First Draft:  As of right now, I know whom I will be speaking to. I already have one complete “interview” done, and I have 4 more. I have spoken to 3 friends and 1 of their friends, and my theatre professor Janet Werther. I am going to open this up to my  theatre class and see if anyone else would like to be involved. I am aware this is a time consuming task, and finals week is upon us, but I feel like this is the best route to go for the project. I have not input my text onto the blog yet, but I plan to make individual pages for each person, along with links to photos and videos if they refer to them, as well as ones I feel relevant. There will be an intro page where I discuss the thesis of my paper and how I feel about this topic being an “outsider” looking into this community. I have to revise that more once I get all of my responses. I think I do not have “ownership” on this topic, so I can discuss research but the passion and emotions backed up by this topic are more relevant coming from the community. I am excited for this to all come together.

Second Draft: This project ended up being a lot more work than I though, but I am definitely not complaining. It was difficult to get responses super quickly because of finals and busy work life, but this was the concept I was sticking with. I spoke with my theatre professor on a level different than how most of my conversations go with professors and I valued that dearly. I also spoke with my friend, Mikaela, who never was so open with me and I can’t blame her because I was very ignorant of this sort of discussion. I learned a lot from Naimul, Elisa, and Addie as well, and I can’t wait to continue learning. I didn’t want to include much of my own opinions and thoughts because that is what my paper was for. I am trying to take more risks. I feel the work I do is not as credible if I don’t take into account real people who deal with these kinds of experiences. I don’t feel misrepresented by the media, I am rarely assumed to be a person that I am not, and I do not deal with too much confusion that society causes. However, I can’t deny that it doesn’t happen and the best way to alleviate the stresses society puts on people, especially minorities, is education and being an avid listener. That is, what I think, the class and this assignment were meant to show us, and I couldn’t be more grateful. My reflective essay and production rationale go into more in depth information about how I feel about this project and what my thought process was!