English 876: Week 15 - Class Generated Content

Question: Evaluate your project presentation. How do you feel that it went? What would you do differently? What would be the ideal context and/or audience for this project? How might you develop it towards its fullest potential as creative and/or scholarly work? Are there parts of the content itself that seemed weak or in need of further development? What models might inspire you towards a goal of refinement and fruition? (note: this blogpost is for anyone who presented. If you didn’t present this week, then there is no other post required.)

Answer: How do I evaluate myself? I always struggle with this particular aspect of any work that I do since self evaluation is so often poisoned by my own self worth issues. They cloud my ability to self assess in a meaningful way, but I will give it a jolly good effort.

I think my presentation was acceptable but not exemplary. I firstly did not feel well enough prepared to discuss what my paper is actually attempting to do. I feel in that way, all I managed was to give a factual overview of events that took place, and draw some very limited connections outside what mainstream audiences or news outlets might know. I feel this alone was not enough to really sell this project as being academically stimulating or useful. I feel strongly that if I were further along with my paper, then I would be much more comfortable knowing exactly what I intended to talk about. There is some value in the act of shedding light on the connections and rhetoric hidden behind meme's and icons, but it feels like its not enough. So, I would prep more, do more writing, and feel more confident in both the topic, my information, and my ability to answer a "so what" question about it. I was also very nervous since I felt unprepared, and therefor deviated from my intended direction a bit more often that I felt was helpful. My normally good cadence of speech and ability to improve off the cuff was dampened by the heaviness of the topic, and my nervousness. Going last also made me feel somewhat ill at ease since I was having to follow some incredible presentations instead of setting the bar.

I did think that my Q&A went very well, as it gave me a chance to step out of my own intentions and speak off the cuff in a way that I think was helpful.

This is such a personal critique but I felt particularly unattractive and overweight that day and it did my confidence no good.

I feel like this would be an ideal presentation for conferences and perhaps, if tailored to the correct audience, useful for prepping and informing social media and news organizations. In order to fully develop the work, I think that both a idea of where we go from here, and what kinds of method can be used to push and engage with the alt-right in a meaningful way.

I have seen some excellent YouTube and Ted presentations that have addressed this particular topic in interesting ways, while always calling to action some kind of platform or cultural change. I think that this would function well, both creatively and academically as a live presentation or video essay. The juxtaposition of video, voice, and my presentation style would be best suited to this format, if I could only figure out what to do with it. Other YouTubers have done this style of videos as refutations of a particular video or commenter. I think that might be a useful way to get a direction, but more academically limited.

On the other hand something far more radical in terms of a change might suit the project. Instead of trying to drum up an interesting "so what" and direction, I could embrace something truly creative, and that justifies its own existence by simply being. I have the least useful experience with this as a direction, but I would love to give it an earnest try sometime.

I am really not sure if this is exactly the kind of metacognative self reflection that is being asked of me. If I had to grade myself, I would award me a B+ or A- depending on the curve of the class, simply because I looked at the screen a bit too often, and was not as clear as other students.

Either way I was privileged to be able to hear all the wonderful and useful presentations in this course! I learned so much!