is an amazing and major part of the Burial Ground within itself. Howard Univerisity is now more apart of history than ever before. Lastly, I enjoyed the trip to the African Burial Ground and suggest that anyone take that trip to New York to visit the monument, it is a life changing and a priceless experience.

Jahmonni Long