Letter to BG

Dear Barbara, 

      I have to say that I feel very uncomfortable about telling you what grade I think I should get. But, then again, I have done many things in this course that I felt initially very uncomfortable about and I ended up learning a lot from all of them so I trust that there is much to be learned from proposing my own grade. However, there is a large part of me that feels like giving me a grade is only detracting from what I have actually learned in this course. I have to admit, when I sat in your class on the first day I was terrified of you. Your passion for writing is what initially scared me but it is also what made me want to stay. All I could think was I am not good at writing, I am a science major for a reason. But in the end, I couldn’t be happier with my choice to stay in your class. I can write. I can be a writer. And I realized that I actually have a lot to say. After I sat in with you for our first meeting and you said to me, you have been doing all of the assignments but you are not really blogging, I realized that I needed to work harder to blog each day. Before this class I thought that writing should just be done when I felt so inspired but now I realize that to become a better writer you have to write what you don’t want to write. You have to write everyday. And, most importantly, I learned that it is the story your mind is telling you to stop thinking about that really needs to be written. That was the case with my final project. I didn’t want to write that story because it was too close. It was too emotional and it was too real for me. And the fact that I was going to write it and more people than just you were going to read it was very scary. But then the story became a part of me and I couldn’t stop working on it. And I will keep writing everyday and I am sure that I will find another story like that. So I guess college says we have to give grades. And honestly, I’ve sort of always understood that before. In organic chemistry you really either get the molecule right or wrong and if you got it wrong you learn from that. But with this, I don’t want to put a letter on what I’ve learned.  I don’t really care so much what grade I get because I have learned more from this course then I ever could have imagined. So I will think of this grade proposal as a writing exercise that I really don’t want to do.  

Final Project (30%)   A 

      I think that I deserve an A for my final project. I think my final project shows a great deal of growth. I have made many revisions to the story (that is my first draft). After meeting with you to discuss the story the first time I realized that I really needed to revise the ending because I was not sending the right message with my ending. I really didn’t want to change my story though; I had become sort of attached to it. But after meeting with you and workshopping with my classmates I realized that the story had potential to really say what I needed it to say so I worked to really make my words bleed (quote that you told us many times). I tried to cut the story down to the essence of my message without loosing it all together. I hung that big post it we made in class in my room and I tried to look at the sentences I had picked everyday. I think I actually learned a lot from doing that. So then I made draft two of the story. I changed the title and the ending and I feel that this version does begin to send the message I want to send. Then for my final version I made some more small alterations of to the text. I really took to heart what the people in my workshop had said and took out some sentences they felt were not serving the whole of the piece. In the final version (you have the book itself in your office) I really focused on the use of images. A project is never really done but I feel good about how the book turned out. The story itself needed to be a tangible thing. It wasn’t doing the story justice to have it be read on a computer screen. It grounds you to read the story as a book. Turning the pages makes the story real.          

      The final project shows a great deal of growth in my ability to effectively use images. I learned a great deal from my multimedia project. You cannot see the first version because it wouldn’t compress properly but I think you probably remember it. It had a lot of literal images of little girls and such. Then my second version I tried to move away from the literal completely. But I had too many different images. I had lost any sense of story in the images. So I looked again at the piece and really worked to have the images say the story themselves. I altered the images and used these alterations to tell the story as well.  I learned a great deal about images. When you look at an image it is important to decide how that image makes you feel. That feeling is where the power of images lies. I also learned in doing my movie the power of blank space. If I were to revise my movie again I would work on having more black space to let the story speak for itself at moments (please see my reflections on editing) .        

       I took all of these lessons from my multimedia project and used them in my final. The images in my book are literal in the sense that they often express the actual thing that I am talking about in the story but they do much more than that as well. For example, the picture of the hair is used to introduce Kathrine into the book but this picture is also used to foreshadow her fate and to describe the feeling of us all looking toward Kathrine for help. The image is then changed as we move further from Kathrine and then closer in. This is meant to bring the reader into her tragedy. The reader feels that sense of dread and horror. The image of the hair is then used again, with the reader further from Kathrine, to give the sense of looking back on the initial moment. The hair picture is then used again, but this time it is altered. The picture is lacks the initial bright colors to represent the realization that experiences can change you forever; you can’t just go back.          

     The beginning image in the car was chosen because it is meant to give a very claustrophobic trapped feeling which is meant to mirror my naivety at the beginning of this story. The picture of the trees was chosen because it is a bright happy picture. This is meant to foreshadow my eventual understanding of my mother and the beauty in her ability to cry over the trees. The picture of Hayley is blurry because it foreshadows her fate. It is placed on the page in that way because it is meant to give an almost yearbook feeling. It is supposed to have a feeling of looking back at to something that once was. The picture of the mailboxes gives the sense of the ideal perfection concealing what is really there. The bright white in contrast to the red flag mirrors the contrast of what appears to be to what actually is. The cut out from the newspaper gives a sense of reality to the story. The white house image is meant to shock the reader. Its lawn is extremely bright and it contrasts the brutality of the Hayley story. This image is then altered to show the destruction when the house is burned. It is then altered again when it is drawn in crayon to show the sense of innocence and safety and the loss of that feeling. The picture of Kathrine walking gives the sense of looking down. It conveys the feeling of being with someone and avoiding what should be said; all you can do is look down at the sidewalk. The blurry image of my face shows the distortion of the idea of me. I have lost my feeling of security and I am beginning to realize the beauty of the trees. The final mash-up of pictures feels like memory. You never remember things exactly as they were and you can’t ever get things to be the same again. The middle picture shows how I am no longer stuck in my car but I am outside in the parking lot. I have gained a sense of freedom from the telling of the story and I have realized the beauty of the trees.           

      I think the book effectively uses repetition of images to give the feeling of the story. The book also uses blank space to let the story speak for itself and to give the reader a chance to absorb the story. Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely was my inspiration for this. In her book, she effectively uses blank space to let the reader absorb and feel the story. I think overall, my book shows growth in my ability to tell a story and in my ability to use images effectively with that story. I took a risk with this book because I couldn’t really know if it would work until I put it all together and I think it was worth the risk. Once I had the idea for this book I actually couldn’t sleep until I got it done. I felt like I had to tell this story and it had to be in this format.  

Participation (blogging, workshopping, class) 30%  A- / B+

       It is hard to grade my participation as a static thing. However, I think if you look at the growth of my participation then that shows much more. At first I was very timid to say much in class. Because I am a science major I felt like there was no way I had anything intelligent to say about reading as a writer. I don’t like when students in class speak just to hear their own voice and at first I was very weary of being that person. However, I think throughout the course I gained more confidence in the fact that I did in fact have intelligent things to say. I think as I learned that I could really be a writer is when I began to gain my voice in this class.  

      Everyone I workshopped with was absolutely wonderful. I was terrified to read my braided essay in front of my group and they were so helpful. Everyone really wanted to help each other and everyone was honest. People told me what didn’t work and what they didn’t like and in the end, it was those comments that were most helpful. As a workshopper myself I feel that I helped my classmates as well. I think I was especially helpful in workshopping the multimedia projects because I had done so many revisions of my own piece. I took a lot of the lessons that you had taught me about the effective use of repetition and the alteration of images and passed those lessons on to my group. I think they thought it was very helpful.  

      It is also hard to grade my blogging as a static thing. At first I only posted on the blog what was assigned because I figured no one honestly cared what I had to say. However, after meeting with you that first week you told me I should blog everyday. And I asked you what I should blog about and you said anything you want. That was an amazing moment for me. After that I began doing a Daily Blog (if you go to my blog you can see all the posts titled Daily Blog). I realized that I didn’t actually care if people wanted to read my daily blog but that I was going to write it anyways. And I am going to keep my blog going because it makes me feel good to write everyday.  

      My commenting on the blogs is probably my weakest part of my participation. I did try to comment on people’s blog and in the past few days I have been trying to comment more and more. I guess I get nervous that what I have to comment is not really deep or is not truly shedding light on the piece. I am working on commenting though. For the first week I think I commented on two people’s pieces total. Now, I would say I comment twice a day. It still makes a little nervous though. I guess I just get worried people will think what I have to say is not that helpful. I will start just commenting more anyways though. It really doesn’t matter if what I comment every time is not the most brilliant thing ever. Everyone loves getting comments right?

 Exercises and Assignments 40% A / A- 

     Am I totally breaking the rules by giving myself slash grades?…It’s certainly not the first time I’ve “broken” the rules in this course. Anyhow, I think that I have really grown in my ability to surrender to all of your exercises. At the beginning of the course I was not a true believer of the writing exercises. I thought they were silly and that they weren’t going to shed light on anything at all. Then, one of the exercises got me to write about the tree story with my Mom. That story ended up being a huge part of my final project and it was after that class that I realized writing exercises are amazing things. It wasn’t until after dinner at your house that I realized writing exercises can actually be fun too.  

      It is interesting to look at my first exercise we did. This is the one with the photos .  This exercise is really bad for a few reasons. The primary reason is that you can tell from it that I did not put my heart into the exercise. I didn’t experiment or take any risks. The images are also very literal with no deeper meaning. The words are just thrown on the image. They look like they don’t belong there at all. But if you then look at the exercise where we had to pick ten sentences and take then photos. I think you can see the growth. With these photos I have worked to capture a feeling. I have not just taken literal images that show what the sentences are about but I have taken the feeling of the sentence and taken a photo to express that feeling.          

     After I posted my five short stories on my blog I feel like I became freer with what I posted. I have been much more willing to write and fail since I posted those stories. Examples of this are my 100 word pieces. Some of them don’t actually really make any sense. That one doesn’t really make any sense right now but it could be a really interesting piece. Some of my 100 words pieces are just uninteresting and really just not so good. I think it is because with that one I didn’t really take any risk and the word didn’t really pull at anything within me. But the most important lesson from these 100 words is that I posted them all anyways: the ones that were weird or the ones that had failed along with the ones that worked. And I think I have found a lot of freedom with my blog in doing that. Instead of thinking well this is something my teacher made me do, sorry if it sucks. I think well that piece failed horribly and I wonder why it didn’t work. I feel like I have learned to take ownership over my blog and over my exercises. Like you said, for 100 pages of written work writers often get 10 pages they keep. If that really is the case I guess I better keep writing so that I can get to what works! 

      Along with the 100 words a day I have learned a great deal from the other exercises that we did. I had a great time doing the stranger studies and I feel like I observe people more now. It is fascinating to actually watch people and try to see what they are really doing. This exercise really taught me that there is inspiration everywhere.  Reading as a writer taught me a great deal as well. The most interesting lesson I learned with this was that about narrative distance. Being able to identify narrative distance in a piece is the first step to being able to use if effectively but it is extremely hard to write a piece and then alter the narrative distance that you use. In the piece Nature’s See-Saw by Edward Hoagland he effectively uses narrative distance. By including subjective facts he brings the reader into the story but then he uses objective facts to give the writer a sense of reliability to the reader. Narrative distance is something I continue to play around with. I try to write my 100 word pieces from different narrative distances. For example with my Lightning  piece I am removed from the piece but with my Gyroscope piece I am writing in the first person and I am closer to the reader. I plan on continuing to play around with this idea.  

Overall grade A- / A 

      I mean I guess I really have changed the rules on this assignment by doing slashes with my grades. But I don’t really know what you consider an A or an A- or a B+ and I also just don’t really think the actual grade matters that much. What I hope you have learned from this letter is that I have learned a lot and that I couldn’t ever thank you enough. I have blogged to the world. I have written pieces that have failed. I have done three drafts of a movie I was convinced was doomed after the first draft. I have been kept awake at night thinking about my final piece because I had to get it right. I have fallen in love with words and image and how they can work together. I am so happy to be in this generation of writers because there is so much to be said and so many ways to say it. Thank you again, so much.