my reflections over the project

So, after this assignment I do believe I have reached amateur savvies of both audacity and soundcloud, or at least I was kind of forced to. I’m starting to think blogger is just a fail really.

But changing topics over to the assignment, I think I did well with it. Considering I live in a dorm and the walls are paper thin I decided to go outside and record. And the Burnett Woods Park wasn’t exactly as empty as I was hoping, considering it was fabulously beautiful outside, but I managed to choke out the words anyways.

The only problems I had doing the actual recording, other than the sound of birds in the background, was articulating my words. I would read the page, and sort of know in my mind what was next and my tongue would get all tangled trying to jump ahead. Practice really did not help me much. My aim was to sound sincere, but at first I sounded like I was selling something, and then my next few takes I started sounding crazy. So in the end I think I sound just pretty much fake on my recording. I had the whole persuasion thing going in my head, thinking “I need this to sound convincing. I need this to make kids want to drive a beat up old Chevy.” So with that whole mantra going through my mind I ended up coming off as one of those people on those local TV commercials. The whole “SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!” sale people, who are all like “One time, and one time only!” even though they run that same add every month.

I think the one on one definitely helped a little. The feedback was good. I think if the set up was more organized and not so much as a jumble it would have been easier to give and receive critique though. Truthfully my essay pretty much stayed the same as it was when I first came to class. I think I did well with my topic, and definitely feel it is better when read, or perhaps if Morgan Freeman had narrated, or Sean Connery, or John Wayne. I definitely feel my paper would have sounded good narrated by a good country accent like John Wayne. So I would say my strength was the topic and the writing, and really the weakness would be my own narration, for lacking the skill to really sell my paper, and sound authentic doing it.

So all in all I found the experience to be different. I was forced to learn new media, which in the long run is probably best for me. I learned that my voice is too terrible over recording. I no longer sound incredibly childish, like a baby doll. I don’t think I would ever really want to record myself again, unless I really took time to prepare myself. I’m also now starting to dread the whole movie project, because I’m sure if I suck over audio recording, I’m going to suck over film.

But we will see…

I believe in driving a beater

http://soundcloud.com/abellanizzle/i-believe-essay-i-believe-in

I believe kids should drive crappy cars...

So I think for my auditory literary thingy I'm going to do the "This I believe..." format. It just seems more organized, and makes more sense for my topic I think.
The topic to my "This I believe" auditory essay thing, will be "This I believe: I believe in driving crappy cars". My idea in more detail being, I believe new drivers should drive a crappy car. My audience would probably be more focused towards parents of new drivers because what new driver wants to drive around a tin can when their parents can buy them a (insert awesome car here)? The story I plan on telling is how my parents forced me to drive a rusted 1989 Mazda all through my high school career, which was not only a stick shift, but had busted shocks (and I don't even know what that means).
My goal for this project is really just to get parents to feel nostalgic for the cars they use to drive. Having a "my first car sucked" story actually is something people can bond over. Also, I think it's ridiculous that kids just roll around in brand spanking new cars right out of the BMV parking lot. Driving around in a crappy car teaches kids humility and modesty and how to survive in practically any car break down situation, because lets get real, in a crappy car you are gonna break down at least once in your drivers license life.
I hope the audience responds in wanting to give their kid a crappy car. Something with a bad paint job, or a cracked window, a whacked out air system, or still has a tape deck. I know to this day I am SO happy my father forced me to learn how to drive a stick shift. When given the chance to get a new car after graduation, I chose a stick. And so my cute lil' 2010 Cobalt is in fact, a stick shift, and I wouldn't trade the memories I had in that gosh darn 1989 Mazda for anything.
I chose to tell this story specifically because I didn't see one like it yet on the "This I believe..." website. And I think it would be a good out of the blue topic. Truthfully, I just want more kids to drive crappy cars so that I wasn't the only one haha!

Auditory Literary Essays

When it came to writing there is always one thing I absolutely hate…writing an essay. There’s just something about being given a specific topic, and specific guidelines and a specific deadline. It makes writing seem almost torturous. And this happens with a lot of people. There isn’t a high school or college student I have yet to meet who actually enjoys writing a research paper or even an argumentative essay, well very few ones that is. And I don’t think it’s because of the lack of liking the act of writing but the lack of liking restrictions. But I found watching and listening to these audio literary essays were really inspiring.

While going through the “This I Believe” essays, I chose “Peace Begins with One Person” and “Being Content with Myself”. I didn’t really find myself relating too much to these two stories. One is about a young waitress working at a Texan diner, who met a homeless woman who she loaned money to and three weeks later the woman returned the money. This experience made her come to the conclusion that everyone should try being nice to each other and the world would be a better place. I found the topic to be a bit clichéd, and reading the text without the audio, is not entirely enthralling. And I have to admit, the main reason I even chose to keep listening to the essay was because the author had a nice voice. Which brings us back to typing vs. writing vs. speaking. When it came to the text I was uninterested, but once I heard the author’s voice I became more engrossed. http://thisibelieve.org/essay/9527/

The second essay on “This I Believe” that I ended up listening to was “Being Content with Myself”. This essay was about a high school student who is black, but in “society’s eyes” did not act black. He goes on to explain how he never gave into the pressure to act in any other way than how he felt he wanted to act. This essay also can be relatable with people. Especially with me being a child from a mixed race couple. My situation was not quite the same, but similar in ways when it came to “fitting in”. This essay I found caught my interest, but what was more surprising was the voice of this author took this essay to the next level. When compared to his picture, I would never have pictured the author’s voice as it was, which added to the essay even more. His point of not fitting in was made even more powerful due to the fact that his voice had not quite fit what I pictured it to be. By just reading text I never would have gotten that minor detail which entirely changed the essay for me in a bigger way. http://thisibelieve.org/essay/10490/

For the DALN I chose to read “The Girls who don’t write at school keep journals” and “Running ASL”. The first essay was about this woman who observed these girls who didn’t exactly come from the best background and when asked to write for academic reasons would only write a few sentences, but then the author found out that the girls kept journals at home, and would write so much in them. With the DALN essays they weren’t as organized, and were more off the cuff. So what caught my attention with this essay is that it seemed as though I was just sitting around, talking story with some friends and relatives. The woman was obviously educated and although telling the story without being organized was able to put her thoughts in order without getting jumbled. http://daln.osu.edu/handle/2374.DALN/504

The second essay called “Running ASL” is about this girl who had a cousin who was deaf and she learned to sign by running. This time the essay wasn’t as organized, and you could tell that she was telling it off the cuff. This author was jittery and sort of nervous when telling her story and I found it sort of interesting just to listen to her being candid. And truthfully if the story was in print, verbatim how she told it, it would not be considered a well thought out or even organized paper, but the fact that she was candid and was speaking made it seem okay and right. http://daln.osu.edu/handle/2374.DALN/559

These essays are able to reach people in a more emotional way. We spoke in class how perhaps typing vs. physically writing something out can take away the emotion of the writing. It can change the whole delivery of it. Well I feel writing vs. speaking is the exact same way. There is more emotion when someone is speaking. You can pay attention to moments where they can stumble and stutter over their words from getting too excited. Or listen to them ramble only to find their way back to their original point. So why only limit the question to writing vs. typing, when speaking has just as much as an impact as either of the two.

How do i view writing...

To me writing was always communication. No matter if you were communicating fact or even fiction, this is what purpose writing served. It's one of the many reasons I chose to be an English major, so I could communicate my thoughts easier, so I could be submerged into a world where words trickled around you constantly and passed on new knowledge, and new ideas. I had thought that for the longest time only a select few knew the meaning and importance of writing, and I had thought myself to be one of those lucky few. But now...it's as if a new world has just been opened up around me. Once I had seen myself as this worldly (or on my way to becoming) person, but now I see that my mode of writing was...blase? I can barely remember a time when I was told to write out a paper, physically. Perhaps back in elementary school, but the computer had always been the mode I was taught with. But looking at it now, how is writing a paper on Microsoft windows, at all really differ from writing it out via hand? There are so many new ways to compose your writing and get it out in the word and covey your message. There are new ways for a person's work to not be so...blase. The "Information R/evolution video" was a digital composition within itself, showing how digital composition can be utilized. WIDE's "Why we teach digital composition" tells why digital composition should be utilized. And pretty much the gist of the two products are telling us that there is so much more out there. Explaining that we have yet to push the limits on writing yet, and that we better get started, because technology is advancing faster than we are teaching. Our teaching facilities are still stuck with the a word document, and although it is technological, it still restrains the creativity and applies laws to how we compose our work. So why do we stay in the dark ages, when technology is obviously running this country, and even the world. I feel as though if we don't watch out then we could begin to slip intellectually, and then where would we be?