“When we break expectations, it opens up two choices: either reject as a failure or reclaim and supersede” (Class 10 June). Writing across multiple types of media seemed like a good plan to avoid ten-page paper. But it was nothing like I expected. What started as a shortcut to fulfill Advanced Composition requirement became a valuable period of personal growth and inspiration.

 

Writing is a product of thinking. To write, it is essential to have some thoughts. Then, I have to determine the best method to exhibit the thoughts. The burden of writing in the second language aggravates the process. The phrase I am using could mean something different. Altering the phrase requires combinatorics with words. Writing begins and ends with thinking.

 

I assumed that it would be easier to convey a message through an artifact than rationale. This course, however, broke my expectation. People think in words; thoughts are put into words. Crossing the medium from verbal to visual or aural involves a sophisticated attention. It is important to understand the context beneath the text: genre expectation, the literacy level of a demographic, and culture. Without a strategy, change of a medium bewilders the audience. I realized that writing is indeed a way to interact with less cost. There is no need to switch the medium. Writing, once regarded as a painful process, became a skill that I should develop for precise and concise communication.

 

Creating four projects, I was able to express my thoughts I had in a new culture. I couldn’t imagine me being socially awkward or gaining new labels. Ong manifests, “The consciousness of each human person is totally interiorized, known to the person from the inside and inaccessible to any other person directly from the inside” (Ong 5). “Cast a Way” and “A Belated Objection” both aim to portray the problem of adjustment in the new cultural environment. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak for myself because it helped me process unwanted emotions.

 

In my remix project, I transform the medium of “A Belated Objection” to combine with “Cast a Way.”  Wysocki demonstrates, “To build your own compositions can thus be a matter of looking hard at and analyzing the genre that is most appropriate for your ends and then copying what you observe, modifying it to fit the particular rhetorical situation” (Wysocki 30). Incorporating color, which is the theme of “Cast a Way,” I composed another visual project “Coherent.”

 

Oxymoron is the device I use to remix the previous projects. Through layers of contradiction, I tried to argue that labels cannot change the essence. The naming of each color contradicts its meaning per se. The title “Coherent” forms incongruence with the content. Oxymoron enables this project “... to question itself [and] to help audiences question what is hidden or backgrounded or assumed” (Wysocki 29).

 

Throughout this summer, I looked back on the past year. Even though obstacles come along with learning new cultures, I believe difference could expand the potential. Wiebe proclaims, “From my view, intercultural dialogue moves beyond multicultural policies by cultivating conditions that allow for creative tensions in the spirit of respect for differences. In other words, interculturalism is a philosophical approach to difference that does not seek to eliminate differences while seeking a common identity. In practice, it entails an iterative dialogical process that creates space for exchange, negotiation, and dis/agreement rather than confrontation and division” (Wiebe 246). Interacting with different people gives me a chance to acknowledge difference, and it will build the foundation for creativity.

 

As a first-year math major, I encountered the difficulty that brought an unprecedented level of joy. In blog post 1, I wrote about the dilemma of copying or refusing solution manual. Ferguson declares, “Remixing is folk art. Anybody can do it, yet these techniques, copying materials, transforming them, combining them, the same ones used at any level of creation. You might even say everything is a remix” (Ferguson, 00:01:21 – 00:01:34). I hope remixing different solutions could open up a new way to enjoy math.

 

Along with Tash sultana, who has become my idol recently, this course allowed me to find my positionality in the new cultural environment. My name Jin Su means essence in Korean. Maybe the Jin-su (essence) of life is to sail the uncanny and discover new colors.

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

 

Ferguson, Kirby. “Everything is a Remix Remastered (2015 HD).” Youtube, written and remixed

                            by Kirby Ferguson, 16 May 2016, https://youtu.be/nJPERZDfyWc.

Ong, Walter. “Orality, Literacy, and Modern Media.” Communication in History: Technology,

                            Culture, Society. Third Edition. New York: Longman, 1999, pp. 65-70.                    Wiebe, Sarah Marie. “Decolonizing Engagement? Creating a Sense of Community through

                            Collaborative Filmmaking.” Studies in Social Justice, vol. 9, no. 2, 2016, pp.

                            244–257., doi:10.26522/ssj.v9i2.1141.

Wysocki, Anne Frances. “The Multiple Media of Texts: How Onscreen and Paper Texts

                            Incorporate Words, Images, and Other Media.” What Writing Does and How It

                            Does It: an Introduction to Analyzing Texts and Textual Practices, edited by

                            Bazerman, Charles, and Paul, Prior, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003, pp.

                            123-163.