A little over three months ago, I, along with thousands of other freshmen, embarked on a scary, yet exciting new chapter in our lives. Most of us, myself included, thought that we were well prepared for our first classes as college students. If I were asked what I had learned during college, I would have a hard time stating anything other than useless facts related to my classes. My commonplace book includes posts from throughout the semester that express my progression as both a student and a person.
While I was rereading entries from my commonplace book, I was reminded of the dejected feeling that I had at the beginning of each unit. It was almost amusing to me to see how fearful I was of each project and then see how I gradually progressed through the writing process until I had slain the “beast”. The majority of my posts in the commonplace book talk about how everything was new to me, which was probably the cause of my anxiety in this class. Never did a moment go by where I felt comfortable or confident with what I was doing. Many posts portrayed this discomfort, such as the in class essay reflection where my first sentence states that I almost had a panic attack when I saw the unit instructions and the post on new ideas where I discussed how everything felt new to me. As the semester progressed so did my writing. I can see a great improvement from my first unit reflection to the second and so on. Just two weeks after the first reflection, I was thinking like a writer. I talked about how dreadful the drafting process was and how I was struggling with using rhetoric correctly in my paper which was astonishing to me because two weeks before then I had absolutely no idea what rhetoric was.
The more that I read my entries, I began to notice that many of my posts weren’t very deep in meaning. I knew from the beginning of the semester that I was supposed to write in a sophisticated manner, but I think that I flew through the short daily writes so I could get out of class early. With a simple glance over, I noticed that there was virtually no substance, which wouldn’t be good when it came time for grading. I think that the biggest think missing from my commonplace book would be the time put into it. It didn’t matter whether it was a short daily write or a lengthy reflection, I wrote the first things that came to my mind and rarely ever read over what I had written. Now that I have had to reread and correct the majority of my posts, I can definitely say that I have learned from my mistakes. I actually think that my comments are better than the original posts.
Nearly all of my entries had to do with learning. It’s not hard to imagine that as the semester progressed that I would continuously be learning as well, I mean that is the point of college. Through a simple exercise of watching differently composed Op-Docs, I realized that being different isn’t just okay, it is encouraged and praised. Without even knowing it, this semester has been one big “how to” guide on how to find your unique inner-writer. My reflections on The New York Times guide, the Op-Doc analysis, and the PowToon video express vivid amounts of frustration due to the fact that they were pushing me toward a creative edge that I had never dared exploring before. My high school never tried to get us toward the edge, but merely to memorize the basic five paragraph structure inside and out like we were cadets in the military. My commonplace book reminded me that finding this “creative edge” was a little like climbing Mount Everest. As each unit ended and a new began, I could feel myself becoming more and more comfortable with what I was doing. In my PowToon reflection, I talked about how I felt like a fish out of water at the beginning of the unit, but later described myself as one who was called to be an animator at Disney. The entry “mistakes” is one of my favorites because I can think of hundreds of mistakes I have made since August and the entry is only about four sentences long. Though it may be brief, it holds a pretty powerful message when it states that mistakes are okay because how else would we learn about ourselves. This logic can be applied to everything that we do, not just during college but in our lives as well.
The tags that I have decided to include are what I believe best represent my commonplace book. The first tag is “learning”. It may seem obvious but I learned so much about not the only the writing process, but in my self too. Nearly all of my entries in the commonplace book discuss some lesson that I learned from the time when I figured out MLA format to when I finally realized how to revise the style of my papers. The second tag is “Fear of Failure”. One of my favorite quotes is from Gena Showalter that says “Giving up is the only sure way to fail”. One of my biggest problems throughout the semester was being discouraged right from the beginning, which I talked about in each unit reflection. Once I overcame the fear of screwing up the project, I was finally able to get to work and spit out some pretty good material. My third tag is “Resiliency”. I thought about combining resiliency and fear of failure but the more that I thought about it, I realized that they were completely different. Resiliency deals with the extreme amount of effort that I put into each any ever piece that I brought to class even though I would rather be doing literally anything else. It also covers all of the times when I had no clue what I was doing and had to start over from scratch, even though I could have easily turned in a piece that would have received an okay grade. “Differences” is my fourth tag. The idea of differences first came to me when we were working on the Op-Doc analysis and each had videos that were all polar opposites of each other. Not only were the styles of our Op-Docs different, but so were the styles in which we wrote our analyses. In high school we learn how to do everything just like one another, but in college we finally open our eyes and see that being different is what makes us who we are. My final tag is “Creative Edge”. It took me to the late half of the semester to finally find my creative edge. Because it took me so long to find it, I had started to think that it was some mythical creature like Bigfoot. The creative edge is what makes a writer a writer. Hours of sitting at my desk, starring at my laptop, and jamming out to Spotify allowed me to dive into the deep dark parts of my mind of which I didn’t even know existed. While I was doing this, I would spit out material far superior to anything else that I had scribbled down. Before this semester I never thought about how simple things like the wording of a sentence or placement of a source can change the entire rhetorical outlook of your product. The creative edge, in my opinion, is the most important thing that you can find as a writer. When you combine all five of these tags together, you can begin to imagine the metamorphosis that I have undergone in just one short semester.
PowToon Unit Reflection
The differences in composing the multimodal project versus the actual paper were astronomical. At first I thought that it would be easy to make the video, especially since I had already written an argument paper on the exact same subject. I immediately regretted that thought. I have felt out of place many times this semester, but during this particular unit I felt like a fish out of water, especially while recording the sound track. I am not the kind of person that enjoys talking, so imagine my reaction when Mrs. Forgette told us that we had to record at least three straight minutes of our voices. I absolutely hated recording the audio track. The Sunday before the first audio draft was due, I sat in my room for over an hour talking to myself like a complete idiot. The worst part wasn’t the actual recording, but the part after where you had to listen to it over and over until you wanted to throw your laptop against the wall in disgust. The images were a breeze for me compared to the audio. In less than two hours, I had composed nearly all of the visual elements and had fun brainstorming ideas of what could come next. After that, I felt as if my calling were to work for Disney. My favorite part of the visual track is from the screenshot above. I love how it incorporates the biggest statistics of my paper, while truly connecting with the audience. The little guy on the far left is portraying the college students getting assaulted on campus, but he is actually supposed to be typing.
To say that I am inexperienced with visual presentations would be an understatement. Before this semester, I never made a PowerPoint, or a Prezi, or anything to the nature of PowToon. When I started the project, I knew that I had to jump right into the deep end and find the ins and outs of PowToon. The hardest part of the design process was the audio track. I didn’t want my the audio to be stop and go; I wanted it to flow! I decided to record the audio all at once, which led an excessive amount of time to be spent on timing the slides. My favorite design choice was actually something that I hated at the beginning – the template. Of course, I wanted one of the premium templates because they were so appealing to the eye, but I started off choosing the black and white template from above. I didn’t think that I would continue to use this template throughout the paper, but merely used it as a starting point. Over the course of the design process, I started to like how it looked and how it represented the paper. There weren’t any colors, other than the red that I used on certain fonts, which allowed me to portray the “black & white” seriousness of underage drinking. This is a very serious subject and I don’t think that bright happy colors would have been a great fit.
I wrote three drafts of my script that were honestly the worst things that I have ever written in my entire life. I thought that since it was the same subject that I could just cut and paste sentences from my original paper. If my own draft made me want to fall asleep, there’s no telling what it would have done to my audience. If I had to choose between composing an actual paper with 1,500 words or a PowToon video of about 3 minutes, I would choose the paper. I like to list facts and elements that make an academic paper. I like to go by the basic rules of a paper that we all learned in elementary school because of its familiarity. Pontoon may be fun, but it’s new. I guess that I didn’t enjoy it because I felt so behind throughout the entire assignment. I will never again speak badly of writing a paper, because I have seen what some of the alternates are. When you look at which of the modes were most effective at addressing the issue, I think that PowToon wins. Emotion is a very powerful tool that many filmmakers utilize to portray their messages. When you see a video, even of a crappy little cartoon like mine, of a deaths and injuries caused by alcohol, you start to imagine the situations in real life. Being able to see a visual representation allowed a connection from the message to the audience that isn’t really viable with an academic essay. I liked the professional, academic audience. I didn’t enjoy having to make my video fun and appealing to younger people, especially with a topic like mine. With the professional audience, the more facts and sources that you incorporate, the more effective your paper is whereas the easily bored audience needs less credibility and more “Wow Factor”.
PowToon: The Journey to the Center of the MultiModal Project
When I started working with PowToon, I thought to myself “There is no way that this is going to happen”. I have never been a creative person and I knew right off the bat that this project required a lot of creativity. After two days of just staring at my computer screen, I decided to jump into the deep end. I know that I could have and probably should have watched at least one of the tutorials, but I wanted to be able to do this my own way. During my first hour experimenting with the site, I got impatient and angry, and then PowToon decided it was angry too and quit on me. After going through seven different templates, I finally found the one that worked for me. It took me a while to drag and drop the characters into the shot and took almost two hours to figure out how to set up the audio format. It took a while, but I finally figured out PowToon.
Recovering with Creativity
Today in class we had to listen to several other multimodal projects. I can honestly say that after listening to about fifteen seconds of other pieces, I could tell how awful mine truly was. Once again I was witness to the writing rule that your first draft is pretty much absolute crap and so are the next five or six tries. I also learned that I wrote my script filled with evidence, which would be great if my audience were forty five year old high school teachers that desperately want to see evidence. Sadly, that’s not my audience. I learned that I have to make this script more interesting, and can possibly do so by taking away some facts and evidence and putting them into the project visually instead of audibly. I can guarantee that two days from now my script will be nothing like it is now.
Argument 3-2-1 Unit Reflection
While writing this project, I learned a lot about the writing process. This was the first project where we had to really focus on our citations, which was a big obstacle for me. Up until a week ago I had never cited a paper in MLA format, so I had to rely heavily on an MLA format book I bought in the Union. I think that it took me an entire afternoon to figure out how to properly cite my paper, but now I feel like I could cite with my eyes closed. Even though it seems like it should be common knowledge, I learned that research is the key to a good paper. I wish that I could say that I didn’t spend an entire week solely looking up research, but if I did I would be a liar. There were a lot of differing arguments in The New York Times for my topic, so I had to be very specific in finding my research. It took my a while to finally start discovering information, but once I did it felt as if I was blazing through articles. At the end of the drafting process, I think I had printed out over fifteen different articles and completely drained the ink from my printer. The most important thing that I learned was discussed in class on Friday. When we did the project focusing on writing style, it hit me that I had a real problem with this. When Mrs. Forgette started taking out unnecessary words and stabilizing the flow of the paragraphs I knew that if I wanted to improve my grade I needed to do that. I will admit that once I finish a paper I think that it is time to submit when I really should be reading over it with a fine comb. I tried to do this for my argument and trust me when I say that nearly one hundred words came out.
One of the biggest questions I had throughout the writing process was using 1st person. I faintly remember someone, perhaps Mrs. Forgette, say that we shouldn’t really use 1st person in the unit because it needs to be credible. I tried to google it to see the correct way but there were way too many conflicting responses. When it came time for the peer review Wiki, I got a comment back that said I needed to use more 1st person in my paper to make it more relatable, which through me for a loop. I decided to write my paper without talking about “I” but about “we”. Whenever I addressed something that needed to be done, I would say “we need to ….”. I felt like because this issue pertains to everyone, we shouldn’t exclude people, but be united instead. Another question I had was with the researching criteria. We had to use research that came from the library guides only, which bugged the everliving crap out of me. I understand that this unit is all about credibility but if I can find a source that is 100% credible through regular google I think that I should be able to use it. Maybe I feel this way because I found a good ten sources from regular google before I actually read the instructions and saw that none of those were going to work. I blame myself for that one.
The greatest opinion that I have after this project is that seriousness of the drinking problem. I have grown up around people that drink, and I knew that coming to college I would be around more people that drink. I never would have imagined how bad the problem until I read all of the statistics from research. It was scary to see all of the horrific numbers and then to think that its literally happening all around me. I think that everyone should inform themselves on this issue, because it truly effects every single one of us.
Visual Analysis Unit Reflection
When I was still in search for an Op-Doc to write about, I started watching “Gorillas in the Crossfire”. Most of the other documentaries that I had watched had left me disinterested after the first few minutes, but after seeing this scene in “Gorillas in the Crossfire” I knew that my search for an Op-Doc was over. This particular scene astounded me at the level of seriousness that it radiated. This was the first moment in the film where the audience could see the gorillas reacting to the horrific environment around them. As somber music played in the background, a mother gorilla and her baby embraced each other which stirred an array of emotions in myself. Another key element in the magnitude of this scene was the graphic text. It hurts me enough inside to see these animals living their lives in anguish, but to couple that with text describing their rapid rate of extinction was almost unbearable. I am an extremely big animal lover which was why I clicked on this documentary in the first place, but when I saw how awful the gorillas looked sitting in that forest, I understand not only the topic of my paper, but the way in which I would write it. By watching this particular scene, I knew that I wanted to write my analysis in a way that described how I felt at that moment; I wanted to write about the intense amounts of emotion that this documentary exuded.
When I was in the early stages of writing, and I mean so early that the only thing on my paper was my name, I struggled with finding clear evidence to support my thesis about the use of pathos in the film. I knew by watching the film that the pathos was there, but I couldn’t figure out how to write about what I was watching in an in-depth way. The next day, after a long, unsuccessful night in the library, Mrs. Forgette gave me a very valuable piece of advice which was to watch the film without sound and then listen without watching. At first this seemed very strange. After she said it, I kind of dismissed the idea, thinking that in no way it could help me. As I sat hopelessly looking at my computer later that night, I thought “Why not?” and decided to try Mrs. Forgette’s idea. After watching and then listening to the video, I was completely shocked at how much information and I had written down in my notebook. I literally had five pages worth of notes full of vivid examples relating to the visual and audio elements of the film and could only muster up a tiny paragraph in the two days before. Every single example that I incorporated into my analysis came from that night of watching and listening to the film.
My thesis discussed how the mountain gorillas of Congo were overshadowed during the war and that the filmmaker created the documentary to give a voice to the gorillas. It took me a while to find a photo that accurately depicted my thesis, but I don’t think that I could have found one better than this. This picture states that the gorillas are calling on us. They need us to be their voice and do everything in our power to protect them. Throughout the film, the filmmaker utilizes all aspects of the documentary in order to make the audience sympathize with the gorillas. His goal with doing this was to make us see how they lived their lives and realize how they need us to be their voice. This pictures is straight forward in telling the viewer what needs to be done.
No Rules? No Problem.
Before I came to college, I had always thought that when it came to writing papers, I would be following strict guidelines. Now that I am in the second unit of my writing class, I have come to realize that writing is a lot harder when you actually have to do most of the thinking yourself. I had never thought that simply picking a topic and its structure would be so hard but I was wrong. This Literary Guide is like nothing that I have ever done before, but I feel that by doing it I will become a better writer.