Project 3 Reflection: Experience

Originally I was looking forward to this project; I was excited that it wasn’t a typical English project consisting of another essay. Throughout the course all of my projects have reflected around volleyball simply because it was how I spent most of my time, so the event that first popped up in my head was the next weekend I had of volleyball. It worked out quite well because my team made the NCAA tournament and therefore it made a good argument of how that achievement was significant at ASU. I thought I used the information I received from the interviews to strengthen my argument and I analyzed the quotes I used within the script. 

Then I thought about it a little more and figured as long as I get a few good interviews I should be set, the trouble was finding the interviewees and having enough motivation to interview them. I would say the biggest thing I struggled with was interviews because besides one of my teammates being my roommate, I was not certain on who else I could interview. But once I did figure out who it was I could interview, which ended up being my assistant coach who was more than willing, I thought I prepared well for it and received the information I needed to make my argument convincing. Through this process, I learnt to get the resources, interviews, whatever sources I needed to get, done first so that I can help base my argument around those sources. Something else I struggled with was the audio essay part of it. It took a lot more time than I thought it would have to record myself recited my script then emailing myself all the parts, downloading them, then converting them, then importing them into the Audacity program I used. But I found the organization of the quotes and recordings easy to fashion into an organized audio essay. Besides just giving myself more time to get the recordings on the computer I did not really learn anything from that.

If I ever needed to do an audio essay or anything requiring recordings and interviews I would probably make a stronger argument and ask better questions involving a variety of factors affecting that argument. I think mine was a little bit small and narrowed down to one thing with only one real argument or piece of evidence which I struggled to expand on. To alter my recording process I would definitely give myself more time and make as little recording clippings as possible instead of using 15.

This was the only project I had to use an interview as a resource and therefore was the only project I did use it for, and I think interviews can be an excellent way to gain credible information. I to apply this to daily life and the world, something I could do is whenever I need information just to talk to people or have an informal interview with someone who can share their knowledge or experiences with me. With the ability to record things and convert them into whatever format I want through internet converters, is a useful tool for future projects I may have requiring other formats besides .doc. Just having the experience of creating an audio piece with Audacity is something new I learned and can know how to use it if I ever need to again.