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Reading Together

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Last Post… Any ideas? I might have one!

Last Post… Any ideas? I might have one!

Happy Easter Everyone! It’s a great day to share my ideas and I am so excited! I woke up this morning with a great positive attitude and I hope you guys did too :)

So to be honest, I was having trouble wrapping my head around my final project BUT out of nowhere I started to get all these ideas. Initially, I wanted to do a video. Then, I started to read up on other multi-modality projects and that’s when I thought of a new direction for mine.

I hope my image above gave you a little idea of where I want my project to head. I currently work on the second floor of the library, at the Copy Center. I am not sure if any of you have stopped by but if you haven’t, you should :). Anyways, we have a LARGE variety of multiple colors of paper. We literally have almost a whole wall displaying these beautiful colors. And so I thought… How can I use my resources for my final project? This is the time my idea started to creep up on me and just like that I wanted my project to show all these colors of paper, but how? Then I connected this with… Origami! I have done origami in the past as a stress reliever and I loved it but I’m no expert. So, now I want to use it for my final project and I am not sure how exactly but I will be looking back into our readings and possibly create the key words or make something that represents that reading specifically. For example, a ball for Russell’s piece. I am not completely sure if this will work out but we will see.

 

P.S Here’s a quick picture I wanted to share of last year :)

 

There has to be SOME kind of creativity up in there…. right??

There has to be SOME kind of creativity up in there…. right??

Its our lastttt blog post! It’s kind of sad but relieved that we finish our blogs now because I really liked this idea. I might continue up with my own kinda blog thing. I mean why not? But for other purposes of course.

I was dumb enough to think that the keyword project was the same thing, or at least the same part of the multimodal project and it seems that I am wrong. I am wrong and now hopelessly behind and I don’t know what I’m doing. But I suppose I am doing just fine.

Anyways, for the keyword thing, I chose inclusivity. So for my multimodal project, I was thinking I could make a cool looking video thing showing how inclusivity is super important in our society and how it relates to writing. I’m not completely sure of what exactly I’m going to include, but there’s some kind of ideas up in that brain of mine!

If that doesn’t work, I was also thinking of making and interactive website kinda thing and use my cool skills of things I know. When I say interactive, I mean interactive. I would include clickable links all over the page and show how inclusivity connects with what we do with writing.

AND POSSIBLY?? Just make a photo-shop thing?? I really like messing around with photo-shop and its fun. I would clip images and make a cool collage story kinda thing showing inclusivity and all that fun stuff. But who knows what I’ll come up with? We’ll just see…

I have something…that will turn into idk what

I have something…that will turn into idk what

 

Our last post! Well, I’ve never really had a blog where I can express myself and where I can fully rant about school shit. In all honesty, this has been very therapeutic for me, and Kim, I’d like to thank you this–for letting us be ourselves and for not taking our voice away as we write what we learn and how those ideas can be applied to our life. I’ve had so much crap going on with school, and sometimes I find things so ridiculous that I just don’t try put in that much effort. Like for example, I had to do this poetry scansion thing for one class, and I don’t know shit about meters or feet so I tried, but it wasn’t my best work. So…now I’m like…”well, if it’s not going to help me, why would I sacrifice stuff like eating to teach myself how to do this?” I actually had this uber driver tell me that he’s never been the school-type guy, and he said, “Why would you even waste so much money on tuition if you have to go home and teach yourself what your paying the teacher to teach you?” I swear that was like a slap in the face…lol, but anyway….back to things that I actually want to do and care about.

I didn’t have a clue on what I wanted to do with this project. Actually, before I read Ginamarie’s post, I was thinking about baking something, but then Kim said something about someone else doing that, so I was like, ok nope! But I started to think that I didn’t want to do this alone–I wanted to create something with someone else, and I asked my group if they wanted to partner up. As a result, Heather and I are going to do a podcast–and that excites me. I’ve only done a podcast once, and when I did it, I was happy with the result. It’s always fun hearing it too, just because you mess up and you hear your mistake and you laugh a lot. It’s good. What we’re talking about is still a mystery. We didn’t get to talk about it that much, but I know that it’ll be good.

ヽ( ̄д ̄;)ノ=3=3=3 <— Can Someone Explain This to Me? Is It Running or What??

ヽ( ̄д ̄;)ノ=3=3=3 <— Can Someone Explain This to Me? Is It Running or What??

I’m still not 100% sure about my multimodal project. So here are some of my ideas:

– Use a combination of apps to make an animation with audio (Sketchbook Motion & whatever that robot voice maker I have is called).
– Make webcomic(s)… perhaps with the robot voice maker reading the text because I think it’s that amusing.
– I always try to find a way to use tumblr for school projects, so I won’t rule it out completely but it’s unlikely to happen… I think.

I would take a similar approach with the first two options: depict a student writing process, illustrate challenges, ideas from the texts, attempt to define “writing” unsuccessfully, ending in my theory of writing. This sounds super long, but I’m sure it can be condensed. What’s most important to me is that it conveys some sort of message while not being extra boring. With the first option, I’d draw some really awful pictures on Sketchbook Motion, then use the animation tool. Then I could email it to myself and record it on one device while using the robot voice thingy on another. I want to add text too, but I won’t be sure about where until I get there. <— This sentence is looking really messed up to me right now 😔 no matter how I rewrite it.

So, in summary, I’ll be drawing some stuff somewhere & adding text and/or audio to it. Oh! Maybe I’ll post it to tumblr and somehow manage to incorporate all three ideas. And “ball-handling” absolutely has to come up, of course.

<—❤️ (p.s. extra cute cat photos at end of post)

<—❤️ (p.s. extra cute cat photos at end of post)

(Bear with me on this long rant but I really wanted to explain how I came to my idea and the thought that went into it. If you don’t wanna read it, feel free to skip to the second paragraph where my project idea is explained.)

I have a love/hate relationship with open-ended projects like this. The freedom to organize and execute it how I want is something that I absolutely love since I can go in any direction that I want. I have always been artistically driven so the ability to explore a new art avenue while fulfilling a project for a grade is a win-win for me. But because it is open-ended I become my own worst enemy. Too many ideas and pathways creep into my head and I can’t decide which one I want to do. It is a constant battle trying to sift through all of them to find what works best for me, for the project, and for the time I have. I just become really really frustrated with myself and school and life. I did this with this project too. I didn’t write a blog post last week because I couldn’t think of anything and when I read the posts that people had posted with some pretty good concrete ideas I just got even more frustrated with myself that I wasn’t coming up with anything as good. Like what the heck brain when did you stop working? It isn’t even time for break. Sooooo I gave up. For the entirety of this week, I put off addressing or even thinking about this project. I instead concentrated on essays and projects for my other classes. It was around this time that I found out that getting into a Master’s program was going to have to happen for me. I had never before considered getting a Master’s and didn’t really see myself as the type that could but with my future career goals, it’s just a thing that needs to happen. Once I ran out of work for my other classes (and still procrastinating on this classes project), I turned my attention to amassing a list of all the colleges that had Master’s programs that I wanted to get into and delving into all the requirements and procedures to apply. A lot of things were the same to get into the different Master programs like prerequisites and application deadlines and the short application essay prompts. And reading through all the prompt options I got thinking, how can such a detailed questioned be answered in 2 pages or less?! The ridiculousness of the feat! To answer it thoroughly while giving the reader a sense of who you are, what you have gone through, and how that has shaped you as a person as you walk through life while doing it in such a short two pages. To quote some internet slang: “I can’t even”

So my project is doing a multimodal take on answering a typical short application essay prompt. My plan is pretty rough around the edges but I was going to choose a prompt and somehow show my thought process and what life experiences went into answering the prompt along with how I went about choosing what to keep and omit and all that jazz of creating a piece of traditional writing (for a pretty common experience/process we all go through getting into college) but in a multimodal format. I am not quite sure how I am going to show all that but I am kind of leaning towards one of those fast forwarded videos where so much work is squashed down into two minutes or less. Maybe to have a point of interaction with the class I could hand out the prompt and my answer and once they read it maybe just ask a general question of how much time do they think I put into the piece then once I get some answers show the video? I don’t know haha I’m tired…

Anyway here are three prompts that I was considering answering:

  1. The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure.  How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
  2. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
  3. Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

 

CUTE CAT PHOTOS INCOMING!!!!

Well this time of the semester is always really stressful for me and I would like to say I handle it with grace and dignity but I don’t. At all. Ever. And it’s been especially difficult being away from my cat. So I am adding some extra cat photos at the end of my post for me and you because one it was fun collecting all of them and also because the world just needs more pictures of my cat. Hopefully, this will help someone who is stressing. Enjoy✌