Project Reflection

1. Among the problems in my community, I thought about this topic the most. I
didn’t have to choose between any other problems because nothing else
interested me as much as this one did. It’s important to me because it’s a problem
I know is real and serious. I’m second-generation and I understood and spoke
basic Spanish. I didn’t know how to read/write in Spanish either. I considered
myself bilingual up to that point, but if I had to have a conversation in Spanish I
would fail. I started studying on my own around two years ago to recover my
Spanish and am at a point where I am satisfied, but still lacking compared to my
English. That’s why I chose this topic. It hit close to home.
2. The biggest influence on my methodology was personal conversations with my
target audience. It was the most important to me because I wanted to hear the
opinions of the people it affects. Luckily, I am very entwined in the community
so I didn’t have to look farther than my family. I asked my aunts, uncles, cousins,
and grandparents. I also asked extended family members on my mom’s side. I
was less influenced by my research on the internet because it repeated things I
already knew or have heard before. However, I did gather statistics and data that
I could use in my report.
3. It was not that difficult to present the results I got from the people I interviewed
because the data that I ended up with was as I expected it. Second-generation
children born in the U.S. prefer English even though they use Spanish at home.
That was the case with me so that’s why I was so convinced that my data would
come out as I expected it to.
4. I would say it was fairly easy to interpret the results. I only focused on first to
third-generation Hispanics because that’s where most of the Spanish is lost.
5. I created my visual pie chart about language preference in Hispanic families
using the results of my research because it was more reliable than finding it on
the internet. I did, however, use the statistic for demographics in NM because
 that’s not something I could’ve created myself. It’s also reliable information
because it was research done by the U.S. Census Bureau.
6. I figured out my topic the first week of the project. After that, I didn’t work on
the project for a couple of weeks because I’ve never been very good at following
a timeline. I did, however, send the questionnaire developed in class to my
participants during that time. I interviewed some of my participants the week
before the first peer review. I developed questions to ask based on how they
answered my questionnaire.
7. I don’t have an exact answer to how I will be able to use these skills in the future.
The main reason is that I haven’t figured out exactly what I want to do. I’m sure
my career path will follow the STEM path but I haven’t thought beyond that.
8. I found myself having trouble with the visuals part of the project. I didn’t include
any stock photos because my topic wasn’t something material that I could look
up a picture of. That’s why the only visuals I included were statistical data.
SLO Reflection

SLO 1 Project Planning

I was able to come up with the topic I had in mind, the day that the project was
assigned, so I didn’t have to worry about any stress in choosing a topic. I chose to look
into the topic a little bit online and found a bunch of articles on the topic, but no
scholarly sourced worthy research. I then took some time off of the project because it felt
like I still had a lot of time available to me. By the first peer review I had finished all of
my interviews and had an idea of what I wanted to present in my results, but still had
trouble because I didn’t know how I wanted to present it. I worked on it the following
week.
SLO 4 Organizational Design
I used mostly primary sources with some secondary sources. I used most of the
information I got from my interviews to come to my results and conclusions. I used
some secondary sources, but I couldn’t find much ideal research. Luckily I did find one
scholarly research publication from a Harvard student with the help of UNM libraries. I
used data I got from my sources to relate it to the text. For example, I got the
demographics in NM and edited the image to focus on the most important part which
was the Hispanic data. I then related it to the text by explaining why the percentage is
so high for Hispanic people in NM.
SLO 8 Content Management
I bolded and sized the section titles bigger to help the reader understand that
they have moved on to a different section of the report. Readers can also use the table of
contents provided at the very beginning of the report to guide them. They can choose to
skip some sections. Or they can choose to go to the very end where all the
recommendations are if they just want that.