Group project

So far I'm feeling pretty good abut my group and our project.  Though we started a little slow, we got our shit together and all contributed to our power point presentation.  We delegated who would present which slides and all agreed to try to get our timing to about a minute and a half per person.  I am very confident that our project will turn out great, and will help teach people how to properly write a resume, which is a very important skill to have.

Ideas for visual literacy essay

After hearing we have to write our own literacy essay, I immediately knew what I was going to write about: music.  The only problem is I have so many experiences in a wide variety of focuses that I had no idea what specifically I would be writing about.  Of course hearing that it was a visual essay, definitely trough me off, but I don't see too much trouble in being able to make it visual.  After giving it much thought, I have narrowed it down to 3 possibilities as per the assignment.  I chose my experience learning to play guitar 14 years ago, learning how to record, mix, and master my music, or learning how to march while playing drums in middle school.  I'm not quite sure how I'm going to turn an audio art into a visual presentation and essay, but this should be a very interesting assignment, and am curious as to how this is going to turn out.

Malcolm X's "Literacy Behind Bars" Response

After reading Malcolm X's "Literacy Behind Bars" I found myself relating his experiences to some of my own.  In this essay, Malcolm discusses how he taught himself to read while in prison, and how his new-found literacy set him free.  He taught himself to read and write by copying down each and every page of the dictionary, and then studying those words.  His complete dedication and motivation to learn to read and write allowed him to reach his goal.  He exhibited this passion by reading for 15 hours each day, even after lights out, sneaking around his cell to get some light jumping to and from bed whenever the guards came by.  I had a somewhat similar experience when I was learning how to play guitar.  When I first started learning to play guitar about 14 to 15 years ago, I was terrible - as you would expect.  However, every chance I got, I sat down with a guitar chord dictionary, and a scale dictionary, playing every form of every chord I could see.  At first, these mangled and muted chords sounded horrible - I couldn't reach all the right frets and didn't have the right finger posture, but after playing them over and over again, I was able to learn all the chords and scales I possibly could.  I sat down for hours at a time, not even breaking for food or bathroom.  I went so far as to plug headphones into my amp, so I could play after my parents thought I was asleep.  I had a similar dedication to learning guitar that Malcolm X had for learning to read and write.  I found it interesting how my life and experiences were so similar to such a well-known activist and speech giver.