Author: Gregory

resentation. How was it different to construct an argument that you were giving to the class as a presentation than to write an essay?

I felt that crafting an argument for this presentation was exactly the same process for an essay. However, the evidence needed support my claim during this project was more rough since my words didn’t need to be convey that eloquently when speaking. When finding an argument to talk about, I looked first to books I felt most comfortable with which was Stitches and Sabrina. I then read over past projects and in my close reading of Stitches and Sabrina, I discovered that much of my arguments were based on the actual drawings of the two comics. I structured my presentation in basically 4 parts; introduction, alternating evidence on each comic, some comparison, and a conclusion. When adding visuals, I included extra shapes to direct the audience’s attention so they could follow my presentation easier.

This format of this presentation was new for me and was a challenge to control my timings. Since I had no control over the timings, if I went over a slide’s time, I would have to spill over, but if I was really behind I had to skip some of my presentation. That being said, I liked the format in the way that there was a controlled amount of information you could include so that it was standardized.

Some things I noticed about my classmates’ presentations were their analysis. Since our prompt was focused on trauma and healing, many presentations mentioned the road to recovery is not a sure process. I enjoyed the many nuanced viewpoints on the same topic across the comic we read this semester.

Things I could have done better during my presentation is to stay on my timings better. I realized that my own computer slides wasn’t exactly synced up to the slides on the board which made me late on the timings and it only got worse as the slides progressed. I also didn’t follow instructions and made a full pecha kucha which was twice the work.

• How has the entire literacy narrative project helped you to meet the Learning Outcomes for this class?

This entire project has helped me meet all the learning outcomes. Briefly, through this project I have composed literature of different mediums, gone through many drafts, and used a website to successfully display my works.

• How was it to return to the alphabetic literacy narrative after having created your comic? How did you think differently after having worked in the visual medium and now returning to a text narrative?

Returning to the alphabetic literacy narrative was quite different since I now felt I had to be much more specific to convey my messages. With pictures, half the story is the reader’s interpretation but it’s not like that with words. That being said, from my drawings, I found new perspectives and words to include in my last narrative which added more detail. I like to think that both part 2 and 3 are adaptations of each other since each version has subtle influences from each other.

• How do you see the story you are trying to tell in different terms now? Was your analytical thinking process any different?

My story overall was pretty much the same. The major difference between part 1 and 3 is part 3 is much more refined and its flow is better. This is partly due to creating part 2 which made me focus on the most important parts of my writing/reading journey I wanted to convey, so part 3 highlights these important events more.

I have always loved reading. As far as my first memories stretch back, there was always a series I was reading: Percy Jackson, classic fairy tales, Harry Potter, among many more. My favorite genre was always fiction and whether it was mystery, fantasy, or science-fiction, each story captivated my imagination in its unique way. Often, I would go on a reading frenzy and finish these books in a few days and re-read my favorite parts again and again, until more books finally came in. I would read everywhere during my free time– on the bed, on the floor, or on the couch. My sense of time would be lost, reading for hours on end which usually ended in my mom yelling at me to get back to work.

School was a place where teachers constantly encouraged you to read, and as an early teen who loved reading, I was puzzled why some people were so averse to it. To me, reading was an escape from reality, a time to fully immerse myself in the amazing world created by the author. However, I do admit I was never that “perfect” reader. Occasionally, there were periods when I did not read for reasons such as laziness to find more books to read or the mindset that reading wouldn’t be as enjoyable as it appeared in my memories. However, once a book was picked up again, it all came back to me. The thrill, the excitement, and the anticipation for the next page: I remembered why reading was one of my favorite hobbies.
Although reading was one of my strong passions, my relationship with writing was more of a chore. In my writing journey, consistent investment in English writing projects and university preparation were the main ways I improved my writing.
My parents always said I would be a great writer because of all the literature I consumed. However, that statement turned out to be false. Although I was exposed to many unfamiliar words, I was never an active reader, so I regretfully say I never took the time to find their definitions. And even though yes, I could differentiate between the writing styles of different authors, I could never effectively replicate the techniques that worked; the hooks that drew readers in, the perfect word choices, and the cliffhangers that left the readers wanting more. To put it simply, writing never came easy for me.

On the other hand, math was never a hard subject. Growing up, especially in middle school, it was difficult to empathize with other students who struggled with it. In 7th grade, I vividly recall one English class where I came to the random conclusion that writing for me was just how struggling students felt with math. To be on the same level as my peers, I would need to put in more effort, and I felt jealous. I don’t believe my writing is subpar, however, I have often received “low” grades that I did not think I deserved. I was also influenced by my peers. For them, words and ideas flowed onto paper like the movement of water through a dam. They took much less time to complete an assignment with many more words. I wondered if writing was an innate skill since I felt my writing had stayed stagnant throughout high school; I felt like there were no major life-changing improvements to my process.

Each year in English class, I had a new teacher. At the start of each year, they would read the course syllabus, and each time they never failed to convince me that this was the year where I would finally become that great writer, or half-decent one, that I’ve always wanted to be. Maybe it was the way they spoke with their English teacher-style diction or my gullibility, but either way, I was led to believe that this was the year. Looking back on each year, I can’t say I had that eye-opening experience. Every year felt like I was just practicing my writing skills with my current skillset; no new writing techniques were being taught. However, with practice came improvements, and through each small free write or major assignment, my writing was slowly but surely becoming more refined.

However, one large milestone occurred when I was preparing my application to apply to universities. Studying for the SAT greatly improved my grammar, especially redundancy and proper punctuation. When writing my personal statement for applying to university, the exercises, and techniques for crafting an essay truly opened my eyes to sentence flow and structure. Writing my personal statement was the longest and most thorough free writing I have ever done. I spent countless hours revising each word, giving it to peers and family to check over, and attempting to read it through the eyes of a college admission officer. That experience boosted my confidence in writing since I not only got accepted, that piece was widely praised by everyone who read it.
Now as a current university student, I am utilizing my writing skills at a higher level. At Emory, there are many opportunities to expand my knowledge and I am already learning new things, for “real” this time. So, here I am now, continuing my writing journey and ready for what is yet to come.

Mixtape

This is a mixtape where songs include the lyric “sorry.” As I was first diving into this assignment, I couldn’t think of a rhetorical situation my mixtape so I followed one of the examples of findings songs that include a word. I thought using one word like “sorry” would be too easy so I added an additional rule of songs that I’ve heard before.

My album cover inspiration comes from my dorm room. Many of the songs I listened to were about apologizing to someone and I thought gambling, or poker chips could represent the regret that people had.

The question I was tracking for this sketch was what does my mood look like throughout the week? To answer this question, I quantified my feelings of accomplishment and annoyance at different times of the day.

Firstly, I gave myself a score from 1-5 (1 being the least extreme while 5 being the most) for each category I was tracking. I chose to display the data in this format because I feel its the easiest to read out of the options for graphs. While this format does not outright display the raw data, since it gives the percentage out of the day I was x annoyed/accomplished, it was not overwhelming in data like the other graphs since I tracked my mood at many times of the day.

General trends I saw after this sketch were:

1. I was not that annoyed/accomplished during sleep/bed as during other times.
2. Even though the graph doesn’t display it, the average annoyance was higher than average accomplishment level. I guess that’s expected since there are more things to get annoyed about throughout the day.
3. the feeling for accomplishment was more sporadic throughout the day than feeling annoyed. This trend was a bit interesting since one would expect it’s generally easier to be annoyed at anything than the feeling of accomplishment. However, thinking back to when it happens, annoyance occurs usually in afternoon classes and/or things at night such as not completing work or annoyances while working in my dorm; I’m not really annoyed in the morning hours.
4. Feeling accomplished and annoyed can happen at the same time. One would think these feelings would be opposites, however, that is not the case. I even remember some scenarios where i explicitly felt these 2 emotions- I had to complete my biology post lab for my group members when it wasn’t my sole responsibility. I got the feeling of accomplishment for completing the task, however, I was very annoyed at them.

I would definitely continue this project in the future is inputting my mood levels was much easier. As a lazy person, i was somewhat hard to input the mood at each timeslot, often resulting in me trying to remember how I felt for each time that day at night. Additionally, to visualize the trends better, I would create trends for each timeslot and see how it progressed from day to day.

Writing my literacy narrative as a comic was much easier since my illustrations can make up for the words. That being said, accurately drawing what I wanted to convey was not an easy task, and took much longer than I planned for. However, a big time saver was my storyboard, which I had planned out in advance. It allowed me to move from one panel to the next without having to think of a transition to the next panel.

One doubt when making this comic was “Is this comicy enough?” I thought this because I was using text to describe my transitions and thoughts in almost every single panel. However, I realized for this purpose, it is necessary to have text.

I believe I have met many of the learning goals while preparing this project. Some of the goals include Writing as a Process and Visual Thinking. I believe I have met these goals since through project, I have revised and reflected much on my narrative at many steps such as going to the writing center, having peer feedback on my storyboard, and my own revisions to my work. Additionally, I have planned out my comic in a way so that it visually makes sense even without the text.

Once I added the visuals, my narrative felt much more expressive because the images were right there for the reader to visualize my life instead of them having to use their imagination. Moreover, I personally felt it was much easier to read sense the panels would convey paragraphs of information.

My process for creating this comic actually started at a writing center appointment. From there, I developed a thesis which broke down the 3 main sections I wanted to tell the audience. After, I went back to my literacy narrative and filled in information for those 3 sections. I also kept in mind how I wanted to display that information visually.

If I could go back to change something, I think I would spend more time on detailing the drawings so that it accurately reflects my memories. Since I am not that good of an artist, it was difficult to get the perspectives correct and especially drawing body proportions and faces. I believe if those things were fixed, my comic would have a better flow to it. I also had to scrap ideas when drawing because they were too difficult to convey.