Reading/Writing journal Entry 1

 Hi everyone,

One of my favorite classes this year has been English, more specifically writing and rhetoric. As someone who does a lot of writing in their free time, I'm always interested in finding new ways to learn the craft, and what better way of that than hands-on experience?

We just finished up our first huge project and while I started out having mixed emotions about it, it was one of the easier assignments I had for the month (ugh to math in Labs). Our project was to take a piece of our literary history, be it reading or writing, and how that impacted our lives. It was easy for me to discuss finding my passion for writing after my back surgery and the challenge of writing a novel in two months. I've told many people those stories, so it came naturally to me to write about it. 

However, the project had to be multimodal, meaning to use a combination of text, photos, audio, etc. to get our point across. For me, I could write endlessly or turn in a paper, no big deal. My technology knowledge is quite limited in that sense. I'm more creative with words than making a video or some creative project. I decided to do a Google Slides presentation because I'd made them plenty of times before and I knew it was something I was good at and wouldn't take up too much time with all of the other assignments in my classes.

I wrote a four-page paper in an hour and a half; it's what I do. Constructing the actual presentation took longer. I had to create the slides, transfer the text and arrange them in an appealing way. I decided to keep my theme simple and keep the white slide, making it look like a book since the main point of my presentation was talking about my novel. As I created more and more, I was worried about the feedback I received. To tell my friends and family about writing was one thing, but to have peers evaluate it who I only see twice a week for 2 hours was different.

Surprisingly enough, I got a great amount of feedback. The feedback made me excited to go and make edits to the project. I added some more personal photos that helped bring a sense of relatability to the project and added chapter titles to really make the presentation feel like a book. I've always been a little hesitant to feedback, but it's something that I'm trying to work on, considering the writing field is mostly criticism. 

Overall, I feel like I did well on my project. I'm excited to continue on with the rest of the semester and see what other projects we'll write about. It's only class #1 on my way to becoming an author!

Signed,

Midwestern Redhead