My Reflection on Writing, Research, and Technology
How has this class impacted my notions of writing?
In recent semesters I have found that although my writing has certainly improved from the beginning of the semester to the end, my views of writing have always stayed the same, but this was mostly because just about every professor conducted their class in the same exact way. When I first entered into this course, I was under the impression that other than a few slight differences, this class was going to be just like every other writing class I had ever taken. I had even used Twitter in previous classes, so I didn’t really see that as anything unique. I thought the only thing that would separate this class from other classes was the fact that we would be posting our responses in a blog, rather than printing them out and handing them in each class. In fact, after getting one of our first assignments, I remembered feeling extremely disappointed and frustrated because even though I had assumed this class was going to be like every other, I was really hoping I was wrong. I remembered thinking Oh no, please don’t tell me this is it. Please don’t tell me we’re going to be reading more boring, pointless articles and writing the same old responses all semester. It may not have happened instantly, but it was only a short time until I learned that everything I had thought about this class had indeed been incorrect.
As soon as we were assigned to write a microfiction story based on one of our tweets, I was not only relieved that we would be breaking away from the ordinary writing assignments that most writing classes (other than creative writing) entailed, but I was also excited because I thought I would be at an advantage since I had already had some experience with writing microfciction stories. It also didn’t hurt that microfiction is one of my favorite genres to write. Even though I knew that I was going to be challenged in more ways than one, I was really curious to see what I was capable of doing. The only thing I was slightly apprehensive about was the whole idea of writing a complete story in three hundred words because it was the first time I had ever been given such a restricted word limit, since I had only had experience with writing five hundred word microfictions. Any other time, two hundred words wouldn’t seem like a big difference in a story, but in this case it was almost half, which definitely made things a lot more challenging. It also didn’t help that I was going to have to find a way to incorporate one of my tweets (which were all pretty lame might I add).
All in all, I really enjoyed working on this assignment, and I was quite proud of my finished product, especially because I managed to write a complete story that included a beginning, middle, end, dialogue, and one of my Tweets. More importantly, I feel that I did a nice job with writing clear stories that were easy to follow , and I also believe that I managed to nicely incorporate my Tweets within my stories without making them feel awkward or out of place, which was not an easy task. The only thing I would have liked to been able to do was add in more details and descriptive language, but unfortunately at the time, I was forced to cut out a lot of descriptions so that I didn’t exceed the three hundred word limit.
Sadly, my excitement over the microfiction stories was short lived because the next thing I knew I was literally analyzing each word I used in my microfiction and tweets in order to write my Found and Haiku poems. Aside from the fact that my poetry skills are less than desirable, I had a really difficult time creating the Found poem because there was nothing about my Tweets that was even remotely poetic. Of course, I am not going to sit here and blame my poor poetry skills on my Tweets, because I am sure that someone else could have created a beautiful poem from the same words, but I will say that they certainly didn’t help to inspire me very much. Even though I pretty much despised the idea of writing a Found poem at the time, and I’m not exactly proud of how everything turned out, I still believe that the Found poem was a really clever concept, and I definitely plan to implement it into one of my lessons when I become a teacher. I am sure that kids would have a lot of fun with something like this, and the best part about it is that there is no limit to what sources can be used to create a Found poem.
When we were first assigned to the Twitterive, I had absolutely no clue where I wanted my place to be. The only thing I kept thinking about was my home, but aside from the fact that I thought it would be boring to focus on such an ordinary place, I was really confused as to how I would approach the assignment. It also didn’t help much that I wasn’t all that comfortable with Tweeting when we first started everything. I figured the best way to figure it all out was to Tweet away and hope for the best. I was sure that at some point everything would begin to fall into place, and I would eventually recognize a repetend at some point. Although I thought this was going to be a good idea and all my problems would be solved, it only resulted in even more frustration. After all the Tweeting I had done, the only theme that appeared was related to my home, which brought me right back to where I started. Finally, I began to see just how ridiculous I was being. I couldn’t believe I wasted so much time rejecting the idea of writing about something that came so naturally to me, just for the sake of basing my Twitterive on a more creative place. The only logical thing for me to do was to go with my original instinct and use my “home” as my place. In the end, I was very pleased with my decision because I was really happy with the final outcome. I was not only pleased with my decision because of how my Twitterive turned out, but also because I found the process of creating it to be an extremely therapeutic, as well as emotional experience for me. Before doing this Twitterive, I never would have believed that it was possible for a school project to evoke so many intense emotions.
When it came time to revise our Twitterive, I didn’t expect it to be as difficult as it was. After presenting it to the class, I was almost positive that I was going to go back and add a section with dialogue, which I had planned to incorporate as a way of showing my audience the various new roles that I have taken on since my Dad passed, and I moved back in with my Mom. At the time, it sounded like a fantastic idea, but when it came time to actually doing it, well that was another story. I felt like the only way I could successfully write dialogue and have it all make sense was to essentially write a story for each of my “roles” in the house, which I feared would make my Twitterive entirely too long. Fortunately, I decided that the best way to showcase my different roles was to create a résumé that would list each of my roles. Clearly, I have no idea if this was an effective strategy, but I was certainly happy with how it all turned out.
Part of my revisions also included the addition of a few pictures, such as pictures of each home I lived in, as well as pictures of myself and my family that were from different vacations and holidays. I think the pictures were definitely a nice touch to my project, and I really think that they would help my audience to connect to my place a lot better. The only regret I have is that I didn’t include them the first time, but unfortunately I didn’t realize that I could just take pictures of all of the photos that weren’t stored electronically, and send them to my computer through my email. They may not have come out as clear as I would have liked, but it was honestly the best I could do given my resources, and considering all of the crazy steps I took in order to post them onto Weebly, I think they turned out rather nice.
As I have previously mentioned, my notions of writing have always stayed the same from semester to semester, but now, I can honestly say that as a result of this class my understanding of the writing process is far different from how it used to be. Before taking this class, I had a very difficult time grasping the whole “less is more” approach to writing. Anytime I would write something, it would take me pages and pages until I finally reached my point (case in point, this reflection). But now that I have experimented with such restricted word limits for Twitter, 300 word microfictions, and Found and Hakaiu poems, I have learned that although it may be a little challenging, it is certainly possible (and sometimes a lot more effective) to develop a story using a fraction of the words one might normally use to write a story.
Actually, I have become so obsessed the whole concept of microfiction and short stories I started searching the internet for them. I didn’t think it was possible to top a 300 word short story until I came across Hemingway’s famous six word story, “For sale: baby’s shoes, never worn.” I know it’s been around forever, but this was the first time I ever heard of it, and I was just so amazed that six words could say so much, without really saying anything at all. Another thing is that even though I may not be a huge fan of Tweeting, I will say that one good thing that came from my experience with Twitter is that I started following a guy who calls himself “VeryShortStory.” Again, I’m sure I probably the last one to hear about him, but in case you haven’t heard of him, he’s known for his “Twitter sized fiction” stories. Another interesting fact about him is that he asks his followers to Tweet him a noun, which he uses as inspiration for his stories.
How has this class impacted my notions of research?
Prior to this course, my idea of research consisted of turning on my computer and searching through the internet for whatever information I could find. Even though I had watched plenty of oral histories in the past on TV, I never understood what they were until watching Food Inc. As soon as I learned that we were going to be required to interview people for our oral history project, I instantly began to panic because aside from the fact that I didn’t have the slightest inkling as to what topic we would be researching for our collaborative research project, I feared that once we did figure everything out, we may still have difficulty in finding the right people to interview. Although, now that I reflect back on it all, I think my anxieties may have actually been a blessing in disguise since our fears of finding people to interview was the whole reason we didn’t go with our original plan to research the belief that growth hormones may be the cause of early puberty in females. I know it would have been a really interesting topic to research, but we had a strong feeling that we would have trouble obtaining the information we required for our research. In the end, I was relieved that we decided to research the affects of the GFCF diet on autistic children because even though our topic was a lot more popular than growth hormones, we still experienced difficulty when trying to find interviews, so I can only imagine the kinds of problems we would have encountered with that topic.
A large part of the reason I was so worried about the Oral History project was that I had horrible past experiences with conducting interviews. Anytime I had done an interview in the past, I would read through my long list of questions (half of which I didn’t understand because they were my professors questions and not my own), wait for the answer, scribble the person’s answers down (while not really paying any attention to what they were actually saying), and then finish by leaving the interview feeling totally frustrated because I missed half of what they had said either because I couldn’t keep up or because I was so focused on writing that I forgot to listen. To make matters worse, the few notes I actually did walk away with were usually so sloppy and unorganized that I would struggle to decipher my own handwriting or what I was trying to say at the
Fortunately, my most recent experience with conducting an interview was very different from my past experiences. While I am sure my success was partially related to the audio recorder I used, I also believe that I owe part of my success to one of our class readings, Like It Was, which was very informative and offered a lot of great advice to first time interviewers. I found Like It Was to be especially helpful when I was writing my interview questions because I was very cautious of how I phrased each question I intended to ask. I wanted to be sure to ask questions that would lead my interviewee, or narrator, to respond with a lengthy detailed answer, rather than just a simple yes or no. I also made it a point to get as much background information as I possibly could before beginning my interview. Needless to say, this ended up being a very good idea because there were quite a few instances in which my interviewee would refer to something that I had just come across in my research, which would usually lead to me asking another question about it, discussing my findings on it, or asking her to talk more about it.
I think something else that contributed to the success of my interview was that both she and I were very comfortable with each other because she is a very close friend of the family; therefore, I did not have to worry about establishing a good relationship with her, although I did try to remember to be conscious of my body language, eye contact, facial expressions, and responses to let her know I was listening. Another bonus to interviewing someone I knew well was that she felt so comfortable talking with me that she made my job far easier than I could have ever imagined. I think that out of the twenty some questions I was planning to ask, I may have only asked around ten of them. This was only because she answered so many of my questions before I had the chance to ask them. Even though this was extremely helpful to my interview, the downside of it was that I had to take a moment to find the next question (I know Brown says to have them “in mind” so they can be asked naturally, but there were just too many to remember) because we had jumped around so much, which resulted in a number of long awkward pauses.
Overall, I would definitely have to say that I learned a tremendous amount from our Collaborative Research and Oral History projects, not only from the information we gathered on our topic, but also from the process of researching and interviewing. Before this class, I had no idea how valuable an interview could be to a person’s research, if it is done properly. Even though I had done a few interviews in my past, I could not see their true value because I had never learned how to conduct an interview in order to have a successful outcome. Now, after having the opportunity to conduct a real interview for my Oral History project, I strongly believe that it contributed to my research more than any other source because I was provoked to do further research on many of the topics my interviewee discussed that were new and unfamiliar to me. If it had not been for the Oral History project, I really do not think that we would have thought to research a lot of the topics we discussed. For example, the woman I interviewed was the one who introduced to a lot of different things we discussed in our research, such as Leaky gut syndrome and Celiac disease, to name a few. Even though she may not have had a lot of knowledge on certain things, she was very helpful to our research because she was able to tell me enough information so that we could do further research.
How has this class impacted my notions of technology?
I would absolutely have to say that this class has greatly impacted my notions of technology. Before this class I was by far the most technologically incompetent person I knew, other than my mother that is. The only time I used my computer was for doing homework, checking email, listening to music, Googeling random things on the internet, and keeping up on current events. I don’t exactly know why, but for some reason I have never had the desire to use social networking sites, so I’m sure you can imagine how I felt when I learned that I was going to be Tweeting, blogging, video/audio recording, downloading, and posting all of my work on Weebly. While a lot of my fears were due to my lack of experience with using the computer, I was also a little uncomfortable with the idea that all of my work would be out there for the world to see. I know I sound a little crazy and maybe even slightly paranoid, but something about the idea of people being able to Google my name and see my work makes me feel vulnerable and exposed, and for lack of a better phrase "creeped out." I guess it’s because other than having my professor and the occasional classmate read my work, I never really shared my writing with anyone.
Once I created my Weebly account and began blogging and posting my assignments, I slowly grew a lot more comfortable with the idea of having my own website, and I also learned that it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had made it out to be. Although I still have a ways to go before I consider myself to be technologically literate, I really think I have come a long way since the beginning of the semester. Not only have I learned how to Tweet, post videos on YouTube, and use Weebly, but I also improved upon many of the skills that I already possessed.
Now that I have taken this course, I truly understand just how valuable technology can be to both our writing and our research. Though it can definitely cause a lot of frustrations at times, and feel like more of an inconvenience than anything else, I can certainly see just how beneficial it can be, not only to our writing and research but to almost every other aspect of our lives. Although I’m not going to sit here and say that I am planning on joining any social networking sites in the near future, I can say that technology will be playing a much bigger role in my life than ever before.