With all of the craziness of the past week, it was oddly calming to have the final presentation to put together. Sure, the specter of a looming due date creates stress in its own right. However, there was something incredibly fun about refining my presentation, shifting slides around, finding some new images and of course, recording the narration. The fact that it was solely my vision and didn’t require any negotiation or compromise did make this task distinctly different than the rest of my week!
If you’ll recall, when first approaching our research assignment, I started out thinking I wanted to explore identity politics, and “cancel culture”. As a big Harry Potter fan (I’m a Ravenclaw, thank you for asking.), I was troubled by the news JK Rowling was making earlier this summer for making insensitive comments about transgender people. I was caught up with the idea of whether it was still okay for me to love the Potter books and movies, but be angry with Rowling for her actions. I thought a lot about whether my anger even mattered.
I took that thought and moved it a bit closer to home. I shared with you all my story about “Crossbar”. Would the owner, who made racist comments on Twitter, ever really know that I chose never to return to his bar? The conclusion, which was pretty easy to surmise, was no. That is, it wouldn’t make much of an impact if I’m the only one who decided to stop going. However, what would happen if I convinced others not to go as well? That sounded a lot to me like a boycott. Another term for boycott is consumer activism. Now, that was a topic worth exploring.
The research led me down a number of paths, and I quickly had to narrow my focus. I found the exercises we used to track and summarize our sources to be incredibly helpful in identifying which of my sources would be the most useful. Thanks to having done that work, it made my job of picking which sources to cite for my final project much easier. That work helped to shape how I wanted my presentation to go. The essay about Walmart and Target and the chapter about the shift from political engagement to voting with wallets were the keystones of my argument. I was able to search for items which helped round out that argument. Adding in some cool images to catch the eye of my audience was fun. Recording my narration was the final piece of the puzzle.
Apart from the obvious, like the mechanics of recording narrations for PowerPoint, I learned quite a bit while preparing this presentation. For example, I had personally observed that Wal-Mart and Target were very different shopping experiences. However, before this summer, I had no idea that there are real reasons for those differences. Also, I vaguely knew that the Quakers had been abolitionists, but had never known about the “Free Produce Society”.
Taking a writing course this summer has definitely had some “real world” impact, but perhaps not in the way I would have expected. Part of my job involves conducting investigations and putting together summaries of my findings. Well, it seems that a few of the narratives I wrote in July were deemed “too flowery” and “read too much like a college essay.” HA!!!
I thought they were really great pieces of writing, but have learned when collaborating, it’s important to not get too hung up on things like that. It’s a good thing this class has forced me to exercise my self-editing muscle. (he types un-ironically as the word count keeps creeping ever-higher.)
I truly appreciate the lessons I learned this summer. I feel as though my writing has gotten better over these past several weeks. With plenty of classes left to take before graduating, and plenty of narratives left to write, that can only be a good thing.