So Close, Yet So Far...

Less than a week left!!!! Oh, I can’t wait for when I’m eating the delicious pizza (or whatever I paid  23 buck for) at Oregano’s. Man, we are soooooo close to being done. Anyways, the biggest hurdle that is left is that dreaded 15-20 minute presentation.

I have given two practice presentations in front of Mrs. Haag and other teachers (who I can’t thank enough for spending their precious free time to watch me ramble on about anime). During my first presentation, there were quite a few things that needed to be changed. First, the text on my slides was too small and the color scheme made it very hard to read, which was really distracting. Also, I realized that there was a few key links that I was missing. I did not provide a definition for anime in my speech, and my explanation of the methods was confusing.

So I tried to fix all of that before the Saturday re-do. First, I changed my color scheme (which did not really help at all), and increased my font size. My text, although much bigger, was still hard to read, so I am thinking of changing my background color. Also, originally when I explained the methods, I went through my steps very vaguely. But I then decided to use an example to explain my methods, which turned out to work beautifully. Finally, I added a definition for anime. BUT! Even then, after all these changes, my presentation on Saturday (which was a little better than the one on Monday) still had a lot of issues.

The biggest issue, as Dr. Helmers kindly pointed out, was that my timeline for literature review was not clear. So in order to address that point, I decided to put an actual timeline into my slideshow, which I found, surprisingly, cut down a lot of words in my script because the timeline gave me a much more streamlined approach to talking about the history and rise of anime in America. Two other issues that Mrs. Haag, Dr. Helmers, and Mr. Molk pointed out on Saturday were that I did not cite my sources often enough, and that my conclusion was slightly off topic. I still have to work on those two parts, but I am confident that by Monday, I will have a presentation and script that will be close to perfect. My next meeting with Mrs. Haag is Thursday afternoon, so I am aiming to have everything tip-top, on point by the next meeting, because it will be too late to change anything by that time if I have any major issues on my presentation.

Overall, after the practice runs and the feedback, I am more confident than I was a week ago. And I am really looking forward to this all being over.

Word Count: 469

Practice, Presentation, Perfect...

I’m not gonna hide it. The presentation that I had when I met Mrs. Haag this week was terrible. No animations, nothing. Just a dump of haphazardly thrown together pictures. No transitions between slides. A deplorable color scheme. After editing for a week and thanks to the incredibly helpful comments that Daphne, Rema, Kimy, and Mrs. Haag provided, I think my slideshow is in much better shape.

To me, an ideal PowerPoint is one that adds to, not distracts from, your presentation. Originally, I had no animations on my PowerPoint, and I found that I was projecting ideas and bullet points before I had even gotten to that point in my presentation. Animations were great tools, they allow you to project bullet points as you go and help the audience to follow along with your speech through your presentation, rather than be distracted by it.

I feel pretty confident about my overall presentation and script. I think that the editing process as a whole has been great and the past week has really helped me to improve both my script and my presentation. Even though I have practiced it, I am a little worried about my speech being a little too long because many times I hit very close to the 15 minute mark. But, like everyone else, I think, my biggest concern is actually standing up there and giving the presentation. I just don’t want to mess up, so I am using different tactics to help me with my speech. The first thing I did was write down a list of bullet points that represented the flow of the main ideas within my speech. I then memorized this list, rather than my script. Then I familiarized myself with my script. Now, when I practice my speech, I try to use my memorized list and my familiarity with a script to “improvise” my presentation.

I found a cool little trick that was super helpful. I recorded myself saying the speech, and when I was busy doing something else, I just put on my headphones and listened to myself speak over, and over, and over again. It was a little painful at first, but it did a VERY good job in helping me remember my material.

I think our presentation is pretty different from our Seminar presentations. Our Seminar presentations were essentially our literature review and did not have the same complexity that our Research presentations have. We have a lot more moving parts in our Research presentations, because we have to articulate the similar arguments we had in Seminar along with our methods, results, and discussion. Also, Seminar was a straightforward solution-problem argument and presentation. In Research we have a more complex structure where we show a problem, then go into detailed about one solution (which is our research) and argue for why it works and helps fix the problem.

Overall, my biggest fear is just messing up in front of an audience. But I know that with two weeks of practice, that will not be very likely—but it still would be a possibility. So.I can’t wait for it to be all over.

Word Count: 524

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Remember those TED talks we used to watch in classes, and still sometimes do. Those were some of the most interesting and effective speeches and presentations that I have seen. I decided to watch some TED talks and try to make my presentation as interesting as theirs.

Ken Robinson's TED talk "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" is regarded as one of the best speeches ever given on TED.

What I realized is that their speeches are a series of stories. Now, I can’t simply tell stories, because the College Board will destroy me for that (see title of Ken Robinson’s speech above). So I decided to convert my literature review into a story, but keep the basic structure of the other parts of my paper the same. I had to rewrite and reorganize my entire literature review in a way that I could show the academic gap and context around the question, while still “tying evidence to claims” as the College Board’s rubric wants.

Like I said, my literature review was the only part of my paper that really needed to be modified for my presentation. The other three sections in my paper followed a similar structure in my speech. But, in order to satisfy Rubric Row 3, I decided to add an entire section talking about my original hypothesis/ideas and how they were changed/challenged by my results. Another thing that I added was a terrible story at the beginning of the presentation which I am hoping to use to hook my audience. It is supposed to be funny, but if you don’t find it funny, please just say so—it is not really a necessary part of my presentation, I was just hoping to add some flavor to my presentation (for Rubric Row 4).

My biggest concerns for my script is its length. I currently have around 2800 words, which I think is too much for 15 minutes, so please feel free to point out any places that are unnecessary or too wordy. Also, I am worried that because I know so much about my topic, that my speech could be too confusing. So again, if you feel like I am missing some parts or claims, just point it out and I will try my best to fix it.

Overall, I am very happy that we have moved on from our paper. Although my paper is not perfect, I think my paper is still a lot better than it was two weeks ago, thanks to all the feedback I got from my peers. Although I am extremely nervous for the presentation, I can’t wait for that day to come so it can all be over!

Word Count: 444

Papers and Cars Getting Wrecked

Last week was bitter-sweet: bitter in that I realized there my paper is terrible, sweet in that I have hopefully fixed most of the holes. My paper was destroyed and completely wrecked, like this car:

As I had expected, most of the biggest concerns were with my results and discussion. My results section was too wordy, repetitive, and confusing. I had tried to explain every single nuance that I found with my thematic analysis. However, after talking with Mrs. Haag and reading my feedback, I found that it was not necessary that I talk about every single nuance of every single theme. Now, I have condensed my results section to less than half the length of the original. Now that my results section is much more concise, hopefully my results will be easier to understand, and hopefully they don’t look like this:

My discussion section also faced a lot of backlash last week. A lot of the feedback focused on a paragraph where I made unsubstantiated claims and conclusions about the complexity of anime. I moved that paragraph and integrated it into the future research section of my discussion, because I realized that part was out of the scope of this paper. Instead, I replaced that part of my discussion with connections back to the literature review. I connected (or at least I tried to) my results to the studies of previous researchers and to the significance of the overall academic research. I’m just hoping that they are not in as bad of a shape as this:

I think that I have a pretty good handle on the first 3-4 rows of the rubric. These parts of my rubric pertain more to the literature review and the methods, which have been looked over and revised several times, and I am confident that these parts are a lot more solid and well written. It is the last few rows of the rubric that I need to work on. I included only one picture in my paper, and row 7 requires that there be multiple diagrams to enhance credibility of the author. So I will probably add at least one more diagram—a thematic flow chart—to my paper.  Row 5 and 6 deal with my methods and discussion, and I am afraid that since I have only had them read once, that they are still quite raw. I am mostly not sure about how I have showed the significance in my discussion section. The purpose of my question was to find WHAT the thematic changes between American and Japanese anime are, and this question was easily answered in the results section because all it required was a list of the thematic changes. However, in my discussion section, I try to explore the significance of the themes I find and their importance to the academic field as well as other significance. This is the part where I still need to work on.

Regarding the presentation, I don’t feel to bad about the content and slides of it, I am confident that I will have a decent script and slideshow. What I am more nervous about is the actual presentation, but again, we will have plenty of time to practice it, so I should not fear. There is nothing about the presentation that I am really unclear about, I really just want to get that daunting presentation over with. We are so close to finishing, I can’t wait!

Word Count: 573

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

BOOM! 4,996 words of pure perfection. 4,996 words of brilliance. 4,996 words of sleepless nights. 4,996 words of blood and tears. Ok—maybe not the last one—but the other three are definitely spot on. Anyways, my paper is so beautiful, so perfect, that I really don’t see any point in writing this blogpost. But, if I don’t write a blogpost, Mrs. Haag would kill me. I am still young and have a bright future ahead, so, I guess I just have to find something wrong with my paper. Well that’ll be hard.

I like to start with the bad news first. It took me a very long time to find the following flaws and weaknesses in my paper, so please bear with me here. I believe my biggest flaws to be in my results and discussion. I have included a lot of information into my results section, detailing every single manifestation of the different overall thematic differences between dubbed and subtitled anime. I fear that the amount of information that I included is overwhelming and confusing. If I were to provide a visual representation in my results, it would most likely be a table consisting of the different themes and their sub-themes/manifestations. But I do not even know if the table will be useful or more hurtful if I include it in my paper.

Regarding my discussion section, I am not sure if I properly answered my question. It is not that I didn’t answer my question, it's more whether or not the way I answered my question in my discussion section is actually easy to understand. I especially need feedback on my “Answering the Question” section of my discussion section.

So close yet so far.

Now onto the parts of my paper that are good: all the parts that are not bad. Jk. Jk. Jk. I’ll take this seriously now. I think that the strongest parts of my paper are in my literature review and my methods. Obviously these parts of my paper are the strongest because they are the ones that I have been working on the longest and I have edited the most. My strong parts in my literature review are in how I introduce my academic gap for my question and also how I provide the context for the academic gap.

In all seriousness, my paper definitely needs a lot of workshopping—especially our two more recent sections. These next few weeks editing the paper will be a critical and hard task. But, we are almost there and only one more month until we are done.

Word count: 428