Long Beach City College Eating the Hyphen by Lily Wong Discussion & Responses

This topic that I chose for our class, even though not quite traditional for a college writing and critical thinking course, is of great interest to me because the more I engage in its exploration, the more I realize that there is this whole reality that has been deliberately hidden from us by the far-reaching and powerful food corporations. 

I came to realization that I still really do not know where our food comes from, but that this reality is deliberately hidden by profit-makers makes it almost surreal. 

Well, the topic I chose for this course is food, but it is not as simple as it may seem at the first glance. 

You may smile as you see this topic and the cover of our course reader. Sounds quite simple, isn’t it? It may, but only at first. Our discussions will, indeed, start with the expiration of your food identity, but it will progress to the in-depth examination of our industrialized food systems and food webs. 

This is not, by any means, a nutrition course, nor is it an attempt to give you nutritional advice or sway you in any way. Ultimately, this is the course where you will practice your critical thinking and argumentation as you engage in exploring arguments of others regarding commercial agriculture. 

Aside from just presenting you with the course syllabus, introduction to class, discussions, readings, and your “Reading as a Writer” responses that you will be submitting on our English 1 Canvas website, our first class discussion is going to be dedicated to the exploration of your own food identity. 

For this very first discussion forum, I am inviting you to contribute to building our online community by exploring and sharing your food identity. In your discussion post, answer the following questions and respond to at least two of your classmates’ posts: 

1. When you think of this topic “food” for our college writing course, what comes to mind? What can predict this course will be about? 
2. What are some of the useful pieces of information can you gather from the syllabus to help you make predictions about our course?
3. Have you ever explored this particular topic in a college course or college setting? If yes, when was it? What kinds of discussions did you have in it? If not, do you think this topic may be valuable? Why or why not? 
4. This is a fun question! What is the most exotic, unusual, or bizarre food that you have ever tasted or been offered (even if you did not taste it)? What happened? 
5. What do you expect or hope to learn from this course? How would this enable you to grow as a writer, a scholar, and a critical thinker?

after the initial post is sent to me I will send you 2 other students posts so you can write the reply 

Student 1

When I hear the topic “food” I think of actual food, but with food there is a wide variety of foods that you can possible get. Relating the topic to our college course is the same thing, there is a wide variety of different reading genres, writings, words and phrases to you in a college English class. What I can predict is that we are gonna learn a lot of different types of writing and reading skills within a small amount of time due to our class being summer session.

2. One useful piece of information that I have gather from the syllabus that helped me with my predictions would be from “What are your course Objectives?” #1 Use various reading strategies to analyze, interpret, evaluate, and synthesize ideas from texts for a range of writing tasks that recognize the complexity within issues for an array of audiences and rhetorical purposes.

3. No I have not experienced this topic before and it is gonna be interesting to learn the new ways

4. One unusual food that I was offered was rabbit. I was told that it was a different type of meat like chicken, but later was told that I just ate rabbit. I didn’t freak out or anything, but it did kind of taste like actual chicken.

5. What I hope to learn from this course is to be able to write essays that mostly follow the prompt and not go off course. This would enable me to grow as a writer because in the past I have been told my writing is good but sometimes gets off topic.

Student 2

When I think of the topic “food” for this college writing course, I get excited because I too only know a little bit about where food comes from. Throughout this course, I will educate myself and gain some new perspectives about this topic. I predict this course will incorporate food distribution and production issues with ways to properly express these concerns and arguments. I have a feeling this course will not focus just on English techniques but will allow us to communicate and discuss issues that we deal with in modern times.

2. After reading the syllabus, there was an emphasis on “habits of (the) mind”. Which meant that during these six weeks we will not be only improving our writing, reading, and critical thinking skills but understand how to apply these skills to the real world. Plus, this course focuses on a certain topic in a social justice category helps guide our thinking to include any problems we deal with every day.

3. I have not explored this particular topic in a college setting before which is why I am excited to learn more about this topic. I believe this topic is valuable because it affects everyone even if we don’t realize it. Food is a huge part of our lives and it’s extremely important to know where the stuff we put into our bodies originated from. Also, I am a firm believer in eating food that’s locally sourced and grown by going to my farmer’s market and supporting the small businesses in my neighborhood. So, I am looking forward to expanding my knowledge about this topic!

4. The most exotic food I was offered was escargot. I was in elementary school when we were learning about different cultures and one of the countries included France. I was very nervous when my teacher placed the escargot on my desk and I took the smallest bite I could possibly take. Ever since I could remember I always found snails to be gross and freaked me out. So when I was offered to try some I was very hesitant and not excited to try, unlike my fellow classmates.

5. I hope to gain a new understanding of the entire food distribution process and its consequences. Along, with ways for improvement in our communities. In addition, I would like to learn some more strategies to help communicate my ideas clearly and effectively. In the food topic sense, this will help me grow as a critical thinker because I will learn about the causes and effects of one issue and then be able to think of solutions to help end the issue. And by learning new English strategies I will grow as a writer and scholar because it will help me develop my thoughts in a highly academic way and be more thoughtful in my responses.