Bringing my learning into what I do is probably one of the
most challenging parts of post-grad I’ve been expected to perform. There’s
usually not a 1 to 1 correlation- like ‘oh, I learned about social networking,
so now I can tutor using social networking’ or something like that. Usually, at
best, classes often introduce me to an array of tools (like Popplet!) that I
didn’t know existed and those tools help me get ideas across, or are excellent
for me to share with my students who need them.
(that tiny blip is supposedly a PHD in contrast to global knowledge. So tiny. Wow!)
As a tutor and sometimes technical writer, I assume the
majority of the information I produce or share day to day is transmitted visually
or auditory. Visually through the learning supplements and flyers I make and auditory
because tutoring is mostly me giving verbal instructions and the student acting
them out. Although we put out surveys, most of the tutoring feedback comes
in-session from the satisfied (or agitated) student. Likewise, my flyers don’t affect
event attendance nearly as much as the method of distribution for them, so it
can be difficult to tell if I’m using the best methods.
I stopped centering things on my flyers, though, and now I
use serif fonts pretty much exclusively, so that’s a definite start. When
working on a tight deadline, those to ideas are the first that come to mind!
Invention is likewise a bad time for me. Probably because
when you start an MA, you realize there’s just…such a large gap between you and
everyone else. You and PHD, you and Professors, you and technical students- it’s
a self-confidence nightmare!
That’s why invention has become kind of…not good for me. You
can do a project on anything in the world you want (usually, if you can sell
it) and starting out asking “well, what do I like?” usually ends in things like
My Little Pony, social justice, and gender studies. All of these are great,
valid areas that could be looked into, but when it comes to getting a job or
paycheck, the gap widens between there. This leads to disasters where you make
a sensible choice, only to figure out you don’t like something nearly as much
as you thought you would, or that the scale of it makes successfully finishing
it less possible and probable all at once.
Not to mention that whole “it’s all been done” thing. Yadda
yadda.
Visual rhetoric (so far) hasn’t really helped me cope with
any of these feelings yet. What it has (sort of) done is make the pool of study
to pull from a little wider. Before, I would have never thought you /could/
study something like album covers academically. Delivery methods are a work in
progress too- I still have some trouble working my mind around the idea of a
website as a final, even though it sounds super neato.
Not that I necessarily /didn’t/ know it before, but I do
feel like this class has happened home how multimodal approaches really are
best. I know I learn best when a course tries several different approaches. Of
course, you always end up hating some, and loving others, but getting out of your
comfort zone is always embarrassingly educational. I may not have loved Popplet,
but I did love learning about using it, and can definitely see how that could
be useful one day in the future.
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