Student Reflection

by Flora Ramirez
Hello everyone, my name is Flora Ramirez and I am a senior in Urban and Regional Planning.  I am extremely excited about having the opportunity to complete my James Scholar Project for SPAN-232.  Within the realm of Urban Planning my interests lie in urban design and community planning in ethnic neighborhoods.  While I have developed my first interest within my major’s curriculum it has been more of a struggle to explore my second interest.  That said, when I ran across this class I jumped at the opportunity to work in the community!

My experience with Spanish within the academic arena is extremely limited.  However, Spanish is my native language and so it has always informally been a part of my life.  Having made the transition from learning in Spanish to learning in English in 4th grade, my Spanish has experience limited growth since then. 
This said I hope that my experience with in the community will help my Spanish speaking skills grow. My goal is to have the ability to hold a casual conversation with community members effectively.  By effectively I mean that I would like to be personable so that community members may feel that they can confide in me.  In the long run I strongly feel that my experiences within the community will also help me gain a heightened sense of awareness for what members of ethnic communities’ experience.  The hopes are that this understanding will then help to better inform my approach to both urban design and community planning.  

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