Katie's Blog

     I’ve learned a lot from completing my blog post assignments throughout the semester. It has, of course, taught me to synthesize what I’m reading and relay it in a way my peers will understand. This assignment has also taught me to really reflect on each thing we do in class and outside of class. It gives me a moment after reading a difficult text to sit with it, process it, and write out my opinion on it. Lastly, this assignment really kept me on a schedule and was something I did two times every week. Keeping a tight and strict schedule is something I’ve always wanted to improve upon and these assignments really help set me on my way.

     The information and skills I have gained from these blog posts assignments will be beneficial for me in the future. Learning to read and express my opinions on various difficult readings is something I will need to do for the rest of my academic and professional career and I am happy to have expanded my knowledge on doing this. Also, learning to reflect on projects, essays, texts, etc., will be largely beneficial. I have learned so many different techniques to help me do this, such as asking the basic questions at first and getting more and more complex as I get more comfortable with the texts. Finally, having a set schedule will help me in my everyday life and get rid of the stress of a scattered day.

     I have learned so much from Project 3. I, not only learned different research techniques and how to conduct research on a movie (trailer), but I learned skills to be in a presentation setting. The research I had to conduct had to be mostly from videos, which was new and different for me. I had to take stills and quotes from the movie and interviews to put onto my presentation. We also had numerous workshops and discussion in class that taught me great skills when presenting and being and audience member. When presenting I learned how important it was to practice before in order to be more comfortable and therefore, deliver my presentation in a better manor. The saying “practice makes perfect” really applied to my methods. In class we also had numerous discussions on how to be a good audience member when a colleague is presenting. I learned how important it was to show how engaged I was in what they had to say. It made them feel more comfortable and deliver a more exciting presentation.

     The knowledge I learned throughout this project is extremely important in my everyday life and will continue to be in the future. Learning that risk is everywhere and the rhetoric side of how we have conversations about risks, has opened my eyes to so many hazards in pop culture. Learning how to display rhetoric in pop culture has also taught me so many techniques for marketing (my major and what I’d like to pursue). Having good presentation and audience member skills will be beneficial for the rest of my career in anything I do. What we as a whole need to do now is be aware and look to limit risks in pop culture because it effects our perception on the risks.

Being an audience member for Project 3 was very enjoyable, but important to the presenters. Having a good audience member that is engaged in what you’re saying makes a big difference. I wanted to really show the presenters that I was listening to what they were saying and interested as well. Having very visual presentations with an exciting speaking voice made the projects fun to listen too, and I even found myself wanting to know more by the end of a few. Another thing that made it helpful to engage in presentations was having the presenter really care about what they were saying. When someone wasn’t as interested it was obvious and distracted from a great project.

My advice for being a good presenter would be to really master what you are talking about. When a presenter has a lot of knowledge on their subject it allows for them to engage with their audience and makes the presentation much more interesting and easier to engage in. Another piece of advice would be to practice out loud over and over again. This is helpful because each time you practice you get more comfortable and the presentation will flow easier. It also helps calm your nerves when it comes time to fully present because you’ll have a good understanding of what you’re going to say.

My revising process for Project 3-

Revising for Project 3 was relatively easy. I had found too much information at first, so most of my revisions were taking out information that I didn’t need. The biggest challenge I ran into was deciding what information was important enough to keep and what was ok to take out, because I wanted to make sure my project still made sense and delivered my point.

I am mostly focused on revising my presentation style and how I wanted to deliver my research. Each class I learned more and more techniques to put into my project. I knew I didn’t want to be monotone and I wanted to have good eye contact. My techniques were to just keep practicing it outloud to my friends or family. This was helpful to ensure that I had the time limit down, but it was also very helpful to hear my writing out loud. I could hear my mistakes or things that weren’t worded correctly which helped me a lot.

My composing process-

Project 3 was very different for me from Project 1 and Project 2 because it was based off something I knew nothing about. I had seen a movie that I liked and had an interesting story line and somehow had to relate it to something very scientific and unfamiliar. I had to do a lot of research before even drafting. When I found research it made me excited and wanted to look up more and more to make my presentation the best it could be. I ran into the problem shortly after that I had too much information about cloning and needed to cut it down, a lot. This was difficult because I wanted to make sure I took out the right information, where my project still makes sense.

Making the physical presentation was enjoyable. I love presenting and all things related to public speaking, so I was already excited for it. Making it mostly visual and writing a script separately was something I wasn’t used to with presentations, but I really enjoyed. Finding different images was really fun and helped spike my interest even more.

• “Fallout New Vegas” trailer
• “Bruce Banner Gamma Radiation Exposure Scene”
• The Simpsons “Two cars in every garage and three eyes on every fish”
• Edwards “Fallout”

These pop culture artifacts all demonstrate ways in which nuclear radiation exposure effects humans in different ways. In all of these uses of media, the nuclear radiation is extremely dangerous and a major negative side effect to things happening within the story line. In the “Fallout New Vegas” trailer it was shown as dark, lonely, over dead bodies, graves, and spoke about a war indicating this exposure is a catastrophe or will be in the future. In the Bruce Banner, Hulk scene the exposure comes from a malfunction when working on a machine and Bruce is considered to risk his life when taking the gamma radiation, showing this would be negative and fatal to anyone who took this much radiation. In the Simpson’s episode, the governor is trying to cover up the mutation to the fish showing it is considered a bad thing by the public, and lastly, in the reading she has to get surgery as soon as possible because they know the risks.

The way that the individuals deal with this exposure varies, but ultimately ends up hurting them in some way. In the movie trailer we know that there will be a war which means that some people are going to try and deal with this issue and end it. Whereas, in the Hulk scene, the women is shocked that he is even alice, but yet he feels even better than he did before. Knowing the story line of Hulk, we know that this exposure turns him into the monster/super hero. In the episode of the Simpson’s, they are trying to vote the current governor out of office and in with a new candidate that wants a clean environment. Finally, in the reading, the family does not act soon enough causing an explosion with a cigarette.

I learned a lot from the knowledge found to create project 2, but I also learned a lot about visual media. I learned a lot about the hazard and dangers of the medical device industry, specifically Essure, a permanent form of birth control that had ruined so many women’s lives. Through this failure of a medical device, it made me realize, question, and research how far behind women’s health care is as a whole. The medical field is mostly run by males and it shows when it comes to devestations such as essure. I also learned how to relay and explain my research to a general audience in another way than just an essay or an article. By making a podcast, something my partner and I had never done before, it allowed us to push ourselves outside of our comfort zone to make something fun and interesting. Gathering the data and research was the first step in really starting our podcast. We first found a technical document we knew we could rely on and went to work. From this document we found subpoints that we wanted to research more about. This then became the body of our podcast.

I do think that the information that we learned when creating this podcast is significant to our lives. As young women who need a form of a birth control, this “accident” made us nervous and angry about the medical field and medical data for women. As we did more and more research, we became very passionate about the subject. It is something we will both be following up with in the future. What we wanted for our audience was to just be aware of the dangers of some of these devises that have been approved by the F.D.A.. The next step for anyone who listened to our podcast would to just do more research about the procedures you’re getting, ask questions, and be on alert for women’s health care. We hope this made other people passionate about the topic and want to push women’s health care forward.

Revising Project 2-

To begin our draft for project 2 we only had a map of how we wanted to lay out our podcast. We divided it into four main talking points in order to break it up in a clear way, while still saying everything we wanted to mention during the podcast. For the second draft we have a rough draft of our script. This script is only a guide that has the important details we need to remember. This will be helpful for both of us to see the flow of conversation so there aren’t any lulls. Even though we may not say the lines word for word it will ensure that we bring up the data we found from our research. We decided upon these documents by using our technical document to find what information we could find out about that were crucial to the lifeline of this product.

How has it been different from Project 1-

This revision process has been much different from revising project 1. There is a bigger difference from what I turned in for project 2 than there was between drafts for project 1. This is due to the fact that for project 1 I worked alone and had a complete essay for the first draft. after that, it was only editing left. For project 2 however every draft requires me to turn in something completely each time. Another difference when revising for project 2 is having a partner to work with. It makes it more exciting and interesting to bounce ideas off of a peer and combine both of our research to make sure we are “experts” on our hazard. The last difference is the physical project. A podcast is much different than an essay. It has made this project more exciting and easier to grab my interest.

Research-

Research is the process of finding some information that you wish to obtain. There are different degrees of doing this, but most people do it on a daily basis. Whenever we google a question that we have, that is conducting research. However, there are professionals that will look through every resource they can in order to be an expert on a certain subject or idea. People do it in order gain a better understanding and increase their knowledge. What the researcher does with this knowledge is different for each one, but the process of researching is essentially the same.

Researchers use different resources and techniques in order to gain more, or a different type of knowing. The information found in an old library book will be different than a scholarly article written by an expert in their field. The research methods I have used have been books, online databases, websites, articles, journals, and notes. Research can get confusing when stumbling along unreliable sources that spit misinformation to their readers. It can get challenging deciding what data to believe.

What is Project 2-

For project 2, me and my partner have decided to delve in deeper to the harms and risks of the permanent birth control called Essure. It was a metal coil that is launched into a woman’s uterus. What the company and “trained” medical professionals say will happen is it will be launched and go into the fallopian tube and create scar tissue, blocking the eggs off permanently. However after quickly researching, we found this was not the case. These devises were ruining people’s lives and causing permanent medical damages to women’s bodies. There were several found in some women, and some found broken into hundreds of pieces in other women. These are only a few examples of some of the complications that have occured from these devises. My partner and I felt compelled to make a podcast to have a discussion about this horrible health hazard for women and how the conversations/who is in the conversation is allowing this to happen.

Process for writing Project 2-

Making the draft for project 2 was easy once we had our source. It gave us a great starting point and allowed us to find new things we had questions on. This broadened our research and data and only made our interest in the hazard heighten. We wanted to draft our thought process and show our data starting from the very beginning. This was very different from drafting project 1, where I sat in a library and typed an essay. Working in pairs and having a visual form of media to relay my thoughts has made this process exciting and fun. It also allows me to delve deeper into the topic by discussing it with a partner.

Composing the media-

Making the podcast and writing an essay have been very different. For an essay, I made a draft and just fixed that. For the podcast we did it in steps. We first decided on the general points that we wanted to explain to our audience, then we added in the research to make it more specific. We then will create a half script that we will use to remind us of key points when recording the podcast. The biggest challenge that we will face while making this new form of media/visual will be editing. We both are unsure of that process, but know some resources that can help us.