After 4 weeks of internship, I have went through my sci-fi story again. After reading it, I thought it was a solid piece of writing. I only wish though that I would have wrote my piece sooner so it would have been more professional. I wouldn't do anything differently but I would like to plan out what I am writing beforehand.
For the Sci-Fi project, our class wrote short science fiction stories that would be compiled into a single book called "Pandora's Book." We began by writing "seed texts" (Potential premises for stories) and eventually moved on to filling individual items such as "logical leaps," "big idea" and "world building" graphic organizers. I also conducted individual research to make sure my story was scientifically accurate. When the project was announced to my team, I had no clue on what I wanted to write about. Writing stories is not my forte but that doesn't mean that I am bad at them. I just had no ideas to go off on. Thankfully, the workshops that Dr.P and Mackenzie gave to the team helped me decide what to start off on. Originally, I planned to do a scenario where the Earth would get enslaved by aliens. After several years, the aliens realized that there was too many humans and hosted gladiator-like fights to get rid of the weak and lower the population. At first, I thought this was a nice premise to work off of. I completed all of the work I was required to do which was the "logical leaps," "Character Facebook page," "Big Idea graphic organizer," "Research Doc," "World-Building Graphic Organizer," and my first draft. I managed to complete all my graphic organizers and even wrote a first draft for it. However, I soon realized that I didn't like my story at all. I wasn't proud of it at all, so I decided to start a new story altogether. (From top to bottom: "Logical leaps," "Character Facebook Page," "Big Idea Graphic Organizer," "Research Doc," "World Building Graphic Organizer," and my discarded draft. After I decided to rewrite my entire story, I needed a new premise for it. I started to read sci-fi short stories that dealt with the theme of space. After several stories, I came up with my premise. I found this premise to be better and several people agreed with my decision. The premise of my story was that the Earth would get attacked by aliens, only this time, there is a colony on Mars. It would appear that the aliens are oblivious to the colony on Mars. The people on Mars now face a dreaded decision, Help Planet Earth or watch it suffer and die. Overall, I had a lot of fun writing this piece. Throughout the whole time I was writing it, I kept on thinking about the ending. I wanted an ending that no one would expect. When I finally did came up with an ending, I was satisfied with my piece. I only wished though that I didn't create my first story. I felt that it took a chunk of time out that I could have used in my new story. However, this taught me to be completely satisfied in the work that I do, so that I will never get in this situation again. Below is my new story. The Book of Us was our Humanities project for Festival Del Sol. The Book of Us is a compilation of stories written by students in our team. Each piece followed a specific theme. (ex. Express and Reflect, or Inquire and explore.) You can see the all of the writing themes here. You can see the details of the project through here. Before we began writing our pieces, Dr. P helped prep us for it. He made us choose any topic we liked. The topic I chose was video games. Then for each of the writing styles,(6 in total) we had to write three potential prompts that related to it. Thus, the name 1 topic= 18 topics. You can see my paper below. Throughout the project, Dr.P would give us a 5 minute quick write. These quick writes were based on the writing styles. We did about 6 in total and it helped us think about what to put in each of our pieces.The direction of the quick writes were completely up to us and it our story basically. Here is an example of one of my quick writes here Another thing Dr.P did to prep us for our drafts was give us mentor texts. These texts would be anything random. From teenage drinking, to magicians, or even love. However, the reason we read these was to understand the writing style of each of these to help give us an idea of what our piece should look like. Once we read our mentor article, we had to fill our a mentor text graphic organizer. This organizer analyzed the text and helped us understand the article in an even deeper level. Here is my mentor text graphic organizer here.
For my writing piece, I chose to write about my first experience with video games. This would fall under the category of Express and Reflect. This piece went through several critiques. Here is one of my earlier drafts. Here is my final draft. During the prep of exhibition, our photographers took everyone's picture. With those pictures, they put a golden line that we wanted either from our piece, or from another source. Here is my Golden Line Portrait here. Reflection When I first started this project, I knew what I wanted to write about in the first place.On February 21, I went to the CCA Writer's Convention. During one of the talks, I was told to write on what I liked. Well, I liked video games, so this was easy for me. My ideas stayed mostly the same when I was writing my piece. When I first received feedback, it was from my peers. They really liked my piece and how it was very descriptive.I just needed to make it longer. I did that, then Dr.P critiqued it. Overall, he thought it was a good piece, but I just had problems with my sentence structure. After several adjustments and more critiques, I finally finished my piece. What I plan to do for future writing is to do several critiques before I say it is finished. If I could change my draft, I would make it longer. I realized I could have put so much more but I didn't realize it back then. The All Time Greatest Panel is a debate where we discuss Obama's State of the Union address as various historical characters. The character I played was Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States. . Good morning, I am Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States. When I gave the first annual State of the Union address, over 100 years ago, this country’s problems were very different from those she encounters today. The economy was good, but farmers stood on unequal footing with large corporations in selling their products, and in the South General Huerta had just become a dictator in Mexico. Today this nation encounters issues regarding the unequal footing of men and women in the workplace, and in the east we are ending a long-fought war in Iraq. Our women served this country during WWI by filling in the jobs left behind by their brothers, husbands, and sons fighting over-seas. We repaid our debt to them by granting them the right to vote: a right that they have earned again and again. The women of this country are vital to it’s survival. However, in the workplace they are not treated as though they are. Women who work just as hard as men, deserve the same rights and the same salary as men. That’s why I supported women rights. Women deserve recognition. If we can’t appreciate their hard work, then America is setting itself at a disadvantage in the world. In 1990 the U.S. landed in the Gulf, fought a year long war, and pulled out when the job was done. 12 years later we sent our troops back in. Now, after 12 years the United States is finally ending it’s conflict in the middle east. However, it looks like we’ll be heading back again soon. Fighting a war is one thing, ending one is another. In my absence, has this great nation done nothing to prevent future conflicts? My advice to you is that, this time, rather than simply eliminating the threat, prevent others from arising by supporting the creation of stable, strong, and fair government in Iraq. Work to foster positive relationships with the people of the region. That is how one creates a plan for the future. However, I know for certain that this nation is moving forward in the right direction. When I was inaugurated as president, I had a dream for America. Looking at it today, I can see that it is achievable. Today’s economy is infinitely more times better than it was during the Panic of 1907. Women now have the same rights as men. America is constantly improving, and the only way to screw it up is if we turn on one another. It makes me proud to have led such a wonderful nation. The moment that sums up the project for me is representing my character. All the time I spent researching paid off because I worked hard to know Wilson in-depth. This project was done is pairs. My partner and I contributed equally to the workload so one one person doesn't get stuck with it all. I helped with the creation of the opening statement and the research. I'm proud of the work I completed because this project was a lot of fun to do. We wouldn't do this project in traditional school and being able to participate in this project is a great experience. This project taught me to do quality research. When I started, I only knew that Wilson was a president. This project has taught me to get the most information I can get in a limited time frame.
For our XONR8 Theater project, we were put into small groups of three or four people. These groups were given the task of forming a verbatim play based on oral interviews about the criminal justice system and anything related to it. A verbatim play is when all of the lines in the show have been taken from a source of information like interviews, or news articles. This project is not about giving information to the audience, but telling a story that people have not heard before. You can find our final script here. After we had conducted our interview, we had to do an interview map. What is an interview map? An interview map is a document where we take all the important pieces and we record them on a time table. Say for example, we get this juicy information at the 2 minute mark. We would then record that at the table. We aren't recording everything that happened at that point, but rather it is our own information guide for our interview. We could then go back to that point later when we were transcribing. After we had completed the interview map as a group, each person in the group had to create their own individual script outline. What I wanted for my script outline was to cover the whole story. Most importantly, I wanted the main characters to be the lawyers, because I felt that the story would be better presented that way. When I finished my script outline, I showed it to my group members and they really liked it. They suggested to use my outline as the ground zero for our script. After that, it was all transcribing. Since this is a verbatim play, we had to use the exact words used in the interview. There were a few exceptions where we had to change the sentence a little because it didn't make sense. Overall, transcribing requires a lot of creativity otherwise it would look like a bunch of copy and paste. I would say the moment that summed the entire project for me was presenting our story to the audience. It just felt really breathtaking to share a story that many people do not know about. The story we shared was very gruesome and involved chopped body parts. I just felt really proud to be able to take part in this project.
In my opinion, I would say that I contributed my part to the project. Everyone in my group contributed their part equally and it was a honor to be apart of that group. I would say I contributed most was transcribing the interview. Transcribing took a long time, and we had the whole group working on it. When I finished my part, I wanted to add more stuff to really connect the story and that is what I did. Nothing bad happened. It ended up being useful to the play and I congratulated myself for going out of the way to add more. What I am most proud of from this project was to be able to work on this project. Every year, the projects at HTHCV get more and more interesting. The fact that we get to do this, signifies a strong trust between our class and my teachers. I know for a fact that there will be more projects in the second semester, but I can't wait to accomplish them. The lesson I have learned throughout this project is to think outside of the box. Before the project, we had a workshop that was led by an actor at the Old Globe Theater. At the end, he said something that really struck me. He said, "Why would I go to a play if I could just read the topic online in 5 minutes." That quote surprised me because that meant our plays had to be extraordinary to everyone. Because of this. I had to think differently for transcribing. What I decided to do then was to combine our play with quotes from articles to make it better. I felt this was an important lesson to me because this is a crucial skill that separates people from thinking alike. |
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June 2015
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