Progress Report after First Complete Working Draft

It feels really good to have my first working draft completely finished. All of the hard work is done, and now I am working on fine tuning all of my comments, prose, and analysis.

I think that the more personal, and transparent I am with my examples of microcultural conflict, the more successful my research will be. I think my draft grew exponentially stronger by adding full texts excerpts from my blog, the rambler, and my journal. Rather than looking back on an experience, the raw emotion, and detail from that exact point strengthens the argument and the details of the example. It makes my point much clearer to the reader, who may or may not have gone through similar instances, but I think they will be able to understand my perspective much better. In addition, it ties it back to auto-ethnography and keeps my research true to my genre of choice. My writing group feedback agreed that the in text excerpts really clarify my argument.

One thing that I am currently working on expanding after the writing group discussion, is my analysis of the interviews. There were not any surprises in my interviews, knowing the microcultures of where my interviewees are from I had a pretty good idea of how they would respond. I expected there to be one or two outliers to my overall thesis, but there were not any. This is in my opinion blatant as it pertains to my thesis because it reinforces the issue that I am discussing, and  clearly states that there is an issue with microcultural communication. However, my writing group thinks that I am currently just letting the interviews stand alone. I did this intentionally because I didn't want to seem biased about the responses, but after re-reading through this section of the research, I agree it can benefit from some analysis, and retying it back to my thesis.

I am also currently deciding on how I want to deal with this idea of assimilation. I know it is a soft spot for many scholars in this field. However based on my interviews, and my personal experience, I have decided that assimilation is the word that I want to use. Some of my interviewees used the word "compromise" and "life adjustments", and I think that this point made by my personal experiences and the interviews can best be summarized by the word assimilation. My point here that I am making is that it is solely the job of the outsider to make adjustments in order to fit into the new microculture. Since you are the minority, you are expected to conform to fit the majority in order to facilitate communication. I wish this was not the case and could do a complete other paper on alternatives to this concept, why it is an issue, and how to fix it. However, for the purposes of this project determining if, and why there is a communication issue, making this statement about how people from different microcultures learn to communicate, is as far as I will go into discussing it because there is not enough time to give the entirety of this concept justice in this paper.

Brainstorm Conversations with Outside Readers

I am working very closely with my second reader Tim Soulis. We are currently revising my working draft and trying to shape it towards that first complete draft. At the moment my main issues are in deciphering what is important when it comes to writing about my perceptions of the two microcultures. I feel like I can say so much about both of these locations, but I dont want to fall in to hasty generalizations or fallacious reasoning.

With my outside reader I want to discuss ethnography and how to tie in my concept of self and my ideas with the broader picture. 

1. What is relevant to discuss in Microculture
2. How do I make this project more personal
3. What is my next step in my interview process. 
4. How do I compile everything I want to say into one project. 
5. Help me digress, and compress my ideas in the revision process. 
6. How do I let go of some of my ideas in order to be more indepth and precise on my ideas. 

Reflection on Self throughout Senior Seminar

As a writer, I consider myself to be a strong arguer. I always have an opinion and I am not afraid to share it within my writing. In compiling my Writerly Portfolio, I discovered that my strongest pieces were ones in which I felt passionate about the topic, and was able to form a well thought out argument to support said opinion. Overall, I say the theme of my work is passion.

Throughout the writing portfolio process, It was fun to look back and remember the excitement I had with each project that I felt connected to. Many of those projects focused on my hometown in one way or another. For example my speech on  the California Avocado Obsession will always be a favorite. I let my passion drive my work and my opinions, in order to create projects that are very personal to me, while making a statement that is relevant to my audience.

The biggest gaps that occur when I write in such a manner falls in to the minute details of a project. I tend to think to much "big picture" and not enough about the details that compose that larger idea. Many times, I look at a project I love, and I realize I could have done an entire project on one aspect of that project alone. I always want to go big, and tackle the ideas head on, but I need to be careful not to overlook the details, or give myself too much to take on, in the amount of time that I have.

My goals for Senior Seminar basically included creating a meaningful project that would be of use to me past my time at Transy, and also learning about myself and my future my looking back on my time at Transy. Focusing on microculture, has really helped me define my experience, and help me to realize how I have grown not only as a writer, and a student in my time at Transy, but also as a person. Studying in a different microculture taught me lessons that I would have not been able to learn had I stayed in California for school. While it was difficult, it inspired my writing, and made me a more well rounded thinker.

I hope moving forward, that my Senior Seminar project will continue to help me build on these concepts and qualities.

Progress Report: A Gap in my Research

After researching into the broader conversation on my topic, I realize I have come across a gap amidst the scholarship on interpersonal communication. The larger conversation focuses majorly on cultural communication when people are integrated from two foreign macrocultures. However, few have looked into the issues of communication that occurs when people from different microcultures communicate. When one comes from the same macroculture, it seems logical that they will be able to communicate with someone who has the same broad cultural influences. However, people neglect to realize that our socializations from a variety of microcultures affect our abilities to communicate with those around us as well. 

Within a single subculture, which is defined as a smaller section of a broader macroculture, there are thousands of microcultures that define a person's identity. A microculture is an aspect of the subculture that a person identifies himself or herself with. For the purpose of my project, I am looking into microcultural communication between my personal microculture, Laguna Beach and Southern California, and the microculture, which I have attended college in. By examining the microculture of Lexington and Southern California, I will be able to definitely make a statement about the issues that occur when people from different microcultures communicate. By drawing from my own experiences, and collaborating them with evidence from other Southern Californian's experiences in Lexington, I will be able to definitively answer this question. 

At this point in my project, I am in the midst of my research speaking with and conducting interviews with others in order to see if my experiences are similar to theirs. I have drawn from my personal experiences and now I am in the process of collaborating them with the experiences of my interviewees. 

Post Conference Thoughts

I don't have much experience with auto-ethnography, but my understanding is that I will use my research to  expand upon and challenge my ideas. My main goal for this project is to really question myself, and all of my ideas following school in Kentucky. I am obviously very opinionated about culture and life in Kentucky, but after all the writing I have completed on the topic, I want to challenge my opinions. At the end of the day I hope to find some validity to my opinions, and I want to challenge this validity by speaking with other students from Orange County, and seeing where their heads are at, and if they have had similar experiences as I. If they have, then  I can use my experiences and their responses as evidence for what life is like for a person from Orange County in Lexington. I like the idea of shifting my focus a touch as to avoid any generalizations that are without merit. It is difficult to say everyone from a particular area is one certain way, while I may feel something, other people in my situation may feel differently and I am excited to figure out if that is true or not.

I am looking forward to getting IRB approval so I can get started on my research. After each interview, I will journal about things we had in common or not in common and keep a thorough record of my thoughts throughout the research process on top of continuing my past writing. I will also be having my weekly meeting with Dr. Soulis on Tuesday to discuss the direction of the project. I am excited to  see where this project can go.

Writing is a Passion

Today's society focuses so much on the academic side of writing. So many people grow up believing they are bad writers because they didn't do well in English class, or don't allow themselves to grow as writers because they lean more towards math or science skill sets.

People tend to forget that there are a variety of reasons to write. Hooks and Anzaldua wrote for different reasons, but at the end of the day, they both write because it is their passion. They write because, at the end of the day, they have stories to tell. Humans all have their own stories to tell, and one of the best ways to tell that story is to write it down and get your emotions out on paper.

Just like Hooks and Anzaldua, I fell in love with writing at a young age. I too would stay awake under the covers with a flashlight reading autobiographies because I loved to transport myself into the world and life of the writer. I fell in love with the art of telling a story.

It is a funny thought that something I fell in love with so long ago, plays such a vital role in my adult life. Not only do I want to pursue journalism and writing as a career, but I am using my life experiences to try to make sense of my own story for my senior seminar project.

I am thinking about writing an autoethnography about culture shock for my senior thesis. It is perplexing because I want to write something of value, and I want my story to matter to the people who read about my college experience in the south. However, just as Anzaldua wrote what was in her heart, and told her story, I must do the same. All I need to do is write what is in my heart and draw from my life in order to give my opinions and emotions validity. At the same time, I must write for myself, and not just for my audience. I want this project to tell my story, and the only way to do that is to be completely honest with myself as I am writing.

Audience reflects Voice

I am the type of writer who likes to pretend that I write for myself, and my thoughts are independent of any filter or bias created by my audience. However, I would be lying if I said that anything I wrote for the public eye had the same voice of my private journal. The truth of the matter is, if a writer is writing for their work to be read by other people, their writing is going to be shifted in order to appease that particular audience. The writer can write on the same topic multiple times for multiple different audiences and the piece is going to differ according to who the writer was writing for.

I love my personal journal, and my writing in my journal encompasses my most raw, personal and private thoughts, and it is in those thoughts that allowed me to fall in love with writing in the first place. I wish that audience didn't play a role in the work that the writer creates, but it is a consequence of the society we live in.

I have done a lot of thinking about audience and the audience's perception of work as it pertains to my Senior Seminar project. Throughout my years at Transy, my writing has been driven by my emotions and experiences deriving from my drastic culture shock coming from Southern California, to a very southern culture in Kentucky. I have written about my feelings a lot in multiple different contexts, and each work differed from one another because I wrote it with a different audience in mind. My very first piece was a blog post on my personal blog that I felt no one read. However, to my surprise it actually got a lot of reads and I had said things in my post that I believed but didn't want my peers to know. I would have written that blog post a lot differently had I known it would have been read as widely as it was.

I built upon that post, and wrote an OP-ED piece in the Transylvania Newspaper a year later. This time, I attempted to write in a much more dignified manner and backed up my claims with examples to give my experiences relevance to the reader. I wrote it thinking about the readers this time. My audience was similar, but I had another year of experience under my belt and this time, I was prepared for my opinions to be read. This experience created a very filtered version of the same opinions I had already written about.

I compare these two articles and I can see a difference in my voice. I feel like I played it safe in the Rambler article because I was aware of the audience backlash of disagreeing with my opinion. When it comes to audience, for me, I think it is something we need to strive to work beyond. I want to write a strong, compelling argument for something, and not worry about the repercussions. I don't want my audience to filter my writing. I want an audience to develop a conversation about a piece of writing, as that is their purpose to begin with, but a writer needs to keep in mind that good conversation from the audience only occurs if the writer is genuine with their thoughts and doesn't play it safe for the audience's sake.