Author: Kofi
Halfa Kutcha Reflection
Link to The Winding Path to Healing:
The process of making this presentation looked like first brainstorming different connections I could make between texts and for some reason I felt that Stitches and Kindred could relate in some way. This hunch ended up being the basis of my argument when I read over the prompt and found the excerpts from Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence — From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror where Judith Herman makes several claims regarding the trauma and recovery process. I found that two quotes from the excerpt closely align with the ways this healing process went in the two novels that I chose so that’s when I decided to use the excerpt as my argument’s foundation.
The way I went about organizing this presentation is by creating a notes page where I wrote out everything that I wanted to capture for each slide. This allowed me to see my ideas clearly and expand in areas where deeper explanation would buttress my argument. This type of organization would be helpful when applied to written work because it can assist with getting over that first obstacle in writing where you don’t know where to start. Simply spitting out whatever ideas are floating in your brain without putting them under critique allows one to get their ideas flowing. I also feel that my addition of certain arrows and symbols allows for a more streamlined viewer experience where my audience can easily follow from one idea/point being made to another. Considering both of these organizational strategies could be used in written work, I can see myself using them in my next piece. I am also proud of the intentionality that went into choosing my visulas. I made sure that each image had some relevance to the title of each slide and that they would flow from one visual to the next in a manner that creates a cohesive argument. For example, when looking at the “Establishment of Safety” slide, I wanted to implicitly show a difference between present-day and the antebellum era so I used a not-equal-to sign accompanied by images that correlate to images on either side.
When it came to the presentation of my slides, the whole concept of auto-advancing slides was sort of disorienting. Even though I had practiced, talking in front of an audience made me speed up involuntarily. In order to combat this I tried to slow it down a bit that proved to be disorienting as well because I was a little late in making my point on certain slides. However, when efficient and intentional practice is implemented to prepare for a Halfa or Petcha Kutcha, this form of presenting could be very effective and fluid in making an argument. Something that I could have done that I saw in other presentations was using captions on the images I used. This gave that much more clarity to what the audience should be focusing on for each slide. All in all, this was an interesting medium to try out and I’ve learned so much about how to be a better presenter in the long run.
Literacy Narrative Part 3 Reflection
The entire literacy narrative project has allowed me to meet the course Learning Outcomes through employing the use of technology to make a comic and then using that comic to revise the writing that I had done previously to make said graphic novel. This has allowed me to approach writing as a process that had phases with each phase offering new perspective on another, resulting in a more polished final product. It was very eye-opening to return to the literacy narrative after creating my comic. This allowed me to see how much I could revise my essay and keep a consistent message across both mediums of expression. It also helped me to realize how much I had grown as a writer in this class by allowing me to see how I used to write and rewriting the narrative based on what I had learned through the Learning Outcomes. After having worked in the visual medium, my revisions looked more like adding details that would allow a better picture to be drawn from what I had written. I feel that this would allow for a more cohesive and interesting argument to be made. This revision also involved a lot of omission which was the result of me telling the story through different means. All in all, I am glad that I got to do this multi-step assignment as it has made me more mature as a writer and taught me a lot about expression as a process along the way.
Literacy Narrative Part 3
I’m reminded of being assigned To Kill a Mockingbird in my 8th grade English course when I think of being trapped into reading. This book, possibly contrary to the popular opinion of avid readers and those who are deeply invested in literature, bored me to an unparalleled extent. I remember struggling to keep my eyes glued to the seemingly never-ending sequence of words on a page. That’s what reading felt like to me, an infinite loop of ink I had to make sense of because my teacher said so. I found it hard to believe that people could enjoy this as a hobby or anything really. One class, I had made the mistake of letting the staleness of reading get to me. Words began to blur and mesh on the page until my eyelids grew too heavy and I fell asleep. I remember being abruptly taken up from my Harper Lee-induced sleep and was embarrassed to find that I was the only student left in the classroom. I was alone in a dark room, my only company being the singular light bulb left on when everyone else left out. This meant that it had become obvious that To Kill a Mockingbird had won the tug of war between itself and me staying awake. I will never forget the consequence that I faced as a result of my disinterest in this book. I spent a while writing that letter apologizing to my English teacher, Ms. KJ, promising change and stating how I would stay awake in future classes. This consequence is what shifted my approach to reading in class as I made a greater effort in reading and participating in class discussions. The unforeseen product of this new approach was the book growing ever more interesting. I had started to give the book a real chance. I began indulging in literature on a level beyond my previous superficial understanding of reading. The more I read, the more reading graduated from being just ink occupying space on a blank canvas. It became a truly captivating story that employed the use of my imagination to place myself in the world created. This new understanding allowed for my next impactful encounter with reading.
I sit in the cool kitchen area and am greeted by the warm rays of the sun as they beam through the kitchen window and kiss my skin. I’m deeply invested in The Family Across the Street by Nicole Trope, almost as invested as my brother is to my left, in his phone. He tries to get my attention but fails against Nicole Trope. I’m fully inside the text. My brother hadn’t removed the veil and uncovered the true beauty in reading, the bona fide light of being able to imagine the story and see the action that is unfolding as I flip from page to page. I’ve never been so invested in a book before. I’ve never been drawn into a book and felt as if I wasn’t just reading anymore. I was fully experiencing it instead. This wasn’t like when I first started reading To Kill a Mockingbird. I began to question my definition of reading. Was this what reading truly was? Is it what it felt like when I was indulging in this book? Is it more than just its definition? After reading the summer reading assignment that I chose, it was confirmed that reading was so much more than just reading. When you read you are drawn into the story and can see, hear, smell, and overall experience the world that the book has created. It’s inviting to imagine yourself through the eyes of the narrator as you watch the plot unfold. Wondering, seeking what’s next as your scramble from page to page. I’m briefly removed from the book as I hear my brother chuckling next to me. I look over to see what he’s watching, only to realize that it’s not as exciting as my book. So I return to the story, told through the, previously, never-ending black ink in front of me that I wished could exceed the bounds of the back cover when I finished reading it.
You develop a heightened level of appreciation for something you hate, then learn to love. Coming out on the other end of the tunnel, redefining what reading means to me, has allowed me to find joy in it. I recognized the magnitude of difference between my past and current opinions surrounding reading and reflecting on how my ideals changed. I found that I gave myself a chance to experience literacy in a different light, granting me a newfound enjoyment of reading and recognition in its true power and significance in my life.
SK10: The Sadder Cycle of Love
Link to Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1uKBO1RAS7wt2LAE9wRCrB?si=4df9ed67a39c44ff
The rhetorical situation I’m taking listeners through is one that resembles the love cycle that everyone is bound to experience. It has 6 main phases which are meeting someone, falling in love, dating/solidifying a relationship, the relationships struggles, there’s a breaking up, and finally each party ideally moves on. I wanted each song I chose in this mix to explicitly mention love as I feel it helps connect listeners to this “love cycle” more deeply, encouraging them to really contemplate a situation in which they were in love and the story of it going awry if it did. The choices I made regarding song selection are made to take the listeners through each phase, for example, in the “breaking up” phase of the love cycle, I used the song Strange by Celeste which talks of the strangeness of how two people can move from “strangers to friends, friends into lovers, then strangers again.” From this song selection I wanted listeners to be brought into the melancholic state following a break up when two partners become cold, almost complete strangers, towards each other. As for the cover of my mixtape, one of the choices I made and would like to point out is in the left group of hearts that have become incompatible after they broke up. This communicates the idea that once a strong bond between two people is broken, it’s hard to reinstate that connection as the two parts don’t fit together anymore. My mix conveys the idea that the process of falling in and out of love is a continuous cycle that follows a general pattern. It does so by highlighting each of these major phases through the collection of sounds and lyrics that induce deep thought of love. Hearing others feel this strong emotion encourages listeners to contemplate how this feeling has found its way into their own life. This pattern is called the “Sadder Cycle of Love”. Breaking this cycle is congruent to one finding their true love.
Literacy COmic Reflection
Creating this literacy comic started off with thinking how I could shapeshift my words into images. This part of the process encouraged me to think critically about what I should emphasize in my comic and what I should omit, in order to effectively tell the story of how my viewpoint on reading shifted. It was very different creating a comic when compared to writing out an essay because you learn quickly that expressing what you want to in a panel is much more difficult if you lack the skills in drawing. For example, if I had a better skill set in drawing I could have drawn my characters with more human-like form, being able to focus on capturing emotion and facial expressions with greater detail and emphasis. I feel that I spent more time making my drawing make sense than I wanted to, which I felt limited the depth of the story because I had to simplify so much, even the little details of what book I was reading on page 4 and why the story was so compelling to me. Thoughts regarding my literacy narrative have changed in the sense that I still have much more to discover about myself when it comes to my interactions with English in and outside the class. I feel that in creating this comic, I gained an interest in comics and how they can be utilized as an effective tool of expression in fewer words than an essay or any other conventional piece of literature.
Focusing more on the final product of this process, I wanted to talk about some of the choices I made. While reading through the comic you’ll notice that any book pictured in a panel is drawn in grayscale and without any highlighted, gold accent or color. You’ll notice however, that after I made the decision to change my approach to how I treated reading, “discovering the gold” in it, the books pictured have this yellow accent or an addition of color in some form. I made this choice in order to show how reading had been enhanced and made more enjoyable through my growing interest in reading beyond the surface and truly experiencing literature. This brings me to the decision I made on page 2 where I show how reading had become more visual to me, showing a panel with a book that translates to “When did reading become this way? I can [see] the [world] I’m reading.” I made the words “see” and “world” into pictures to show this visualization of words. I also want readers to notice how my house shifted from “Home (Not So) Sweet Home” to “Home Sweet Home” ” after I began playing around with my newfound interest in books, reading The Family Across the Street by Nicole Trope. This book is what I wanted to capture in the final panel of my comic. The process of making this comic had many different steps like drawing out a first draft, receiving feedback, and revising your product. This aligns with our learning objective of writing as a process as we are encouraged to take our time and the necessary steps to produce something we can be proud of. All in all, creating this comic has been a layered process that has taught me a lot about myself and I can say that I’m happy with what I produced.
