About Me

 

Hello everyone! My name is Vanesa Munoz. I am a senior at NJCU and plan to graduate after this semester. This is my second year here after transferring from Ashford University during the pandemic's peak. After enrolling at NJCU, I switched my major from early childhood education to sociology. I work full time, and I am a full-time student. Most of my time is spent with getting my homework done, as all my classes are online. This semester, I am a little nervous because I am taking five classes instead of my usual four. When I do get some spare time, I love binge-watching tv and look for any excuse not to get off the couch, unless I am getting ice cream, of course. I currently work at a preschool/daycare center as a lead preschool teacher. This has given me much-needed experience as I hope to get my teaching license after attending an alternative route program for education once I have my BA. I enrolled in this class last minute because I needed a general education class to graduate. I find literacy courses interesting; however, I do hesitate to take these types of classes because of the writing I may have to do. In my personal life and sometimes the papers I have to write, I struggle with expressing thoughts/ideas. Sometimes I have too many thoughts, and I confuse myself with them, leaving me feeling overwhelmed. I was a little skeptical about taking this course. After viewing the webinar, I was a little hesitant about all the blogs we needed to create during the course, mainly because I am not tech-savvy, and the whole thing made me nervous. However, I am staying in this class because I think we will explore interesting topics. And although I would never make a blog in my personal life, we live in an era where lots of people blog, and some blog posts can be useful. So, I am staying optimistic about this class and will try to have some fun getting experience in blogging.

I don’t remember my early years of becoming literate; however, I am bilingual, and Spanish was my first language. When I started preschool, I absorbed the English language quickly. I was still being taught to speak, read, and write in Spanish at home. I remember my church books were in Spanish. I appreciate my parents, who have encouraged me since I was young to be proficient in both languages while growing up. However, English has become my predominant language over the years; it was used throughout all my years in school. I admit that my grammar has never been perfect, and I struggle to remember all the rules that it consists of, but I love something about grammar, and it can be a pet peeve of mine when I catch other people’s grammatical errors. I use a proofreader to minimize any grammatical errors most of the time. It has helped me with writing in college throughout the years, and I get satisfaction when I use the checker, and it has detected little to no errors. I think being literate is essential in my life. I have seen its importance throughout my years, and I want to be viewed as “educated” based on my communication skills, specifically my writing abilities. Currently, I frequently speak to parents at my job, most often through emails. I want them to take me seriously and respect me, and for some reason, I think being literate, in this case having good writing skills when communicating to them, gives me that feeling of power.