Reflection 3 (Second Major Paper/Photo Essay)


Reflection 3 (Second Major Project)
This second paper was a challenge for me to attack due to the fact that there was a minimum amount of words to be used. I had to tell a story through pictures, which can bring down an argument if you don’t create the feel that you want. I learned that wrting isn’t always about what you say, but how you say it sometimes. In the case of this project it wasn’t about words, but about picture placement and design. Just as I played the role of critic to the author in the first project, the roles were flipped now. I was the author and my audience was the critic, trying to break down my message. I think that this project taught me how to play that role well, because I had to use placement and visuals to tell the audience a story. The first two projects helped me to see the importance of structure and arrangement by forcing me to tell stories and break down visuals. I learned that the ability to organize a paper to create a perfect flow is a necessity for a smoothly functioning paper.
I really felt that in this specific project I choose a very interesting topic to argue. I think that comparing the athletic world to the business world was a topic that my audience would find very interesting because there was a lot of information in the argument for people that weren’t familiar with playing sports. I was use to playing sports my whole life and I wanted to show my audience how it was able to shape me to be a better individual. I wanted to learn how to tell a story by simply placing a picture in a certain way and captioning it and I accomplished that. This project challenged my way of thinking by testing my creative side. I had to find out what story I wanted to tell and how I wanted to tell it. On top of all of that I had to organize my argument and captions in a way that would make sense to the audience. The easier the PowerPoint was to follow the more understanding my audience would be of my argument.
The argument actually made me see how sports are beneficial even more than I thought they were. Sports are able to shape an individual and this project shaped me into a creative learner. It wasn’t the traditional type of paper because normally papers don’t use picture to tell a story. This type of paper was the first of its kind for me in college and I am happy we did it. I was able to see how important organization and structure was in a paper. I learned that there was a different way to research through this paper and that is using outside sources for questions. I was able to figure out how to do things through people that were successful in the past with a project like this one. I wanted to learn how to tell a story so I asked around for other’s help. I wanted to tell a story in an effective manner and I did this by organizing similar sections together. I made sure to group topics in my paper, such as, success in sports, controversy in sports, and failure in sports together so that it was a smooth read. Therefore, the audience wouldn’t read about one success, one failure, and one controversy, then bounce back to the second examples from each topic.
This second major writing project taught me how to organize and tell a story and it would prepare me for the final writing project to come. There was still more that I had to learn, because this last writing project was no pushover. I would have to blend all the things from the first and second writing projects in order to create something special in my last project. Although I felt ready there were many things that I still needed to learn in order to create something special in this final project. I would now be tested in everything that I learned to up to this point in time, but my love for the topic would my driving force to perfection. 

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