The Secret Language of Comics

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.

The most important thing I wanted to measure was my personal well being, and specifically how much I’m improving myself from before. Because of this, I decided the 5 most important things I wanted to track were (in no particular order): Sleep, Happiness, Exercise, Academics, and Relationships.

Using an Excel spreadsheet, I would rate how I subjectively felt every day as I got ready in the morning about the day before in all the categories, with the exception of Sleep (for which I used data gathered from Pokemon Sleep — strongly recommend!). I did this from the dates of 10/22 (Su) to 10/28 (Sa).

Looking at this data as a graph made me notice quite a few things about my life habits in each category. For example, I realized that sleep was rather inconsistent, which is something I am going to work on improving. However, on the day I slept the most (Friday), I recorded rather low scores in Happiness, Exercise, and Academics. Overall, I think this was a good way for me to hold myself accountable in terms of constantly becoming a better person, as I can see where I can improve myself on each day so I can hopefully live a life where I can confidently record constantly higher scores. It achieved the goal of helping me understand myself better, and I plan on continuing to track my self-scored data for a while to see whether I am actually improving myself.

I wanted to see the effect my stress and anxiety levels had on the amount of food I ate daily. I know I am prone to stress-eating but I wanted to see just how much my food intake is tied to my mood. Since I am a business major, I immediately thought it best to use Microsoft Excel to create some charts and calculate the regression (determines correlation). I asked myself how I felt at the beginning of each day for two weeks to track stress and anxiety on a 1-10 scale. I estimated my calories for the day at the end of the day, something I got good at when dieting for various sports in High School. Comparing stress and anxiety showed an immediate correlation that can be seen on this very nice chart.

I used a t-test because I had under 30 data points. T-tests are known in statistics for being slightly less reliable than their cousin the z-test which can be used with more data like the nationwide census. 

It was clear to me after looking at the data that my food intake was directly related to my stress and anxiety levels. This line-fit plot tracks regression and passes the t-test proving correlation. 

Knowing this means I need to stay conscious about how much I am eating and the motives behind that. By the end of the week, I started asking myself how I felt when I sat down in the DCT. I found that being more conscious about my consumption made me more mindful and I enjoyed my food more even on days when I was stressed. When tracking stress and anxiety I found that it grew throughout the week when I had a test on a Wednesday or Thursday, but then fell dramatically on the weekends when I have more time to get work done and relax. This exercise in asking myself how I’m feeling at the beginning of the day was clearly an excellent tool that I will definitely keep in the future. I would not change anything if I had to redo this project or continue it int he future. 

Below are my calculations used to make the charts as well as my raw data. 

This quadriptych was inspired by a common experience I have whenever I sleep, where I can never seem to find the right temperature. In the comic, the protagonist (me) tries to sleep at a reasonable time, but is kept up by the cruel indifference of the changing temperatures, which I’ve exaggerated through hyperbolic imagery. When thinking about the story that I wanted to tell through the quadriptych, I realized that the addition of one extra panel exponentially increased the possible creative directions I could take in crafting a story. Having the middle act take up two panels allowed me to quite literally double the breadth and depth of the story, making even a simple story such as this be more detailed than what would’ve been possible with a triptych. All of this opened my eyes at how much work goes into writing an entire book in comic form, and made me appreciate the creativity of all the comic artists we’re reading from in class.

My thesis statement was: Through the different zoom in and out effects, color schemes, number of panels, and the common theme of isolation, they highlight the universal human struggle to connect with people and having to navigate their adolescence independently. I argued that Walden and Small used similar themes, and  techniques to emphasize the larger theme of isolation that is depicted in both comics. 

Most of my thoughts came from tracing and annotating, and it helped me design my outline structure for the analysis. While tracing the panels, I was able to make a list of similarities and distinctions that helped me identify my bigger theme/thesis. It was distinct from my previous writing in that it anticipated what I would write about and the format of my writing. In comparison to other types of writing, I would have taken my time and worked it out as I went rather than having an outline and efficiently executing it on paper.

I do feel like I got to understand the “secret language of comics” when doing the close reading exercise. I was able to pay close attention to each panel and different or similar techniques each author uses to analyze the theme.It helped me understand why the authors chose various options in each panel to invoke specific emotions or to make a general theme. Although I cannot relate to both situations, I believe I have a better understanding of Stitches and Spinning.The single biggest insight I gained was how both authors have a common theme and they convey that message using similar techniques in some panels. For example, the use of zoom in effects Small uses to emphasize his emptiness and isolation and zoom out effects shows the isolation Walden is facing.

 It was challenging for me to shift my writing style to an inductive essay because I forgot to develop my thesis statement and just started writing. In the past, I would have my thesis statement planned out first and would easily execute it with both paragraphs. After writing each paragraph, I had to find out what my thesis was and then go back and change the paragraphs to align with my thesis statement. 

Link to my analysis: https://lifeofkidu.wordpress.com/2023/10/17/solitude-tracing-stitches-and-spinning/

Link to my tracing ; https://lifeofkidu.files.wordpress.com/2023/10/thinking.pdf

Photo Caption: Revisiting this narrative allowed me to connect my work with others’ narratives, as well as with the audience. (Photo Credit: VectorStock)

Returning to my literacy narrative after completing the comic felt as if I was starting with a rough sketch of my final work. The comic provided me with the opportunity to take a linear, essay-like story and turn it into an actual story that portrayed all the accompanying emotions as well. I feel like this final literacy narrative is similar to that of my classmate Tim Yau, as both of us highlighted a single event in our lives, a “spark” that put us on the path towards where we are now. Both of us were struggling to find meaning in our writings, but they ultimately came together to form a piece we were proud of, using inspiration from our own ideas and, in my case, experiences. This connects to the “Critical Thinking and Reading Resulting in Writing” learning outcome, as I am using the ideas of my classmates to make connections and gain a deeper understanding of my work. It also allows me to see how I can make my narrative more relatable; if I see that there is a common theme among several different narratives, I can assume that using the theme in my own narrative will make it more relatable and interesting to the reader.

The entirety of this project connects greatly to the “Writing as a Process” learning outcome. Having the conference with Professor Morgen really opened my eyes to how extensive of a process writing can be. In the past, I have only written one or two drafts before submitting what I had and moving on, never coming back to the work again. However, because this project would be worked on and edited throughout the semester, I was forced to go back to my original draft(s) and reread them so I could find things that needed to be fixed and make it the best writing it could be. This also relates to the “Rhetorical Composition” learning outcome because of the change in writing style and organization I was forced to take over the course of this project. One of the biggest things I kept in mind throughout this project was my audience, and how I could create a story that I was proud of and that anyone reading my work would be interested in and connected to. As described in the learning outcome, I used a variety of different technologies during this process, including Grammarly to help with common mistakes I make, including passive versus active sentences. I also used a drawing platform to create my comic for part 2 of this project. The use of a variety of platforms has widened my horizons of what writing can look like–it is not limited to only words on a page.

I thoroughly enjoyed this project, and I can say that, without a doubt, it has allowed me to flourish as a writer, an artist, and a person.