Inquiry 4

Throughout the semester we wrote four essays, each one taking a different approach to our writing and thinking. I think the most interesting one was inquiry one where we did a close reading. This inquiry was the most difficult for me. It challenged my normal thinking and writing process. Normally, if I have to do a writing assignment I can just sit down, put some music in my ears and brainstorm. Once I have brain stormed and thought about how I am going to set up my paper and what key points I want to talk about, I will start writing and fill in the gaps while I am writing. When I am done writing I will close my computer and not look at it for a day or so. I always write my papers way before the deadline. I find I do my best writing when I am not stressed about a deadline or any other impediments. After that time goes by I will revise my paper. Sometimes it hardly needs any revision and some times they need a lot of revision. Inquiry one I had to treat much different then my normal writing and thought process. We had to watch a tracking shot and make observations, which took me a great deal of time. I watched the video maybe five or six times just jotting down things I noticed and from the colors to the music. To me they all had a significant role in the shot. Once I found a great deal of observations I had to sort them into importance and figure out if they each one could be part of a pattern so it could ultimately become a theme. This process is similar to my normal thought process except it is more in depth then mine. As I stated above I more or less get key point and then fill in from there. In the new process I had to use far more detail and connectivity before I could even begin to write.  This project made me extend outside my comfort zone for it made me think much more critically and effectively. The reading “Water” by Abbey helped me to redefine my ways of reading space and thought process.

            I think the first and the second project correlated well with me. I was able to take what I learned from close reading of visual digital space and parlay that into an actual space on our campus. I think the biggest thing I took from the first assignment was attention to detail. In the first inquiry we need to look closely at details of the videos so we could come up with some patterns and themes. I wrote in the first Inquiry “She is wearing black and the camera only stays on her for a couple of seconds but it is long enough to take in the expression on her face and the clothes she is wearing. The dress she has on is black with white flowers going down both sides. Flowers seem to be very important, all the people are throwing them from the balconies of the buildings.” which shows my attention to detail and through that I was able to make a pattern of flowers along with other things, which lead to a theme of a funeral of a country. This helped me in my second inquiry describing the space I was observing and the forces that were acting on it. Because of the first inquiry, I was able to pick up on this observation and I wrote, “On either side of the entrance of the space it has small shrubs and flowers. The half circle shape is made to be inviting and engulfs you into the pathway”, which lead me to figure out that most things on the campus are done in the idea to attract you to come to Miami University.

I believe that because of the challenges of the Inquiry’s and readings we did in the class, I altered my writing and thought process to become a better writer then I already was. I think my new thought process will help me in my business degree by paying attention to detail and being able to see what forces are shaping the space or spaces I will be working with and how I can make them better or more productive by doing a close reading of them.