This site is an archive of the work I completed as part of ENGRD101 at Emory University during the Fall 2025 semester. It brings together major assignments, sketches, and reflections completed throughout the course.
The literacy narrative process was the most detailed and interesting writing process I’ve ever gone through. It also taught me a lot. Through this process, I learned that literacy is more than just reading and writing, but it involves considering/interpreting the audience, context, and emotion. It was incredibly helpful to use both alphabetic and visual modes in the drafting process, and because the forms are so different, I was able to rethink my work in ways I never have before. I learned that revision is not necessarily editing grammar, but rethinking the ideas and details in your work. I also was forced to practice rhetorical analysis (which I never have before), where I was thinking about the audience and my purpose at the forefront.
It was also super eye-opening to come back to the alphabetic form after experiencing and writing in the visual form. Because the comic in a sense narrows down your essay and forces you to remove any unnecessary details, the theme was much more clear when I went back to the alphabetic form. It was also clear to me which were the most meaningful moments in my story, so I knew which ones to emphasize.
Writing in comic form also made me see my story differently. In the revised literary narrative in alphabetic form, I shifted from a story about perfectionism more towards a story about my shift from intrinsic motivation to external validation. Because I was more aware of the theme, I was also able to improve its clarity through explanative sentences. In general too, the comic form made me realize how powerful inference is and how few words are actually necessary to understand a story, so I tried to delete as much redundancy as possible in my essay and leave more things up to interpretation for the reader.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1wtBDKRfAtDPOy8HmsPDxsUePEyMkVQkQKO8_v4Uj0i0/edit?usp=sharing
The Halfa Kucha was a very different presentation style than I’ve done in the past. I really enjoyed constructing an argument in the presentation form rather than essay form because it felt a lot more manageable and less daunting. It helps that the Halfa Kucha is 20 seconds per slide- I feel that is the perfect amount of time to engage the listener and makes it not too much work per slide for the author.
I made a few choices about the structure of my argument. I wanted to talk about the trauma readings before talking about the comics themselves because I wanted to prime the reader with information about trauma so they would be more informed when listening to my points about the comics. I think I would still format it this way in an essay- although it would look more like an introduction. Overall, my analytical process was slightly different just given that I focused more on engagement for the presentation than details.
As for the visuals of the presentation, my main decision was to start and end my presentation with windows. It served as a sort of metaphor of how trauma is both something the affected person looks at within themselves and grapples with, and it also is often the goal of the affected person (especially in our chosen comics) to teach those around them about how to manage this trauma. Visually, I also tried to create an impact for my slides by not adding too many words and making sure I could back up my thoughts with evidence from the comic. This type of presentation was interesting also due to the fact that I had no control over the timing of the slides. It made me more conscious of not being too overly detailed, which I’m hoping was more engaging for those who were listening. It also helped me to block out my thoughts, where I didn’t have to think about the timing of each slide.
As for my classmates’ presentations, I really enjoyed it when people used good inflection as well as engaged the audience. Sometimes this was through not having a script, and sometimes this was through emphasizing compelling thoughts, but in general, I enjoyed when I was able to be more engaged. That being said, I could have done better by not reading off my script as much and focusing less on timing, more on connection with the listeners.
It was interesting to do this assignment because it made me realize how different mediums play such a large role in how you think about and approach writing. For example, we did multimedia work, work with audio, photoshop assignments, comics, and more, and each of these (as shown above) taught me a different thing about myself as a reader/writer. I realized that I enjoyed the drawing assignments the most as well as the mixtape. I also now know that I don’t enjoy photoshop as much- but that may just be because I am not very experienced with the platform. Overall, I feel that I have done a lot of interesting work this semester and learned a lot about myself!
I addressed the rhetorical situation of having a bad day and not knowing how to turn the day positive through simple mood transformations. My playlist is targeting college students who are stuck in a sort of rut or negative mindset and need a playlist that gradually moves them from these feelings into a positive mood. As for rules that I established for myself, I made sure that all songs (except for one) were under 5 minutes. I felt that if the songs were too long, they would elicit too much reflective thought that is often not productive on “bad” days. In general, this mixtape helps move the listener towards a good day by having each song gradually becoming more energetic and upbeat. The playlist starts with more melancholy songs to meet the listener where they are and moves up from there. For the argument of my mix, I aim to convey that any day has the opportunity to have its narrative changed. No day is just bad; sometimes you just need a push (or a playlist) to change its perception.
List of songs:
Girl – Acoustic — SYML
Sparks — Coldplay
Landslide — Fleetwood Mac
Cherry Wine – Live — Hozier
Where The Skies Are Blue — The Lumineers
Home – 2019 Remaster — Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
Upside Down — Jack Johnson
Sue me — Audrey Hobert
12 to 12 — sombr
Manchild — Sabrina Carpenter
The Fate of Ophelia — Taylor Swift
Confident — Justin Bieber, Chance the Rapper
Raise Your Glass — P!nk
I recreated a movie scene from Friday the 13th. I decided to recreate this scene because I have been watching a lot of horror films lately and I wanted to recreate a horror scene. I just watched Friday the 13th with my friend and I happened to be wearing a similar quarter zip to the main character, so I chose this scene. I used paper and some pens to recreate the mask and filtered the image to match the lighting in the film.
My goal in this data visualization was to answer the question: how does my sense of social connectedness change throughout the week, and what factors might influence it? I was able to answer my question through tracking my feelings for a week, starting and ending on a Thursday. In terms of tracking my data, there were a few judgement calls I had to make. First, I made loneliness on a scale of 1-10, where 1 was still a small value and 10 was a large value. That means that the analysis of the visualization has to consider this and in a sense consider the column as “lack of loneliness”, but I thought it made more sense regardless. I also chose to visualize the data in a multiple line graph because it showed the association between each of the five variables.
When looking at the graph, there are a few key things I notice. The first thing I notice is that there seems to be a positive association between meaningful interactions and sense of belonging. Without even realizing I was ranking them the same, I often had the same score for meaningful interactions and social connectedness, which is why after a while, you can’t see the blue line (meaningful interactions) anymore. I believe that interactions have a huge impact on feelings of connectedness and this chart confirmed these beliefs. I thought that my digital interactions would have greater variability throughout the week, although I noticed that they tended to stay pretty constant. I realized that the social media I consume (TikTok and Pinterest) don’t have a huge impact on my feelings of social connectedness, and I am happy about that.
I also noticed that my feelings of loneliness had a negative association with meaningful interactions and time spent with others. I could have deducted this without doing the visualization, although it is interesting to have the confirmation that spending time with others will help me to be less lonely.
If I were to do this again, there is not much I would change. I would probably have started on a Monday and then done a two-week analysis to have more confidence in my data trend. However, I still think one week was able to tell me a lot. I believe this was a very valuable tool for self-analysis and I will be doing something similar in the future.
I enjoyed making this quadriptych a lot. The composition process was very similar to the triptych, although I feel like this was a bit easier due to the fact that we had more panels to work with. I got this idea because I was thinking a lot about the environment recently as the seasons have been changing. From there, I had an idea about a flower getting watered after being neglected and I decided to make it my topic. I then sketched each panel on an iPad, making sure to have the 2nd and 3rd panel be the same act. For me that was my greatest challenge. I struggled in making it clear that the 2nd and 3rd panel were a part of the same act, but I used the background to hopefully do so. It was definitely different, but I like the way this style of comic feels very similar to how I used to write when I was younger.
I feel that what I have in my bag is not incredibly representative of who I am as a person because I don’t carry very much and what I carry is relatively common. I included my notebook, calculator, pepper spray, charger, and eraser, which I’d say are very common items. I also keep my art project for my French class in my backpack because I haven’t had a chance to take it out yet. French is something that is important to me and something that consumes a lot of my time, so me carrying around the art is telling of that. I also carry athletic tape and scissors in my bag. I am a track and field athlete and my friends always need me to help tape them in places they are sore. This says a lot about how much my friends mean to me and my athlete identity. I chose to have the background be the main subject of the piece which I think sets the mood. It wasn’t super challenging to do this assignment, although it did make me realize I might want to carry more in my backpack.
I chose to depict a student who says they’re going to study for just a bit more, but ends up studying into the late hours of the night and ultimately falls asleep while reading. This was the topic of my comic because more and more, I’ve seen myself and my peers fall into this pattern of studying and crashing while studying and its been something that’s been on my mind recently. When crafting my narrative, I knew there were going to be three panels, so I wanted to depict something that is a clear 3-step process. As for the composition process, I wanted to make each panel as identical as possible, so I started by drawing the same background in each panel and then drawing the student. It was challenging to think of a scene that was small enough in scope to have only 3 panels, but also substantial enough that it tells a story. This was unlike anything I’ve done this semester- I’ve never drawn my own comic and had to think of my own comic idea. It was a new and refreshing experience because I could use multiple modes of media to depict a story and I enjoyed that.
