Course Projects

I think I can honestly never say that I've been excited by the thought of doing projects. After reading through the projects for this course, not much has changed. As I mentioned in my earlier post about my writing process, I am a massive procrastinator so projects are always a struggle for me, no matter the subject. I can admit that the projects that we will be completing in this course are definitely more interesting (and possibly more challenging) than in other classes, but the anxiety I feel is all the same.

LaurMG. "Frustrated Man at a Desk." 5/24/2011 via WikiMedia Commons. Creative Common Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. 

• One of the things that makes me the most nervous about the projects are the different genres. I know I will be internally debating for days over which genre is better for which project, decide, then change my mind again. The genres themselves make me nervous, specifically the podcast and video essay. I'm not a performer and I doubt I ever will be, so putting myself out there won't be easy. I have to make sure that my nerves don't get in the way of me delivering specific and well-researched content.

• Some of the same things that make me nervous are also pretty exciting. Editing, filming and recording will all be new experiences for me, so I'm excited for it in the way that I'll be able to try something new (if only I didn't have to actually be in it). I am also excited to be researching and writing about something in my field, so at least the content will be relevant and interesting to me. The best project I ever did in high school was a research project on scary movies(I LOVE them), so hopefully the course projects will follow that trend. 

• I will definitely have to devote some time to learning how to work all the technology we will be using. I have a bad habit of pretending something doesn't exist if I don't get it, which is definitely not an option this time. I will also have to set aside plenty of time to do all the researching the projects require, as well as schedule an interview. Again, I am a legendary for my procrastination so actually doing these things will require a lot of self discipline. 

• High school had its fair share of research projects, so I am pretty confident in my ability to find reliable sources and use them well. I was also taught the steps that should be taken to write successful papers, such as outlining information and writing rough drafts. I don't generally take those steps for a low stakes paper for non-writing classes, but its good to have the skills and be able to use them for these projects that require planning and attention to detail. 

• I understand the main ideas of what we should be doing for all the projects, but actually going about doing them and using the different genres is a bit confusing and scary. I'm sure I'll understand once we talk about them in more depth in class, so until then I'll stay nervous and pretend that they aren't coming so soon. 

I thought that looking over the course projects would settle my nerves a bit, but it seems to have done the opposite. I'm just getting visions of myself trying to set up cameras and microphones and probably crying. Is everyone just as nervous as me?

Reflection: James and Fern both expressed some confusion over the rhetorical investigation and the interview, which made me feel a little better about my own stress. The general consensus seems to be stress and interest in the content. I continue to find it interesting how easy it is to distinguish everyone's voice over their blog posts. We're all writing about the same thing and have similar feelings, but everyone has been formatting and expressing themselves differently. I feel like I learn a little bit from everyone's blogs and it's actually really cool :)