Advanced Essay Writing, Spring 2013

Here is both my PowerPoint and Handout for my presentation. I truly hope you all enjoy it!

Poetry and Prose Presentation

AleeENG3680Handout

Semicolon and m-dashI apologize for taking this long to post my link for the presentation I did couple of weeks ago. It is here now and hopefully it will of some help.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HPskuI2Ydmq-qCdpCsZ7ky-cy_JeKBZnAp8yLr2VIGo/edit?usp=sharing

For my capstone essay, I want to capture the idea of coming into myself in my post-college mid-twenties.  I have recently been spending time in an old brownstone in Bed Stuy, prolonging my carefree days before starting my first full time job.  I left my parent’s house after Easter dinner this year and haven’t been back since.  I haven’t lived at home in years and being home for the past few months had driven me to a breaking point where I could no longer be at their house.  Their house, no longer my house.  I went out on a ledge and moved in with a girl who I had known for a week in a neighborhood that I didn’t know. I was now a minority. I didn’t get the alternate side of the street parking rules.  I didn’t know the guys at the deli, the landlord, her husband or my neighbors.  I couldn’t point at myself on a map. But by escaping the comforts of my white bread suburban upbringing, I was able to start to discover who I had become. 

Here is an except from the thoughts that I have written down over the past few weeks:

“I sat in the back of my car for hours that day.  My beaten Nikes hung inches above the greyed out pavement on Macdonaugh Street, my untied laces swaying softly in the spring wind.  I leafed through the book in my right hand, maneuvering my way through the words as I exhaled the smoke of yet another Parliament.

Just as the capacity to feel is present throughout the body, 
Ignorance dwells in all affliction emotions,
Therefore all affliction emotions are overcome,
Through overcoming ignorance.

Tough the screw in my tire was keeping me immobile, I couldn’t imagine a better place to be spending the day.  The sun shone through the windows in my car…”

The quote in the middle is from a book on the best Buddhist writings, which I had been reading the day I was getting my tire fixed.  I’m hoping to incorporate quotes from this book as well as a few songs and poems in the essay, making it more lyrical than a normal essay.  I am also hoping to make this a video essay, taking my own video or incorporating photographs in a slideshow-like manner in conjunction with a reading of my essay.

I want to get down to the raw emotion that comes from having time to sit down and truly reflect on yourself.  The good, the bad, the ugly.  I want to touch on subjects that  are applicable to people my age as well as relate my recent thoughts and experiences to feelings that are relatable to everyone.

Sorry it’s late, I haven’t been able to make a final decision on the topic… But this is where my head is at.

Since I am a journalism major, I woUld love  to stick to interviewing people and making a story out of it. About two days ago I met a guy on the train, he is from Kazakhstan, he lives in Newark and he works on 42 street. He paints pictures, no, he “sprays”pictures. His dream is to go to Baruch college someday. He is trying so hard tobuild his future. I want to meet him again and ask him to tell me his story, maybe I will find more conflict. I just imagine the visuals, they will be just awesome. I also want to try thetechnique that was used in “Ode to every thing”, so-called video made of many pictures, which is somewhere in the middle between pictures and video.

I could also write more about my experience at the hospital. Though it was the worst two weeks of my life in the States, I still have a lot of funny moments to mention and could make this essay not only hard to read and “oh my God what she went through type of an essay, but one having positive side.

Here I could use some of my pictures and I guess audio, record my friends who came to support me.

I’m currently brainstorming for my hybrid essay. I really liked the idea of the interview. I was thinking of maybe engaging senior citizens and children and asking them what they think is the best advice whether it was given to them or they came up with this piece of advice on their own. I’m debating if I want to narrow this advice to focus on “love” or just advice broadly. I’d like to juxtapose the wise, dated or crotchety advice of a senior citizen with the innocence of a child whose advice can potentially be wise, naive, something their mom told them or just plain hilarious.

In terms of really pinpointing where I want this essay to go I personally, like to start with a simple idea and decide where I’d like to take it once I begin. Right now, I’m thinking I would like for this hybrid essay to be purely audio, but depending on the answers I get I will determine the final direction I’d like to go in. I find it difficult to predict the mode in which I’d like for this essay to appear and need a little inspiration before I can commit.

That said I particularly like the idea of voices as a mode for this essay because the voices of a young and old person are drastically different. The inflection of someone’s voice tells a story in itself and lends itself to assuming a certain age and level of experience or intelligence.

I have been sitting at my desk for a very long time. I had several ideas, but every time time I try to write one of them up, I do not want to write it, and I delete it.

Henry Kissinger was one of the greatest negotiators of all time. He managed agreements between the Arabs and Israelis, that no one else could. Some said the Arabs and Israelis were like mixing oil and water — how did he do it? What special skills did he use? What agreements did he manage to come up with?

To be honest, I know very little of this topic, and I would need to get more information or perhaps do some research.

But perhaps I could describe a scene with detailed images and dialogue of one, two or more agreements between countries, the concessions, the skills used, etc. At this tme, Iam uncertain as I need to do get more information.

For this Hybrid essay, I’m planing to interview immigrants (students, workers, professionals) and ask them several questions and from those answers I would find my story. I’m planing to make an audio version because it is going to be easy to heard their different accents.

Continuing with the pattern of my first two essays, this last installment will also portray a family element, but with a different aspect. In this essay I want to compare the dynamics of family relationships with that of friendships and discuss which is more valuable.  I plan to interview some of my family and friends and ask them to describe the elements in each relationship they feel were the most fundamental in helping them become who they are.

I am undecided if I will make this draft into an audio version but it will be a hybrid essay, where I start off with a poem about family and friends and then use the interviews as examples. The title, Family or Friends” is a work in progress and may change when I have completed the first draft, but for now it works.

In this essay I want to explore quotes and how they impact and reflect my thinking. I love quotes and tattoos and in this paper I plan to take a look at my own views and beliefs on a wide range of topics through the lens of quotes I have tattoos of and quotes I plan to get tattooed later on.

In terms of the essay being a hybrid I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to do that but I think I’ll give my point of view from two different time periods in my life. This mainly applies to my views that have changed from the past and why they’ve changed. Ideally I’d like to also make this a lyric essay by somehow making it poetic but I’m not sure how yet. Although an idea I had was to take the quotes and use them as not only section breaks but at the end of the essay arranging the quotes together and having them form a poem.

Structurally, I’d like to break up the essay into sections separated by the quotes and then go directly into a stream of consciousness about my thoughts on the quote or what it means to me with no real explanation or intro into it. Almost as if to have the quote open a window into my mind and then I just, for a lack of better word, rant about whatever it is that comes to mind.

As of right now the working title is “Why do you speak?”

For my essay 3, I really want to incorporate music. Since I am a musician, I feel that I can really tell a good story with just music, no words. I haven’t thought about a story yet, but I plan to go around and film some shots of everyday life to see what exactly I can come up with. I will film the shots, then depending on the visuals, and the atmosphere I would like to portray, I will write scores to each scene.

Music can depict images very vividly. Moods of scenes will be easily interpreted by viewers. However, I don’t to just stick with one genre. I would like to string together scenes with completely different vibes. I would like to jump from depressing and gloomy, to romantic and triumphant.

However, the final product will tell a story; a story that makes sense, and has a definitive plot and characters. Maybe I can do some animation? Then I won’t have to find actors..

If possible, I’d like to hear some suggestions. I’m pretty open to where this essay will be going as of now. Maybe when I start filming, things will happen to fall into place and then I can work from there. Or maybe work backwards? Write music and then try to capture shots that would align with mood of the song? hmm…