Essay #3 Reflection

I enjoyed making the video for Essay #3 because I feel like it is something I will be able to show my kids in the future, or just re-watch it for myself to remember what my first semester of college was like. It will be nice to look back and reflect upon it and see how my life/ideas about engineering has changed since then. For the interviews I chose the most important people in my life that have to do with my college experience. My parents because they support me through everything and my roommate Pat because he is my best friend at Manhattan and the person I spend the most time with. The equipment that I used was just the camera and microphone on my iPhone and iMovie to put the videos I took altogether. The interviewing skills I developed were to ask the right questions and also to gather more information than I needed. The first thing I did for my project was take the interviews and once I had those and gathered the pictures I feel like the story was already there I just had to piece it together. The different types of media I used were, audio recordings of myself narrating the video, interviews, newspaper articles and video. I used subheadings to help me piece my work together and tell the story of what people were looking at too. Subheadings along with my audio narration hopefully clarified to people what they were looking at during the video. I had fun making this project and although it took a good amount of time I feel like it was time well spent because I will have this video to reflect upon the first semester of college for the rest of my life.

"Man On Wire" Reflection

"Man On Wire" is a documentary from 2008 about a tightrope walker from France, Philippe Petit, who took his tightrope walking talents to the largest stage in the world, The World Trade Center. This documentary, directed by James Marsh, is a beautiful story about the "artistic crime of the century" where Petit becomes an american celebrity after completing his tightrope walk between the towers in 1974. I loved watching this story because it was so well put together and Philippe Petit is an amazing storyteller. The home videos of him practicing on his wire while he was in France are so cool to see because it is like he knew he was going to be famous and make a documentary before tightrope walking in front of the whole world on the biggest stage. A good portion of the documentary was reenactment of them in the building which was very well done and seemed extremely realistic. This along with Petit's vivid storytelling painted a beautiful picture and made you seem as if you were in the World Trade Center Tower with him setting up the cables. The interviews with various different friends and others who were involved in this incredible story gave a second perspective on how Petit acted before and during his show. There were even interviews with guards who were in on the plan which I also thought was cool. I think a reason that this story is so incredible is because it is unable to replicate what Petit did now that the Towers are no longer standing. It gives people an insider view of these towers and I was too young to remember what they looked like but this is the closest I can get to them now.

Peer Review Workshop

My favorite part about Brittany's presentation was how well it flowed. I loved her story and how she talks about what her home life is like because I am not from the city and do know what it is like to live like that. I also loved her interviews they were well placed in the video and well thought out. Although I did not bring my project to show her, since we both did a movie we were able to talk about different strategies we used. I liked her idea of adding soft background music to the video during slideshows and also taking videos of surroundings. Being able to see somebody else's video was extremely helpful for brainstorming ideas for mine. Although mine was already about 90% done I got some good ideas for details such as transitions and music. One thing I thought that she could improve was something that I also had trouble with in my video. Her audio when she was telling the story was sort of plain which does not reflect how she normally sounds in person. In my video I feel like I was very monotoned at parts and could have been better with sounding more excited in my audio. Overall, she had a great video and was extremely helpful in giving me new ideas from a different perspective about how to improve my video.

How to Tell Personal Stories

I really enjoyed reading "Writing Family History and Memoir" from William Zinssner because it gave insight to strategies that writers use when collecting information and writing a memoir. For this upcoming final project I feel like if I did not read this piece I wouldn't have asked the right questions to my family over thanksgiving break. I feel like I was planning on asking questions to them that I already knew the answer to. This would have made for a fabricated, unoriginal project. One of my favorite things that Zinssner said "Your biggest stories will often have to do less with their subject than the significance–not what you did in a certain situation, but how that situation shaped you." I feel like when you are collecting information before writing you may think of a situation that you vividly remember that did not create anything physical but it played a major part in how you changed your thinking from then on. Another strategy he talked about was collecting as much information as you can from who you are interviewing and from there you can read it over and the story will unfold. This method is more truthful and original than collecting the information you want for your story. Instead let them tell the story then just put it all together. This is what Zinssner said, "They will tell you what your memoir is about–and what it's not about. Once the information is gathered the story is right in front of you. You will be able to see how much you should talk about a subject and how little you should talk about another. It will become clear from all of this and when you have it in front of you, just focus on what's important and condense it into a shorter version. "They will tell you what's interesting, what's not, what's emotional, what's important and what's worth expanding."

Tweet: Sir Ken Robinson's TED Talk

Ken Robinson thinks that our educational system causes us to grow out of our creativity and we become afraid to be wrong #DontKillCreativity

Plagiarism: Ethical Issue or Educational Issue?

In Susan Blum's text "Academic Integrity and Student Plagiarism: a Question of Education, Not Ethics" she brings about some new thoughts about an old topic of students vs. plagiarism. Her thoughts about the subject, as you can see in the title, present the topic of plagiarism not as a topic of ethics but one of education. At colleges across the country students are told not to plagiarize when they agree to the institution's honor code. She says "Such codes appeal to the desire of students to do the right thing. The codes assume that, with appropriate social pressure, they will." This is the only way colleges right now are enforcing students not to plagiarize. Blum proposes that students already break a vast majority of other rules included in the honor code why would this one be any different. "The laws regarding drinking, for instance, are routinely flouted at almost every college, and those regarding music downloading, a form of sharing intellectual property, are broadly disregarded." This scare-tactic method might not be the most effective way to tame a generation of college students who already disregard the other rules of their institution. Blum believes that teaching students why to plagiarize their work instead of scaring them with punishments is a more promising way to instill these ideas in students. "Treating academic integrity as a constellation of skills, taught largely through the long apprenticeship of higher education, is the most promising approach for getting students to follow the rules of academic citation, and the one with the least likelihood of providing a shortcut." I think that Blum makes a good point and it sounds good on paper but in reality there just aren't enough college students who want to learn why they can't plagiarize. Most just accept it and cite their work so they do not get thrown out of college. Although this may be the way it should be taught, it just isn't practical enough for the majority of college students. 

 

 

What does "I" Look Like?

In Phillip Lopate's writing on "The Personal Essay and the First-Person Character" he describes how big of an impact using the letter "I" in an essay has. Describing yourself is not an easy thing to do by any means, especially through text. Lopate says "the first step is to acquire some distance from yourself." I think that this is an interesting thought and one people often do not do. Think about if you were anybody else, how would people see you? what would you look like to them? For some people this is a scary thought, but it can be used to improve writing and storytelling especially in works about you. For my final project in College Writing I have to show my class/teacher who I am, why I'm at Manhattan College and who has been the biggest help in getting me here, all in a 15 minute video. It seems near impossible to show strangers who you are and give them the best image of yourself in that short amount of time. I am definitely going to have to use Lopate's strategy and step-back for a second and think about what makes me, me. It may be a difficult story to tell at first but once you are able to gather your thoughts and figure out what makes you different from everybody else it will start falling into place. Whether you are writing a personal essay or creating a short video, whenever you use the letter "I" make sure that they know who that is really talking about.