Introduction

 Hello all,

My name is Karla Polanco, and I am an English and History double major here at NDNU. I was born in San Francisco, but moved to South San Francisco when I was eight years old. My parents were born in El Salvador, and I am the youngest of three siblings. Being the only child to go to college, I often feel a bit of pressure to do well and to make sure I succeed in all that I do. But even so, I try to not let those pressures get to me. I absolutely love studying literature and history, often just for fun, but when I'm not reading or studying, I enjoy writing fiction and drawing. As of late, I have not worked on anything personal of mine (perhaps it is a quarantine slump), but I intend to work on things for myself once I get back into the swing of things. I also enjoy studying languages and playing video games, though I'm not very good at either of those things. 

I am very much looking forward to increasing my analytical and researching skills in this class. While I do well on my essays for English classes, I am certainly less confident writing essays and reports for my history and political science classes. I hope to elevate my skills, especially with gathering qualitative and quantitative information that I can use as evidence. I want to be comfortable using charts, graphs, statistics, etc. within my writing to supplement my claims in future essays. As I want to continue on to graduate school, and I am certain this class will help better prepare me for the work I will need to do there. For my career, I hope to become a writer or an editor for a historical or scientific magazine/publication (while I love English and History, I would have also loved to pursue something relating to environmental biology). Again, I'm certain this class will enhance my writing skills, and add on to what I already know about writing argumentative and analytical papers. I was initially a bit apprehensive when reading the description of this class, but now I find myself excited about the work and challenges ahead.