Section 1: End of Course Reflection

This term’s writing journey has been a long, but impactful one. I began the class hesitant of the true meaning of the title “Cultures of Places”. Cultural identity, nationalism, and history were just a few of several potential areas that this course might have followed, but instead, I was presented with unfamiliar ways of  defining places. Critical Regionalism, Localism, and Public Spaces were redefined in my book into more expansive, detailed theories.  As we were presented with these topics, the task of writing about particular places, archives, or concepts were to follow. These theories that were respectively denoted to three different large scale projects, became the pith of our course. In retrospect, I struggled with several aspects of writing in this course, as the formats were slightly unfamiliar to me, in this unfamiliar face. However, the first step towards growth and towards change is acknowledgement, and thus today at the term’s end I can wholeheartedly address these issues. Today, I acknowledge my growth opportunities and the parts to which I payed closer attention to over the course’s time. Clarity, refraining from watering down analysis, and offering more detailed evidence in support of my claims were areas of focus for me.

In further detail, I struggled with being clear, using lengthy quotes and of providing bland analysis. In most drafts of my projects, I either lacked clarity in my motive, or in my claims. As the course progressed, especially after reading Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace, I aimed to be present clearer messages. Beginning perhaps with who my audience was, I thought about the orientation of  my pieces and how they could best impact my readers/audience effectively. I payed more attention to my motive, which set the tone for clarity in my pieces and from there I could gage the flow of the rest of my pieces. Coherence was an essential goal of mine! My next issue, using lengthy quotes, became a shortcoming of my first project. In my first project, we were given the task of writing about Critical Regionalism as seen through various lenses of our chosen archives. These archives were rich with dialogue or with lyrics. My archive being a movie had several quotes and required of me to provide a lot of context, painting illustrious images for my audience. This approach lingered into my grappling of our outside texts where I used full, lengthy quotes to support each of my claims. The issue with this is that it became a habit where I would drown out my analysis by overusing or interrupting my own writing. Lastly, I became aware of the fact that I lacked enough evidence to support my claims. If I wanted others to understand the stance that I was taking, it was imperative that I presented them with appropriate evidence for them to recognize on their own. Out of these three areas, I was concerned primarily and decided to focus on the clarity of my motive and the clarity of my writing.

Clarity is essential in order to create an impactful piece of writing and in order to my present a message. In my first project, as well as in my second project I realized that I lacked clarity between my motive and the basis of my arguments. I knew that in order to gain this clarity that I so badly yearned, that one of the two parts needed to be changed, so I began with my motive. It read, “Although at first it seems like the film speaks positively and solely to the interconnectedness of neighboring regions, in actuality it exposes the understandingof social patterns that exist across regions and time”. The first problem was that my claim was redundant. Parts like ‘”interconnectedness of neighboring regions” and “social patterns that exist across regions” are essentially the same thing. One of my peer editors, Luke Valdes, actually pointed this out for me our workshop conference when he commented, “It feels like these two ideas that are supposed to contrast are too similar, and therefore need clarification”. He was absolutely right. My other editor, Albie suggested that, “The film focuses on the positive interconnectedness among reasons but in actuality it really exposes the way social patterns are viewed in different regions” and also that, ” [it] seems like it focuses on just immediate region, actually focuses on broader and interconnectedness among many regions”. Although this may have been an essential message of mine, the fact that two different readers derived two different interpretations, one clear and one not, was a red flag. It became imperative that I accommodate these readers as well as the rest my audience to be fit to read the remainder of my essay. 

The next step was adaption. I took my writing project to the next editor, Nick Van Kley, where my claims were further analyzed. He mentioned that my local claims were being cited appropriately with detail and that despite some smaller structural issues that my over coherence was beginning to emerge. It became apparent from my conference with Nick that my motive still struggled, because my main claim/motive and local claims did not compliment one another.  He commented to me, “Move toward a clearer and more clearly articulated motive mechanism”. So, by using the motive formula that resolves or prevents a problem and changes the world (by changing the audience’s perception), I altered mine immediately. 

By my final draft, I had manipulated a new argument to compliment the rest of my writing piece. It read, “This piece dramatizes an outsider’s attempt to understand regional identity. The film wants us to see the larger social patterns that connect us, shape our lives, and help us to better understand our lives. In full effect though, the film showcases that in order to change the patterns–not just understand them–we need social invention”. After reviewing my final draft it seemed that I accomplished the goal of a motive which is to tell the truth about something. This is something that I did by exposing the truth about local and regional cultures. The remainder of the course I put extra emphasis on this motive formula and its targeted goal, so that I could reveal something to my audience. Although I know that much is to be done along my writing journey, I understand that the first step to any impactful writing piece is to present a clear message.

 

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