When I first heard we would be
doing projects other than writing research papers, I was ecstatic. I was particularly excited for project 3
because being a communications major, I love going out and talking to people
and giving interviews and such. As this project began, I was surprised that I
didn’t enjoy it more.
Throughout the entire year we have focused
on arguing, making our argument clear and begging the so what question. As much
as I hate admitting it, I am still unsure of how to make my point perfectly
clear, at least up to the class’s standards. I hope that this time I did a
decent job of putting my side of my argument perfectly clear in my thesis
statement because each time I have done that so far, I haven’t done it as well
as I should have.
My interviews were actually good in
my opinion. I varied the types of people I spoke to to try and get many angles
on one subject. They didn’t give simple, one sentence responses, in fact, most
of their answers were paragraphs that needed to be broken up into multiple
question and answer sections. They were informative with their responses and
stuck to the question, rather than going off on tangents. So, in terms of what
I did well, I would say the people I chose to interview were definitely a good
choice on my end of things. Perhaps my questions could have been a little more
guided, but I really do feel that I generally stuck to what I originally
intended to write about.
My recording process was simple.
Since I didn’t do any interviews with random bystanders, I was able to sit each
person down one on one and get a clear interview. I used my microphone on my MacBook
so I could easily upload and edit the audio in Garage Band. It was a challenge
at first because I had never used recording software for a podcast. Luckily I
had had previous experience in journalism with editing and recording, so it was
easy to figure out.
In the future, I will take what
this project taught me and apply it to my career. Working in the communication
field, I will need to constantly be contacting and interviewing people, so the
skills I learned for that will be useful. Every project that I have to interact
with people is another way for me to practice for my future. I think it was a
good idea to have a different style for each project this year. Each one gave a
new skill to all of us. Also, each person had an opportunity to show his or her
strengths at one point or another.
