1.11 Course Projects

Major Course Projects

What are you most confused by or nervous about? 

I'm most nervous about the second project, the Rhetorical Investigation. I'm not nervous about interviewing people in my field, but it will definitely be a new experience to produce a piece of writing about how other people write. I'm mainly worried about realizing that I need more information for this piece than I got during the initial interview or asking questions that make it difficult to fulfill the requirements of this project.

What are you most excited for or interested in? 

I'm excited for the final self assessment. I hope to use this as a way to see how much I've grown as a writer and researcher over the course of the semester. Also, releasing the final project and knowing that the coursework is over will be a huge relief. 

What elements do you have to plan ahead for? What will challenge your time management skills? 

Any projects in which I have to interact with people will require a lot of advanced planning. Also, shooting footage for the video essay will have to be organized pretty far in advance. Last time I did a video project, the State Department asked me for enough footage for a three minute video and I shot over nine hours of footage. Then, my stupid Turkish wifi wasn't working and I never sent it all in (sorry USDoS.) I try not to half ass anything, but if I wait until the deadline to get everything done I'm going to have to be satisfied with "good enough," which I'm not particularly excited about. But that's the real world, right? 

What skills will you bring with you to this course? How have your previous English courses prepared you? 

I never appreciated my basic English abilities as a native speaker until I had to function in formal and casual situations in other languages. Just recognizing when something does or doesn't sound correct to native ears is a huge advantage that we Americans have over half of the world's English speakers*. 

I doubt my English classes have prepared me for this course any more than anyone else in the class. We all did well on the English AP, which means that we can read better than bears and write coherent essays. I did some (not much) work with video editing in the past, so that will hopefully make my video essay production a little smoother. 

What do you still want to know about the four major projects? 

Will we be able to use our interviewees' previously published work as a resource on project two? 

*There are 170 million fluent, non-native English speakers worldwide. The native count includes people from countries like Vanuatu where English is an official language but only people in the tourism industry speak it. 

Reflection

Reading other students' posts definitely calmed some of my nerves about the upcoming projects. Most of us, like Katy, are riding the technology struggle bus so that should help us form some level of camaraderie. It's also nice to know that I have Michaela in the 20+ credits club so we can cry together.