Simha 1

Vibhas Simha

Kaaronica Evans

Writing 2

21/11/23

Translation Link

Reflection on Creating a Discussion about General Education Requirements

For the Writing Project 2, I translated a hypothetical conversation about general

education requirements that I had with someone from a party I attended to a blog post for my

family. General education requirements have always been an interesting part of my college

experience. They have so many cool facets that give me the opportunity to take classes in

subjects that have no relation to my major, but at the same time they can make me feel

overwhelmed by requirements for classes that I do not want to take. A good example of this is

the Area C requirements. I do not look forward to taking a course in a science, technology, or

mathematics field due to my interests in the social sciences and humanities. I found that

translating this conversation into a blog post was quite difficult as I have never created one

before.

The audience I wanted to reach with this was my family, but honestly anyone. The reason

why this was translated into a blog post was because it would appeal to a wide range of people

who didn’t have knowledge of what general education requirements are. Although the range of

people the blog could reach is wide, the reason why I specified my family was because my

parents went to college in India where the college curriculum was completely different from here

at UCSB. Taking the curriculum of general education requirements and picking certain aspects of
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it to talk about in my hypothetical discussion was intended to make it more realistic even though

I might’ve made the actual curriculum slightly more confusing.

The reason why I chose a blog post was because I thought it would be an interesting way

to depict this conversation. I have seen so many blogs and posts that people had written about

their own conversations and experiences at parties that it seemed fun. I honestly didn’t think it

would be this difficult to translate as I had never had a real discussion. I think that since I had to

make up the conversation, it made the blog post harder because I wasn’t telling real aspects

which would have helped me make the blog flow naturally. This challenge kept popping up for

me and persisted as a mental writer’s block for me.

The challenges that I faced were quite large for me. I was quite confused by the project

builder instructions so when this assignment came around, I was slightly prepared, but not fully

prepared as I foolishly didn’t email the instructor asking for clarification about the instructions

for the translations. The instructions on paper were well worded, but I still struggled with fully

grasping the concept. I also found the topic of discussion quite difficult to translate to a blog post

as general education requirements are a really unique and large topic of conversation. I feel like

if I had more time to fully grasp the concept of the instructions, I would’ve been able to pick a

much more defined topic of discussion like a sport or concept in politics. The last challenge that I

faced was that I wasn’t able to adequately ask for feedback from the instructor which was partly

my fault as I should have reached out.

A concern that I kept in mind was that general education requirements were an extremely

vague topic in terms of unsimplified material due to the fact that it would be very confusing to

someone who didn’t understand the actual parts that are required of university students. There

are so many areas that are covered that I wasn’t able to do it justice within my blog post. I also
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don’t think I was able to keep the reader engaged with the general topic of discussion as I only

focused on a few areas. I really hope I can do better with this assignment with my final

submission and final portfolio after receiving instructor feedback. I know there are so many

aspects that I can improve, I just need guidance and really appreciate my peers for reviewing my

paper really well.

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Works Cited

Zai, Robert. “Reframing General Education.” The Journal of General Education, vol. 64, no. 3,

2015, pp. 196–217. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5325/jgeneeduc.64.3.0196. Accessed 27 Nov.

2023.

Chang, Mitchell J. “THE IMPACT OF AN UNDERGRADUATE DIVERSITY COURSE

REQUIREMENT ON STUDENTS’ RACIAL VIEWS AND ATTITUDES.” The Journal of

General Education, vol. 51, no. 1, 2002, pp. 21–42. JSTOR,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/27797900. Accessed 27 Nov. 2023.

Metcalf, Thomas. "The Case for Philosophy as a General-Education Requirement." Teaching

Philosophy (2022).