The second phase of the course had an interesting assignment which was to create a profile on one of our peers. One aspect of this assignment that I liked was that we got to know our peers at a deeper level than we get to do in most of our other classes. We were able to share our stories and narratives of whatever life experiences we chose to discuss and how it impacted on us a significant level, how it developed us, what it taught us and how our reactions are looking back at them now.

I think the ability to understand one another and getting to know each other is something that is usually neglected at CUNY colleges because of the lack of opportunities to actually make real friendships. Though this might not have given life long friends it did give us the opportunity to meet strangers.

Furthermore, constructing a peer profile made us look at other people around us with less of a self-imposed image. As humans we naturally think more about ourselves and how our own problems affect us and which way our own life is going. We don’t usually look at other people and wonder how their problems are going and how they have valuable experiences that are different from ours, that they probably live completely different lives than us. One aspect of this assignment that I did not particularly like was that there wasn’t a more rigid outline for what the peer profile needed to include like there was for the narrative. I think that would have made it significantly easier to construct the profile and even get to know my peer better. I think that was a valuable part of this assignment and I enjoyed writing the peer profile.