Final Reflection Post

When I first step foot in this course I had an eerie feeling.  I didn't know what to expect and I really was not looking forward to writing.  Going into the course I thought that I was going to have to do a lot of writing and things of that nature.  But after attending the class a few days I found out that it was different then the usual english courses.  I felt that I had more freedom in it and there was not much boundaries in writing.  As time progressed I started getting used to the course but there were some things that were challenging to me.

One thing that I liked at times but also despised was the task we accomplished early in the morning.  We would (almost every day) play some warm up games.  Some days I like it and some days I felt it was just too early to be doing these focus games.

I remember doing one particular "walking into the day" exercise.  For that day we watched a video, I don't remember what the title was called (except it had the word green in it) but it was based on writing.  The main video was focused on an interview with a writer ( I think). The interviewee was throwing out some pretty tough questions at him.  One question that was asked was about writers.  I don't really remember the question but the answer given shocked me.  He was asked something about writing being systematic.  His answered was based around that there really is no rule to writing.  That really had me puzzled and surprised.  I started asking myself questions like: What does he mean?  I thought that there was a specific format for writing, no?  You know, the 4 sentence a paragraph, 5  paragraphs, conclusion and you're set (to get a good grade), no?  So why do I get points taking off (on assignments) for not doing this or that (like creating introductions and ending)?  Or better yet, does the rules even matter?  All these questions bombarded me and his answer confounded me.  After all these questions one thought came up that really had me wobbled.  So if there is no wrong way to write than can there even possibly be a right way to right or guarantee the right way to write.  The way I came up with this was teachers usually tell students "you should not do this or you should not do that".  The word "shouldn't" taken from combination of "should" and "not" implies that "there aught to be a right way to do it".  Take for instance a scenario between a students and teacher.  The teacher tells the class to write about something.  So she gives the class time to write and after a while she starts to go around and take peeks at the students writing's.  She looks and one person's paper and the second person and sees that it looked good.  Then she goes to the third person and stops him.  The dialogue between the two (the third student and teacher) goes something like this.

Teacher: "Hey, Jake you shouldn't start with a lowercase letter after a period."

Jake:  "Okay, so what should I do?"

Teacher:  "Always capitalize the first letter of the first word after a period"

After pondering the interviewee's response and looking again at this scenario, I thought "So this doesnt matter and there's no right or wrong in it".  After all of this I am still confounded by these questions and now think that writing has no certainty.  But I don't know what to think???

Literacy Writing Reflective Post

My progress in writing my literacy narrative had many twists and turns.  The hardest part of the process was, the beginning.  I really struggled with how to start.  I didn't know what to write about. I had many  ideas on what to focus on but was not able to be fully convince on which one to pick.  In writing my literacy narrative I thought hard on what major events that occurred in my past that has really had a profound effect on my present writing.  In choosing my topic, I had followed a couple of processes.  One of the tools that really helped me to choose my topic was an in-class assignment.  In the assignment we were given multiple post cards and given certain questions to answer.  The questions given helped give me a boost on how to start (as far as figuring what topic(s) to write about).

After I chose my topic I came across another stumbling stone.  Once agin I didn't know how to start.  I tried many methods on how to start but it just didn't flow well.  After this the impending departure of me and the narrative was eminent.  I had given up on it for a few days....

until one day, I started to watch videos on improving writing.  It was pretty long but the "end message" of the film was "get all of your ideas on paper and don't worry if it sounds incoherent just get all the thoughts out.  Than later on the revision and editing you can start molding it into the master piece".  So when I started writing again I tried this method  (I forgot to post this piece in the Doc....Ill try to once I find it).  To my surprise their were lots of details, so many that I could easily write the narrative, but with so many parts I didn't know what to exclude.  Eventually I narrowed things down to the most significant details that I could readily expand on.  After actually starting the narrative, everything (mostly everything) just flowed out smoothly  and I barley had a time where I was stuck.  At the end, the time I had wrap it all up was when I started struggling again (I'm still a little stuck on how to end the narrative).  After trying multiple times I gave up on it and started to revise the narrative.  One assignment that really helped in the revising process was the "comment yourself" method.  Basically I read over the narrative and started on any places that flowed awkward or was hard to understand.  After doing a little revision I started editing things by; inserting commas, exchanging words (to help make it sound better), and switching some sentences.

process of writing this assignment, overall, was like walking along a  path facing many road blocks /dead ends and seeing many roads.  Although there were many roads I had to choose the ones that yielded the most ideas and narrow it down to the ones that I could easily travel through.

Ethnography Reflection

The journey to this ethnography project was haywire going in many directions.  The topic I had was architecture.  It was pretty tough trying to relate architecture with literacy.  To be honest the hardest part was the beginning.  I hadn't have a clue on where to start.  The first thing I did was looked up the word architecture.  I just did a quick google search.  What had popped up was this.


ar·chi·tec·ture
/ˈärkiˌtekCHər/
Noun
1.The art or practice of designing and constructing buildings.
2.The style of a building with regard to a specific period, place, or culture.
Synonyms
architectonics

It was a pretty straight forward definition and really helped kick me into gear (to start the ethnography project).   I was still hesitant on choosing what I was going to put as my main focus.  That issue was resolved when me and my group members got together.  During that meeting we just jotted down anything related architecture and if lucky even literacy.  After the discussion I chose to relate the interior of non-academic buildings with literacy.  Afterward everything else fell into place (sort of).  As far as the team work of the project, I thought it was interesting.  I got to see other views on how literacy and architecture were related.  Some of the down sides in the forming the team was time management.  It was difficult for us to find time to do the project.  We all had conflicting times due to our schedules.  In the end we created a compromise and made our time when we will meet up.

The revision process was kind of tough.  I had a hard time trying to find other things to incorporate into the ethnography draft (the things that made sense at least).  I came across things like the roof of buildings and had no clue how to relate it to literacy (besides saying it can with stand tsunamis, but I don't think that UNCC has those kinds of buildings).

I believe that this assignment was a great turn around from the traditional endings (such as writing a final paper or taking a final exam).  I like how we were given the option do what we wanted to without much limits (besides time constraints and things of that nature).  Our group decided to use a short clip as our "product" for the project.  We planned to have separate video of each of us talking about our sub topics relating to literacy.  Afterward we compiled the videos into a single video.  This entire video thing was totally new to me.  I never talked in front of a camera (besides blurting nonsense while passing through the lens accidentally) prior to this assignment.  I was nervous while filming my part but after looking back on it, I didn't seem nervous.  Overall this assignment was a thrill and interesting to say the least.