Cover Letter:

Over the past 16 weeks I have learned a lot from this class. For starters I now know how to make collages and videos on my computer. More importantly I learned a lot from myself and about myself. I learned a lot from myself through revising my work, which allowed me to realize where I tend to excel and where I need to work harder. This portfolio shows the strides that I made through the semester by revising my work and resubmitting it. I have really grown intellectually from this class, probably more so than any other class. Having the course structured around revisions and continuously working on a portfolio throughout the semester allowed me to care about my work, as opposed to other classes where I read the comments but continue to make the same errors because I never go back and actually make the corrections. I think the biggest thing I will take with me from this class is the knowledge that when faced with a number of different challenges I was able to succeed through all of them. I know that sounds a bit corny, but before this class I hated poetry and working with it would have been like pulling teeth for me. In terms of the individual assignments, I will let their descriptions speak for themselves. Overall, this class and the way it approaches literature feels like it was made for me. I was interested and involved in every assignment, and actually enjoyed going to the class and doing the work. It is an innovative and somewhat unorthodox class but it was perfect for me. I think this course is perfect for people who aren't interested in literature because it will change that, it did for me at least.

PLAYLIST:
I began working on this assignment after watching The Big Lebowski for the umpteenth time, and thought it would be fun and interesting to use The Dude as my focus for the assignment. As I began the assignment I found it tougher than I initially thought it would be. One reason for that was because the music from the movie does such a good job at getting at the core of The Dude, and a lot of those songs kept sticking in head. I did end up using a song from the movie, 'Just Dropped In', because it was truly the best song for what I was trying to do, but I wanted to make sure that I kept this assignment as original as possible. As I began to choose songs to analyze who The Dude was I found myself getting stuck on just describing some of The Dude's attributes, rather than really mapping his development. So, for my revisions I threw out a few songs and really tried to get deeper into The Dude's development as a character. I began by mainly looking at The Dude during the first and last 10-15 minutes of the movie, which allowed me to notice the changes and then I was able to really describe his development.

This assignment was a lot harder than I had originally envisioned. I didn't realize how tough it would be to find the right songs. Furthermore, I found it quite challenging to tie the songs into what I was trying to portray at a given point. However, once I was able get things moving with this assignment, I found myself learning a lot about The Dude and how to look at characters. I found myself picking up on things with The Dude that I would have otherwise missed. I also feel that I look at characters differently now; it's hard to describe, but recently while listening to music I'll occasionally find myself trying to tie the song to a movie I've seen recently. This assignment has challenged the way that I listen to music and the way that I look and think about characters. I find myself looking deeper into music and movies.
Playlist - The Dude - Original 9/5
Playlist - The Dude - Revised 10/9

Collages:

-Character Original:
For my character collage I chose to continue working with 'The Dude' from the movie The Big Lebowski. I had a lot of fun working with The Dude for my playlist, and found him to be a more complex character than I had originally thought. There are a number of characters in the complex plot of The Big Lebowski and everything seems to revolve around The Dude, due to a series of misunderstandings. For my first attempt at this collage I chose to include some of the more intricate characters of the story along with The Dude in a bowling alley setting, bordered by The Dude's rug. I chose the bowling alley and the rug as the main setting of the collage because the plot seems to continually weave between The Dude's missing rug and The Dude and his pals bowling. I think up to this point I was on the right track. Then I chose to add some objects to the corners of the collage. The piece sign and 'no war' sign were placed there to represent an obscure moment in the movie where he mentions that he was a member of the seattle seven, the dollar bill to represent the missing million dollars, and the white russian to represent his favorite drink. I tried to force these images into the collage and it showed in the final project. The other thing that I did was add smoke going across the collage except for over The Dude. This was meant to show The Dude at the center of everything, but it really just ended up washing out most of the collage.

-Character Revised:
When I revised my collage I decided to try something different. I left the original placement with the bowling alley and the rug, but I chose to put a picture of The Dude's house in the background. I think this collage does a better job of representing The Dude. It has all the characters fading away from him, in terms of depth, in what I see as the order of their importance to the story. I like the light that the house brings to the collage, my first one was somewhat dark and depressing and that is not what The Dude is about. The Dude is a guy that rolls with the punches and does not roll over into the dark. Lastly, I really think the images blend together much better in this revision, which really makes the collage more complete and cohesive.
This was a very interesting and fun assignment, but at the same time it was fairly challenging to me. I originally had trouble visualizing what I wanted my finished product to look like, which was particularly frustrating. I had to go through a number of attempts to just get a rough idea of what I wanted the collage to look like. I really enjoyed learning how to actually make a collage on the computer, probably something I would have never learned otherwise. I think the coolest thing about this assignment, as well as the playlist, was that it made me think outside the box. I would have never looked at The Dude from any other perspective than what I saw on screen, but with these two assignments I had to really think about who he is and then how to portray that in an abstract way. That is the biggest thing I will take away from this project.

Poem Collage:
With my collage on the poem Sleep by Leigh Ladd I felt a little more comfortable. I understood the software I was using, amnd after finally getting to a finished product with my character collage I was able to visualize what I wanted this one to look like a lot quicker. Also, poems generally invoke images in your head as you read them so after reading Sleep a couple of times I had a general idea of what I wanted to do and what types of images I wanted to use. I really liked the frustration that was present in this poem and immediately I thought of someone incredibly tired kicking the sheets trying his best to fall asleep. I know that when I can't sleep I start to drive myself crazy thinking about how much sleep I've already lost and how much time I have left to sleep before my alarm goes off, which is where the idea for the clock came. I then tried to integrate the images from the poem into the collage as different thoughts that were running through his head, which is why I faded them in to the collage in pseudo bubbles. I added the sheep because that's what everyone thinks about when they think about sleeplessness.
I liked my original collage, so for my revision I did some touch up work. I got rid of the watermark on the clock, which eliminates an annoying distraction. I also made the sheep a little more prevalent in the collage, since they weren't all that visible before. I also did some touch up work with some of the masks. I think these little changes make this collage exactly what I was looking for.
This collage project presented some initial difficulties to me, but I was able to work through them and produce, in my opinion, to very accomplished collages. I learned a lot about my ability to think and work abstractly. My first reaction was that this was going to be an easy assignment for me because I have a very vivid imagination, but I quickly found out that this was not so much about imagination as it was about abstract thought and how to convey that. I was able to really understand the mindset of The Dude, past the typical interpretation of him as a stoner. And with sleep I was able to really get into the mindset of not being able to fall asleep when you've tried everything and you are extremely frustrated. Overall, this was a really interesting and fun assignment.

Character Collage: The Dude

Character Collage: The Dude Revised

Poem Collage: Sleep

Poem Collage: Sleep Revised

Annotation Project:

This was probably my least favorite project, because I'm not a big fan of Dickinson and am not very good at working with her poetry. I had to put a lot of effort into this project. As I got into the project I began to get into a groove. The fact that we had to do annotations for 10 different projects forced me to take an interest in the project. I tend to have difficulty looking deep into poems and taking them more at face value, but as I saw other annotations I was able to slowly get the drift of what the poems were really about. I did realize Dickinson's obsession with death rather quickly, which gave me a jumping off point in several poems. After going through the poems and some of their annotations I was able to get a better idea of what to look for when reading them, and how to interpret their true meaning. This assignment showed me that if I really put my best effort into something that I can at least get a basic grasp on it, even if I am still not able to excel in the area.

Annotation Project - Emily Dickinson

Podcast:

This assignment was much different than what I originally expected. I thought it would be me lecturing about a topic into a microphone for a few minutes, I was intrigued when I realized the group format of the assignment. Again, I liked the freedom we were given with respect to the topic. I think being able to choose our own topic allowed us to really get excited about the project, and I am always able to get more involved in things that I am excited about. I think we worked well as a group and were able to tie our topics and songs together well. I think the general flow of the podcast was fairly smooth. We were able to go back and forth with one another which I think really helped get our point across. I think the downfall of the podcast was my shakiness and stuttering at times, but I think I did a good job at keeping the dialogue moving at times as well. This topic really sparked my interest in the 60's. Although my particular area of expertise for the podcast was the Hippie movement, I became intrigued by Vietnam and ended up using Vietnam for my video project. I think I did a good job relating the song to the topic at hand, and feel that our group as whole did a good job connecting all of our topics and songs together to create, in my opinion, a fascinating and informative podcast.

Podcast Assignment

Video:

This was definitely the most time consuming project for me, but also the most expressive and informative assignment. I really immersed myself in Vietnam books and articles to try and get a feel for what life was like for both the soldiers abroad and Americans at home. The reason the project was so time consuming for me was because I kept changing the order of the photos and video clips which in turn forced me to reorganize the audio. I was working with several different typed of media which made it even more complimented. For a while I thought that I may have gotten a little over zealous with the project, but I think it came out very good. I used video, pictures, song, sound effects, and my own voice to guide my video. The problem with having so many different types of media is it becomes increasingly difficult to make changes to the project. Although it was frustrating at times, I really didn't mind putting forth the time and effort to make changes because the whole time I was so excited to see how good I could make this video. I really tried to draw on the pasts assignments and what I had learned in this course to make this video great. I really learned a lot about the Vietnam era. I drew on first hand accounts as well as articles and various other readings to try to understand what people were thinking and feeling during this time. And as I had suspected the nation was divided, which is why I had to make so many editing changes because I kept going back and forth on how I wanted to have the video come across. I decided to quit reading things and allow my head to garble all the information I had into one big ball, I then began to just let that information flow out and onto the screen. So, this video is how I decided to show the Vietnam Conflict and draws on several different accounts. This was my favorite assignment because it was really challenging, but it was an intriguing and I was unable to stop working on it until I was completely satisfied and proud of what I had done.

Vietnam Video

Postings and Comments:

The comments and blog postings done in this class were an effective tool. They allowed me to reflect on my own work and the work of others in the class. By commenting on others' work I was able to gain a new perspective on many of the assignments. Viewing my peers' work and also analyzing it in order to make meaningful comments allowed me to get deeper and more involved with the assignments. I liked having both discussions through comments with others and also being able to show how I would have done things differently on certain projects. I gained useful and interesting ideas on my projects from the comments I received. I thought this part of the course was very useful.

Comment #1 - Hardware
This is my comment on the poem Hardware. It is a discussion of the mood and meaning of the poem.

Comment #2 - A Good Man Is Hard To Find
Here is a discussion of the Misfit as the 'son' in A Good Man Is Hard To Find.

Comment #3 - A Good Man Is Hard To Find
this is a discussion of the Misfit's motives in A Good Man Is Hard To Find.

Comment #4 - A Good Man Is Hard To Find
This is an exploration of religion in A Good Man Is Hard To Find.

Comment #5 - Feedback for John's Playlist
This is some feedback and comments on Jonathon's playlist. I included my thoughts on how he could add and improve his existing playlist.

Comment #6 - Girl/Sweat
This is a discussion of the relationship between the poems Girl and Sweat.

Comment #7: Khalil Gibran Poem Collage - This is a suggestion of how to blend the images in the collage.

Comment #8 - Feedback for Pablo Escobar Playlist
This is my comment on Alex's playlist. I included some links to possible songs that might fit in and help improve the playlist without compromising the overall flow or message.

Comment #9 - Innocence assignment: TransitionThis is a look at the transition into adulthood and how the four poems approach and look at that transition.

Blog Post - A Death in Texas
This is a posting about change. It looks at the changes the character incur in a A Death In Texas.