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Player Narrative Reflection Post

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player narrative: https://thisiselainecom.wordpress.com/player-narrative/
I started my player narrative first by reflecting upon my literary narrative. I thought that the most thing I could improve was the flow of details in the essay that could make the essay vivid. Getting the idea for an essay is quite important, so I had been brainstorming my experience as a player for a long time. I realized that games are not limited into digital form that I spent most of my leisure time with in childhood, but it also means any quest that I experienced, as long as I kept a “playful” attitude. Then my experience shifted to the recent, when Professor Morgen asked us to play several unique games with meaningful topic and delicate design. I found that the games I enjoyed in class echoed with one of my interests – escape room, which I had lots of memories with.

The main idea of my essay is that good games, like escape room, not only bring us to solve puzzles, but also lead us to experience a variety of emotions; reaching the end of a game successfully is not the purpose; enjoying the process of exploration and appreciating the artistic effects the game designed with are more enjoyable. To express my theme, I chose to first introduce my first opinion on escape room, and elaborate what I experienced in an advanced game to highlight the surprise and gain from it. Finally, I applied the mindset of a player into real life that if we can be “playful”, putting less concerns and more courage in the matter we are dealing with, our life might be filled with exploration and excitement.

Writing this player narrative makes me dig deeper into the experience I had in my life and try to reconstruct a concrete story into an exposition based on vivid memories. With the big amount of details contained in the actual game, I also learned to utilize the information and put them together to make the essay clear and simple.

My bag, my stuff, my world.

Student Posts

Basically college students’ necessities.

  1. Laptop with 100 folders for classes and random edgy/ cute stickers.
  2. Chargers (for both laptop and phone). Portable charger in case I can’t find any outlet.
  3. Wallet – most of the time carried around for fun but in certain times would be used for food purchases.
  4. Mask – can’t forget it whenever I leave the house. Plug: my family sells masks. If professor Morgen or friends need one just hit me up.
  5. My notebook. I carry a big physical notebook with me all the time. It is a habit since middle school days. I still can’t seem to get used to taking notes on a screen. I use this Emory notebook mostly for my math class.
  6. Sweatshirt – Atlanta weather is getting more chilly these days.
  7. Lastly, my passport. I think this is a bad habit because I might lose my passport if I keep carrying it around all the time. However, part of me is afraid that one day an officer would come up to me and ask for my IDs for whatever reasons. I should leave my passport at home.

I had a good time with this assignment. I think it was much more straightforward and easier to showcase what I have in my backpack than to describe myself or tell a story about me, per se. I, however, do not think that this post would be helpful for anyone who wants to know me, or just any other student in this class. I think we all carry relatively the same items in our bags on the daily basis, things that help us “survive” the day. However, they don’t paint a picture about our thoughts, our traits, or our most interesting characteristics. At most an unusual object would give others a glimpse into one’s idiosyncrasies, but it cannot portrait his/her identity.

Side Quest 4

Student Posts

Here is a picture of all the things in my bag:

  1. A Macbook computer
  2. A facemask
  3. Two notebooks (One for my previous internship, another for my classes )
  4. One pencil
  5. A wallet
  6. AirPods

It is funny that I have a NYU bag instead of an Emory one. I got it from the NYU bookstore. Because I went to a high school in New Jersey and NYC is just a 40 minutes drive. I like to take notes during classes or doing homework, so it reflects that part of my personality. Moreover, I am a “semi-Apple fan” that is why all of my electronic products are from Apple. As many can tell, I carry little items in my bag since I can easy loose things everyday in my life. There isn’t many challenges while I was doing this project since I just laid out all of my stuff. Yet, it is a little bit embarrassing to have only one bag and it is printed with a NYU logo.

What’s In Your Bag?

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clicked by me

This is a list of things which I suppose would be in my bag on a usual day in college. The list is not in order of preference (all are dear to me).

Charger: necessity since my phone’s battery life is just as short as my patience

Calculator: considering I’m on the Finance and Quantitative Science track, I’d require it

always

AirPods: for both music and talking to people on the phone while eating food

Nachos: The half filled Cornitos packet right there signifies that food will always find its

place in my bag, no matter the space

Chocolate: Something sweet to digest the day 

Pencil kit:  The pink one is worn out from school, but it’s lucky so I’ll take it along

Art Journal: To sketch and scribble whenever I get a chance

Peach Folder (with that quote): I do have brain tabs open but they are organised

White register: class essential

Sticky note pad: To stick stuff in my frontal lobe of the brain that I tend to forget

Lip Balm: advised by my mom but I am sure I’d never use it

Fidget Spinner: That’s fills the void of a ‘game’

No matter how hard I tried, I could not get that charging wire in the right form. That picture is 100 for me on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the messiest. Those items placed in a disorganised way make my organised self want to weep. I placed the objects in such a way to hint at the fact that a picture is not enough for you to know me. It’s just as good as seeing my face because you wouldn’t be able know all my traits. Its only my comments from above that might reveal that I love food or I’m organised enough to have a folder (taking a long shot here). The most challenging part about this assignment was that it’s been over six months since I have carried a bag, so I’d forgotten how it felt packing a bag and having your essentials loaded on your back. Unfortunately, Zoom universities do not require it. I went around my room looking at stuff thinking what deserved that space in my bag. It was a tedious screening process. 

Representing oneself in a catalog of the stuff in one’s bag is a type of writing since it almost fulfils all the parameters on paper. It’s a medium of communication through symbols( objects in the bag) and can be reconstructed by other human beings. It just leaves too much space for assumption. I’m all for open ended writings but this one is like an open ended introduction, body and conclusion. It is a form of writing but definitely not my type of writing.   

What Would Have Been…

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Pictured here:

bookbag: the Isabella is so old, you can not find this style in stores anymore; was rescued from an old closet when my Herschel broken down in the middle of senior year

iPad: the lightest 5-subject notebook I’ve ever owned

laptop: functioning was better pre-quarantine when it did not need to be charged every other hour; likely weighs 100 pounds since I nearly break my back carrying it

pencil case: contains 2 pens & correction tape for the mistakes that are too tragic to look at

calculator: stoichiometry

wallet: carries embarrassing ID pictures & expired metro cards that I will one day exchange

planner: my pride & joy; withstands my tears and aggressive cross outs; understands my limits

vaseline: a necessity when it gets lower than 65 F; must constantly be replenishing itself because it never runs out

airpods: great for traveling, bad for Zoom

earphones: great for Zoom, bad for traveling

I have been studying at home for months, so I tried to show that things that would have been in my bag. It was interesting to see how many of my “materials” have become tech, because a few years ago I would only carry a pair of Apple earphones to school. Overall, though, my picture certainly feels a bit odd: a mix of study-influencer with my airpods, laptop case, and planner cover, but also a bit of whatever she could find and need–which I think is representative of who I am. I try to fit an aesthetic, but I mostly just care about functionality. I would say the part I enjoyed most was the cataloging portion because I did not feel restricted by traditional grammar rules and went free form in my descriptions. I definitely do consider it writing because I was able to describe my items in a more comical way that revealed my sarcastic personality (speaks to the autobiographical nature of this assignment).

Player Narrative Reflection

Student Posts

My https://muditajainn.wordpress.com/player-narrative/  (player narrative) revolves around how liking board game made me an odd one out in my friend circle and how games inspire me to follow rules. Acknowledging these facts was already big leap for me, leaving the writing part aside. I employed a different strategy while writing. I let the conclusion drive me writing unlike my Literary Narrative. The narrative begins with analysing what my love for games led me to. It is followed by an instance where I discovered how being a player had impacted me. Writing this player narrative prompted my realisation that I had never actually broken rules inspite of not being fond of them.

What’s In My Bag?

Student Posts

Image: Clicked by me

  • Laptop/phone: 80% of my world is on there, now even more so thanks to virtual classes.
  • Powerbank and charger: To save me from panicking in the middle of a Zoom meeting.
  • AirPods: To watch funny videos and listen to embarrassing voice notes from my friends, without the fear of getting judged (or worse– my parents hearing someone swear :p).
  • Mask and sanitizer: Because COVID is still very real.
  • Wallet: Only reason I need this is to buy food when I’m hungry (that is, always).
  • Driving license: Subtle plug that I can drive a car.
  • Comb and hair tie: To maintain the bush, otherwise referred to as my hair.
  • Hoodie: I have extremely low resistance to cold temperatures. (‘Noice’ and ‘Toit’ are references to my favourite TV show– Brooklyn 99)
  • Sanitary pad: Hopefully don’t need to explain this.
  • Painkiller tablet: The only reason I survive period cramps.
  • Umbrella: Because it’s easier to predict the position AND energy of an electron (what’s up, Heisenberg?) than the weather in Mumbai.
  • To do list: A small effort to manage my time well and avoid procrastination.
  • Body spray: Just to, you know, smell good.
  • Sunglasses and watch: This is just me trying to act cool. I don’t really use either on a daily basis.
  • Snickers bar: For emergency hunger and/or stress situations.

This is definitely one of my favourite posts so far. I use the objects in the image almost everyday. These objects, and the post in general accurately represent who I am as a person– just another average (virtual) college going girl with a questionable sense of humour. This kind of representation of self through an image of contents of one’s bag seems random. However, I believe that it actually gives an interesting take on a person’s personality which other forms of writing may not be able to shed light on completely. Often, seemingly irrelevant details add depth and character to the impression of a person in a reader’s mind, and thus make the person feel more real.

Player Narrative Reflection

Student Posts

Image: Clicked by me

Read my Player Narrative here!

My Player Narrative primarily focuses on the role of games in my life as ‘social tools to make connections with people’. At least for the past 18 years of my life, games have always been about the memories and relationships I created while playing them, and not really about how they have directly impacted the way I think and behave.  Although I have to say, I have begun observing the latter more so over the past few weeks, thanks to the thought-provoking discussions we’ve been having in my English writing class in college.

While writing the Literacy Narrative, I believe I was more controlled and structured in my writing. I was afraid of how it would be perceived, and so I mostly steered clear of taking big risks. In the Player Narrative, however, I have really experimented with my writing style. I was more comfortable to write in a way that I’ve never written in before (a choice that could easily and terribly backfire). This time around, I tried to deviate from the 5-paragraph-like structure, to write paragraphs of inconsistent lengths, and to work with a more conversational tone. I’m not sure if this paid off, but it definitely gave me a lot more creative freedom to express my thoughts.

I think that the pre-writing exercise was even more helpful for this assignment. Before I did it, I could not think of anything that I wanted to / could write about. I knew I had to write about playing games, but I had no angle, no viewpoint, no theme. The listing of memories, and then particularly the continuous free writing let me spill out the total mess of ideas from my brain onto paper, and then systematically work through the mess and sort it out.

On the whole, this has not been one of the easier things I’ve worked on. I found myself procrastinating writing it until the day it was due, and even then had to deal with the non-writer’s equivalent of writer’s block. But somehow I finished it and produced a piece of writing I’m pretty unsure and semi-proud of.

Player Narrative Reflection

Student Posts

In my Player Narrative, I discuss how three games: chess, Minecraft, and Fantasy Football influenced me as a player. Although I played more games, these games were the most important to me because they largely shaped me more than other games in that they showed me particular aspects of myself, such as the desire to explore (I learned this from Minecraft, from example). My literacy narrative reads like a story of my overcoming a critical flaw in the way I read and write, but my experience with games is substantially less dramatic, so I approached it in more of a “how did each game change” manner. The primary structure of my player narrative is a paragraph or two dedicated the way each game changed me and the way I learned from it. Finally, a new idea I learned is that games actually do a lot for me than I realized – I learn new things about myself.

What’s in my Bag?

Student Posts

Welcome to the backpack content of a normal college freshman. A laptop with its charger is a must, along with a notebook and a pen- a “basic starter pack” for any college freshman. The most fun thing in my bag would be the hard drive. This has my most valued collection of movies, tv-shows, and anime, not available on NETFLIX. I downloaded around 500 episodes of Naruto Shippuden, which I finished in two weeks during lockdown. It also has a USB to Type-C connector because that’s the only thing that works for apple, and my headphones which I just use when listening to music. 

The crafting took little to no time. So, I learnt this term mis-en-scene in my film class and it basically means how you represent a shot. Filmmakers look at mis-en-scene carefully, as to “amplify” the characters present in the scene. I chose to keep the white charger on my notebook so you know its there, without looking at the picture very carefully. Since I’m at home doing classes online, I don’t keep a backpack, because I don’t need it now. But, this picture is just a representation of what would have been in it, if I were on campus. The only thing challenging about this assignment was figuring out what would I should have been in it. And I think just showing a catalog of the content of the backpack is a form of writing because there is a very famous quote- a picture is worth a thousand words.  

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