Taking A Tour of Brick Lane & Learning More About My Writing Style (Week 11)

My favourite thing about this week was starting off with doing a walking tour of Brick Lane. For my British Life and Cultures class we took a tour of Brick Lane which is a street in East London. I enjoyed learning more about the area and the culture that surrounds it. We learned that it has always been a very diverse area and that there was a heavy Bangladesh presence. I could see the impact the community has had just by looking at the types of shops and restaurants that were around there. There were markets and very cool restaurants there that I took note of so I could go back and check it out. I enjoyed this tour a little bit more as our tour guide was not as monotone as our previous one but it still felt like it wasn’t as great as it could have been. I did like looking at all of the street art as a lot of it seemed personal and moving. I enjoyed being able to visit an area and see how it is impacted by different cultures. During this walk, I tried to be more open to what our tour guide was telling us. I tried to be more aware as I have noticed that I start to zone out after a while. I want to be able to appreciate this walk around an area I did not know anything about. One thing I did find very interesting was the use of the street art. As I mentioned before it was all very moving and personal but I thought it was interesting that people chose to use street art to make a statement. I like that people in that area are comfortable with others expressing themselves through art.

For my internship this week I focused on writing more pieces for the website. After finishing my piece on women’s history month, I started writing another piece on bisexuality and busting myths that surround it. I was fortunately able to run through this one pretty quickly and was able to upload it to the website halfway through the week. Once I finished this fact sheet, I started another piece on gender stereotypes and the effects they have. I first wanted to write about gender stereotypes and the impacts they have on children but I shifted for it to be towards adults only. Because my main experience with writing is all academic, I struggled with the tone on this piece. I originally had submitted a draft to my supervisor that sounded way too formal and academic. He made sure to clarify that the information provided was good just that the tone was very straightforward and something that doesn’t match with the tone of their website. I had to take some time to fix my wording on this piece as it was a little bit harder since a majority of the information provided was a good part statistics. I also realised that I needed to include more information as to how gender stereotypes impact the LGBTQ+ community. As much as I was enjoying being able to write, I did not think about the learning curve that would come with it. Because of this, my supervisor and I had a chance to talk about my struggles and he gave me advice as he also went through the same thing when he first started. I was thankful for his help and I made sure to look back on his advice when I would find myself struggling.

Nonetheless, this was a good week in terms of learning more about the different areas in London as well as the way I write.