This year has really been a fun year, and the time I had in this class was nothing less than I could have imagined Emory to be. As I was revising my essay that I had wrote at the beginning of the year, I was able to see how much I have changed in such a short amount of time.
Learning Objectives: I was able to see how my rhetorical comprehension improved as a whole, as I was able to represent and develop it in so many different ways, whether it be through a comic, an interesting sketch assignment, or through traditional words. This also improved my critical thinking and reading skills as I had to analyze comics and assignments in depth and through multiple lenses. As for my writing process, visual thinking, and digital citizenship/digital identity, they went hand-in-hand. There were many unique prompts that required me to take a step back and really examine what I was supposed to do, forcing me to draft up a plan every time. I had to think in many different ways, including visually. I also had to revisit my work many times this semester, going back and making little edits or even completely changing them. Lastly, I also had to represent this in multiple ways while displaying them on WordPress, which improved my technological grasp of things.
Narrative: Returning to the alphabetic literacy narrative was like opening a time capsule for me. I remembered how I had written that just to get the job done at the beginning of the year. However, after looking back at it, I was able to see so much more than when I had first drafted it up. Many ideas or formats flew completely under my radar, that now, after stretching the narrative into so many different mediums, I was able to see clearly. When revising it, I completely changed the story I was trying to tell, making the idea more clear for readers to understand.
Album Cover (In Case Spotify Does Not Display)
I decided to address the rhetorical situation of how one feels on a late-night ride. There are always those nights when you drop a friend off and are now driving down the highway alone. On top of the three rules, I also established the fact that the songs need to be more calming to fit the vibe. They could not be anything to cause a ruckus or any other genre like that. To put it simply, they were mostly R&B. Creating this outline allowed me to pick songs right for the mood and avoid the ones that were not right. As an argument, my mix provides closure that being alone may not necessarily be a bad thing. It shows how solitude can be great for emotional reflection or just social recharging. The playlist does this by taking the listener through a story where they are first introduced to chill music that merges into more nostalgic songs and finally ends on a calm note again.
Throughout the course of this assignment, I was able to construct this argument through a presentation rather than an essay. I found it a little different in the fact that I could not write down all my ideas entirely, but had to sum them up into brief bullet points to talk about in the presentation.
When constructing it in this unique format, I had to plan out my argument to fit into the 10 slides. This forced me to think differently and really plan everything out, other than be able to condense it, and make it make sense. While creating this structure, I had a topic planned out in every slide. I think I could make use of this for my written work, except for replacing the slides with paragraphs. Every paragraph could have a specific topic to talk about, a stark difference from my traditional thinking process style of free writing without any care for structure.
Regarding the visuals, I chose strong and relevant pictures/scenes from the book that I thought would match my argument or what I was talking about on that specific slide. I presented this with little to no words, merely using the visuals to elaborate on. Consequently, this allowed me to present a more powerful message in which I was strengthening my argument with the compelling visuals while those same visuals also helped bring my verbal arguments to life.
For this presentation specifically, I believe that I improved my inner timing as I learned better how to time my words, trying not to speak too fast to get ahead of my slides while simultaneously trying to not go too slowly and fall behind. I also had to really learn what I was talking about, since I had no bullet points or paragraphs to read off on my slide.
After observing 13 other presentations from my classmates, I noticed how several of them had used visuals from outside the comics. For example, someone used a broken glass pot that was fixed with gold while someone else incorporated a picture of footprints in the sand at a shoreline. These pictures were very compelling and helped them significantly in proving their points, even though they were not taken directly from the comics. If I were to do this again, I think I would also follow in their footsteps, taking pictures from outside the story. I would also practice my timing better to be able to fit in everything I wanted to say, as I was only able to say so much during my presentation. Some topics, I ran out of time on and had to cut it short, while for others, I had to throw in some useless jargon to fill up the empty time.
Concept: Consistency
Categories (1-10, with 1 being consistent and 10 being inconsistent):
Sleep schedule
Day
Rating 1 (same) – 10 (different)
1
3
2
2
3
4
4
5
5
1
6
1
7
3
8
2
9
5
10
1
Environments
Day
Rating 1 (same) – 10 (different)
1
3
2
9
3
7
4
1
5
3
6
2
7
5
8
1
9
4
10
9
Routes/Paths
Day
Rating 1 (same) – 10 (different)
1
10
2
2
3
7
4
5
5
1
6
2
7
3
8
5
9
4
10
6
Food and Meals
Day
Rating 1 (same) – 10 (different)
1
2
2
10
3
7
4
6
5
2
6
1
7
2
8
5
9
1
10
6
Daily Routine (right after/before sleeping)
Day
Rating 1 (same) – 10 (different)
1
2
2
1
3
4
4
4
5
1
6
1
7
2
8
1
9
8
10
2
Total Overall Consistency: 3.52
Day
Rating 1 (same) – 10 (different)
1
4
2
4.8
3
5.8
4
4.2
5
1.6
6
1.4
7
3
8
2.8
9
2.8
10
4.8
I decided on my abstract concept to be consistency. I figured that this would be something that is not normally measured but still plausible to. In this case, I settled on five categories that I thought would best represent my daily consistency: Sleep schedule, environments, routes/paths, foods and meals, and daily routine before and after sleeping.
In the end, I was able to answer the question about myself, realizing that on a noraml day, I am pretty consistent. However, there were several days that were highly inconsistent, whether that was due to a party keeping me up late or an errand changing my environment and meals. Because I recorded my ratings at the end of the day, I did not face a lot of judgement. I chose to visualize this data in a graph per day to best show how consistent I was per day, and it made me realize how certain days were consistent. I thought this was kind of funny as I could recall the events I did that day. to make me see why it resulted in that way. If I were to continue this project, I think I would add more categories and different ways to analyze it. Maybe I could look at it, not in a per day perspective, but in a per category way. In the end, I found this very useful for self-analysis as it showed my life in a completely different way. I also enjoyed collecting the data and looking at how my day reflected onto a spreadsheet as numbers and data points.
After writing my literary essay and drawing the comic based off of it, I was able to really understand and comprehend the learning outcomes. I checked off pretty much every box, learning to compose texts in a variety of ways while simultaneously summarizing and evaluating those ideas in a scholarly manner. Additionally, I also went through a researching, drafting, revision, editing, and reflection process for all of my assignments. I worked with peers too while doing this, improving my collaboration skills as I utilized technology to post my work in a responsible way.
I found it very different to translate my literacy narrative into a comic, as this was a medium I had barely dipped into my entire life. However, once I added the visual components, it became a lot easier to progress the story as I am a visual learner myself and having the layout all set made it way easier. This also allowed me to tell the story in a different way, a way in which I am sure many are unfamiliar too. It is not your stereotypical essay with the introduction, conclusion, and three main body paragraphs. Instead, this was split into four pages, each with several panels that contained drawings and transitions. There were so many more factors at play that also helped tell the story in so many abstract ways instead of the linear format that we are all used to that is your standard essay. This also changed my analytical process as I had to include images and not just words. I also had to think of where to fit the words and images, something that I had never done before. After doing all of this, my thoughts have changed significantly, as comics and essays are both very different mediums. However, it has also made me realize the numerous ways that we can transfer knowledge to one another, whether it be through kids drawings or a scholarly narrative.
I decided to pace my comic into three pages initially, but realized I needed more space. This followed closely to my main body paragraphs, with each page being a different phase of my life (elementary/kid, middle school, high school). I felt that my drawings could have used a little more polishing or detail, and I could have done this if I had more time. However, I am not the most artistic person and never have been, but I am happy with my work. I would have aded a lot more shading if I could hire an illustrator. I tried my best in the sunset scenes to mirror each other, but it was not perfect and the shading was pretty terrible. I would have also tried to draw the lines a little more straight, spacing them out evenly by measuring and tracing with a ruler. I did not have the time to do all of this, and I felt like my rough, hand-drawn lines, while they were not the best, got the job done. Overall, I really enjoyed making this comic. It was unique and something that I had never done before.
I actually had the most trouble finding the pages I wanted to trace. I am not the best artist, so I was searching for something simple that could also convey a main idea. Actually tracing and annotating the pages was relatively easy as it was mostly just common sense. While tracing though, I was able to understand the page better as I had to re-create, with my own hands, every single detail. While this ABT structure was very foreign to me, I was able to incorporate it with my past style of writing. I still created a thesis in that rough format, but it was not exactly ABT but a little more jumbled. I did feel like this assignment helped with understanding the comic’s secret language, as beforehand, I had never paid attention to how much a color scheme could impact my mood of the story. This allowed me to understand the stories a lot better.
In the traced pages, Tille and David are both depicted as being alone, with David laying on the ground drawing and Tillie sitting alone, watching skaters from the sideline. And while they are not by themselves in a literal sense, they are both alone essentially. In David’s situation specifically, he is drawing with his mom in the kitchen in the other room, washing dishes and not paying much attention to him. While this may not seem like a lot on the surface, it portrays an underlying theme of neglect and isolation present throughout Stitches. This situation where David is alone repeats throughout, not because he has no friends, but due to the fact that he is neglected by his parents, raised in a household that does not love him. In Tillie’s similar situation, she had just moved to a new state and was trying to adapt to her new lifestyle with her new team. Because of this, she felt isolated/neglected, just as David did.
While they are both alone in the end, their situations and attitudes prove to be drastically different as Stitches and Spinning both give off completely different vibes. This difference can be observed, not just in the pages chosen, but throughout the entire story, where David’s facial expressions often exhibit resentment and anger while Tillie’s show admiration and curiosity. To add on to this difference in tones presented between the stories, Stitches’ color scheme also stays much closer to a black and tan palette to help convey to the reader the feeling of claustrophobic isolation that David faces. On the other hand, Spinning is more bright, showcasing a more cool color theme with a variety of blue and white colors to establish a calming presence that she learns to use to find herself. While these differences are just a few of the numerous others present in the two comics, they all serve the similar purpose of establishing their distinct and unique tones.
Ultimately, while both books show a main character isolated and neglected from their surroundings, Small uses a more neutral color scheme and facial expressions to convey this idea, whereas Walden emphasizes a more bright color scheme and facial expressions. In conclusion, this shows that comics can be diverse, used as a medium to represent a variety of core ideas and themes. In this case, two separate comics held similar themes of isolation, but presented them in almost emotionally opposite ways.
Difference in facial expressions as mentioned in paragraph 2:
