Month: September 2018

Reading Shitty First Drafts was a reassuring experience. While I’m not as ashamed of my first drafts as she was, I often feel the same way as her, and too often I find my fingers just moving to form words without having a real direction. But this is why we have drafts. I like her friends depiction of drafts as starting with a mess and ending with a dental cleaning of a draft. I do however think that three drafts aren’t always needed. Sometimes I can overthink my writing and it turns out worse. My revision strategy will consist of not trying so hard to incorporate my own experiences and focus on the texts more, adding more textual evidence and quotes. I tried to personalize this first draft too much, which isn’t always a bad thing, but I recognize that I have to follow the material more.

Through the peer editing, I found some things I did right, but also what I did wrong. This includes me not putting a proper amount of quotations in my essay to back up my points more. I mainly used my insight and text to world examples without directly referencing the material that much.

After brainstorming the similarities and differences between the Essay and the TED talk, I made a few good conclusions and points that will help me write my essay. I have decided to argue why art in any form is important in society. I didn’t realize until I thought about it is that both authors had very good grievances with art, and I believe that they could even find common ground in it all.

In Titus Kaphar’s TED talk, he approaches racism in a way that relates to all people. He recognizes that we as a society see the world through many different lenses, but we tend to focus on those with prestige instead of the people with a history just as rich, but haven’t had the same luxuries as others. Titus moves the audience with very convincing words about both his experience with his child and everyone’s experience with our very nature. He moves the talk into a demonstration where he covers up all of the high class white people with paint. My first reaction was sadness, for I resented the fact that things like this need to be done in order to make us “shift our lens” to the subject matter that needed to be seen. But the meaning behind it was, in fact, beautiful. The paint is mixed with linseed oil, which becomes transparent over time. This allows us to look at different parts of the painting before eventually coming back to the full picture, our artistic minds all the better for it. If this style of painting can be perfected and utilized in art galleries all over the world, then I believe that it will change the way not only artists, but the entire world will look at history. Titus Kaphar teaches us an important lesson that I have also written about in previous works; It’s important to look at the whole picture, for in an ever changing world, we can always notice and understand more than meets the eye.

My first thought when required to make an online portfolio was that it clearly wasn’t my cup of tea. I tend to be more conservative about technology, and doing my work and establishing more of a presence online is not exactly something I am excited about. That being said, I understand and appreciate the pros of having this system, and in time, I will get used to it and have more and more fun with my classmates through this system. Looking at the other people in this class, I love the enthusiasm and the various pictures of their animals. I especially like Jamie’s chickens because chickens are adorable and I’ve always wanted some.

I enjoy cheese.