Throughout my educational career, I have always enjoyed writing. I love to write and create a story. However, this does not mean that I do not struggle with it. In the past, I have struggled with trying to create a perfect paper. Since I began this class though, I have felt as though my work does not have to be perfect. Instead, it needs to convey the message I want to get across. When I came to my professor, Dr. Frances, for help, she did not criticize my work like past professors and high school teachers have. Instead she guided me though my work with constructive recommendations which I greatly appreciated. My relationship with writing has changed as I am not trying to be a perfect writer. Instead, I now work to convey a message.
My writing style is not that different when composing visual texts. I still analyze and explain the claims I make to get my idea across to the reader. What has changed though is the outline of the writing. I don’t write a closed thesis like I typically would when writing a paper. Instead, I leave it open, with room to expand and include new, relevant ideas to get my audience thinking and engaged.
My reading style when reading visual texts is different than reading word text because I have to analyze it differently. Instead explicitly reading words, I have to read lines, boundaries, and dates. To see the different representations of power, I must also look at more than one visual representation. The person who created it has the power to dictate what their audience sees, and I have to take that into consideration. I also analyze visual text differently because of the fact there are no words. I have to look at all aspects of the visual data to interpret it. When analyzing written words, I comprehend the information word by word. That is not the case in visual data.
Overall, this class has taught me to look at visual data more critically than what I have in the past. I need to look at who created it, what their agenda may be, and the cause and effect the visual data may be representing. All in all, this class and what I have studied has made me more aware of the data all around me.
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