For this project, I interviewed my fellow peer Angel Soto-Pena. He also dealt with a sociopolitical topic, that being gentrification in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. I can tell he is very passionate and intrinsically motivated about helping people and dealing with systemic issues.
Angel’s environment and past experiences have led him to follow this path of action. He grew up in the middle of Los Angeles which is close to his faultline Silver Lake neighborhood. In response to my questioning, he said that “I also got to see how I lived a different life from kids I went to school with when they would tell me from what part of town they are from.” The diversity exposed him to different groups of people that face different struggles and have different perspectives on said struggles. After seeing the problems facing his peers and neighbors, Angel wanted to bring attention to it.
Angel was an incredibly empathetic person who cared deeply about the well-being of others. When asked about his motivation, Angel emphasized the value of people: “I am very passionate about people. I just love being involved with people. Letting people know that it is okay to be human/ a person involved in everyday society.” The word “people” is a general term and the way he uses it shows that his goal is to help everyone, not just a few individuals he is close with.
Angel expressed how he faced personal challenges when writing with new expectations: “Something that was difficult and challenging would have to be analyzing my evidence because I tend to summarize and not analyze so that part really tripped me up.”Angel also disliked tertiary sources and how “they would give me summaries and I did not need summaries I need first-hand evidence.”In this age of mass media, we’re used to getting our information in easy to consume chunks, and in turn, we neglect the real source.
The third problem he mentioned was the ticking clock. Angel believed that this was one of how his work failed: “I did it so last minute I couldn’t really focus on what I was trying to say and nor could I give a detailed explanation on why I used said evidence.” By waiting until the last minute, Angel had to put in a large amount of effort just to get the project done on time.
Angel helped his peers and noted that “when someone else reads your work they catch your small mistakes.”He is referring to his correction of grammatical errors, a key part of the revision process. Angel described himself as a “benchwarmer” which shows his modesty. The term benchwarmer refers to a player who is not the best on the team and thus does not often play.
When all said and done, this interview showed me a lot about Angel’s writing and character. He possesses a strong desire to help others who are going through tough times. Education and writing are ways in which he can develop his skills to be a more effective advocate.
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