Reflection/Essay
When this assignment was brought to my attention, I thought it was going to be easy. Using my imagination and being creative with a project really caught my attention. Although, I did complete the assignment on time, I found that the assignment wasn’t as easy as it seemed. There were many obstacles that I came upon and many decisions that I had a hard time making throughout the project’s completion.
Thinking of a topic to advocate for was one of the toughest decisions I had. I did not have a clue as to what I wanted to advocate for or what I was passionate about so I picked something that was relevant to me and what I convince all my friends to do, get an education. Once I had a topic the professor helped me to determine specifically who I was going to target as my audience, high school juniors and seniors. While typing my introduction in class I started thinking about how hard this topic is going to be to attract high school students because, most of them have either already made their mind as to what they are going to do or just do not want to hear about college.
Making the project interesting to high school students was another challenged I faced. Kids now-a-days seem only to care about fashion, music, and television. I was thinking of doing a comic strip, but I’m not too good at computer graphics. I then thought about a video, but I’m not comfortable in front or cameras or camcorders even if it’s just me taping myself. So I went with the next best thing, a power point presentation consisting of photos off of the internet that related to my topic. It also was a great choice since I spent my whole weekend in the hospital and only had two to three days to complete my project and still work full time as an assistant manager for a fast food restaurant.
Searching the web for suitable images that go well with my topic was harder then expected. Education image searches are filled with a lot of people such as principals, and teachers. Finding meaningful images seemed to take the longest. Most of the images where from educational websites which made me feel better about them. The points or arguments that I made for higher education were strong ones and I hit some of the major reasons why most of my friends did not want to attend college. In a way, my friends not wanting to go to college helped me with this project and made me realize that not a lot of people have the desire to get a higher education.
Struggling to get the project done and turn it in on time with quality effort, I managed to complete the project and feel pretty good about it. Although I do not believe it is my best work, I still feel that I did the best that I could given the conditions and circumstances that came my way. This topic was a hard one to tackle, but I managed to do my best and tried my hardest to get it done. I put in a lot of work over the past couple of days that I have been out of the hospital, and even though I’m not strongly passionate about the topic, I believe I touched on some very valuable points.
Image from http://www.syracuse.com/north/index.ssf/2008/03/30-week/
After reading this, I realize how many friends I have that need to hear an argument like this because, like you said, some just need a little motivation. I am interested to hear you present why people don't continue their education and your proposed solutions. Looking at the issue from the point of view of the audience is something I had never really thought of before. To make this essay stronger, you could include a little of how you are going to persuade people to go back to school.
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