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For my avatar, I wanted to pick a grand picture that aimed to symbolize my expectations for college and my outlook on my future.

I picked an illustration from Paradiso in which Dante is graced by the Angels and sees the divine light at the center of it all. My name is placed brightly in the middle, contrasting with the bright gold of its surroundings. It was originally a black and white illustration but I played with the color balances and contrast to make the picture “pop” as it does.

Now, I in no way equate myself to any Divine beings, or the bliss of paradise – this is all metaphor for me being the master of my own destiny. In college I want to find my path to success, even as my definition of it changes, so in a way putting my name inside the circle of angels signifies the end goal of success as well!

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Here’s the link to my literacy narrative. https://jimmyyichengwang.wordpress.com/my-change-big-change/

It was a little weird and also exciting to write this literacy narrative because it is barely two weeks into the progress of the semester. The freewriting exercise prepared me well for writing this narrative. I definitely became more comfortable.

Just like any other writing assignments that I do, I wish to share some truths about me with other people. This is what I enjoy doing: write what I believe, and believe what I write. At the end of the writing process, I felt like I got to know a little more about myself. And I’m glad that I explored an aspect of myself that I had no chance exploring in the past. I identified some of the key experiences that helped me grow as a writer. I think having a clearer view of my past enables me to better realize who I am and set goals for the future.

I want to highlight one sentence, “Now looking back to my first year experience at my high school, I feel like I was a nicer looking Frankenstein (I think I look better than Frankenstein) trying to wiggle my way through all of the weird, new, unknown things around me.” I love this one. It is interesting.

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I photoshopped my own photo using the app MomentCam. I chose to photoshop my avatar like this because it both represents my personality and stands for some part of this class as well. And also, I think it is a fun photo. It has full contrast of colors, with red in the background and blue and brown in the foreground.

The little blue fox magician right next to me holds a knife in its hand, almost saying, “welcome to the show!” In my life, I enjoyed being on stages and throwing myself out there meeting all kinds of new people. I participated in a couple dramas and performances under the theatre lights in high school, and I believe these activities can show people who I am. I like to laugh, and I like to make people laugh, to entertain them, to make friends with them. When I was photoshopping this picture, I really enjoyed the curtain at the background because it connects to my past. I also love this avatar because in the picture the huge box with a spade sign on it to the left represents the challenges of this class. In the picture, I’m locked inside the box. It mirrors the breakout rooms that we often do in remote classes. The several knifes It specifically speaks to this first-year writing class because it pushes us to get out of our comfort zone, to deal with new challenges, and to always perform our best when we face the unknown.

At first, I did not know how to make this avatar at all because I did not know where and how to start. I think the topic was very broad, and later I find out that if we use our creativity and boldness to get things started. This project could be fairly straightforward.

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I have always seen myself as a goofball, leader type. Thus, my attraction to Sokka, from “Avatar the Last Airbender,” begun. Sokka is a person trying to be a leader in an era where he is put at an obvious disadvantage; however, he overcomes it, despite not bending any elements. Despite his hardships, he grows to become a leader, who still tries to make people laugh at his dumb jokes. I used Sokka’s image as part of my avatar because I see a lot of myself in him.
Additionally, I added the New York Yankees hat because I grew up around baseball, especially the Yankees organization. Furthermore, I added the mask to show my current situation of coronavirus. Even though Sokka has a smile on his face, it is concealed by the required mask and necessary social distancing. I faced difficulties deciding how I wanted to depict myself to people, whether to show my goofier self or my more academic and formal self. I chose the former.

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This is a picture of a banh mi sandwich, one of Vietnamese national dishes. I chose the banh mi to represent my site for two reasons.

First, I grew up eating it a lot. It reminds me of not only my literal home but also my elementary school, the road from home to school, my city, and my country as a whole. Banh mi is versatile. It can be a quick bite, or it can be served as a full meal. However, it almost never appears on the menus of high-end restaurants. It is casual and simple yet extremely unique. It mirrors my identity and personality.

Second, there are multiple layers in a banh mi sandwich, just like how multifaceted us humans are. A complete banh mi usually consists of pate, mayo, pickle radishes, cilantro, Vietnamese ham, grilled meats, and sometimes jalapeno, all pressed between a hot French baguette. From the outside, one can never tell what is inside a banh mi and can never expect what it would taste like. A banh mi hides its flavors and capabilities so well that makes it mysterious and ultimately desirable. This same principle applies to human beings. Our looks are deceiving. We are so much more than how we look. I believe that each of us is special and each holds so much potential that needs to be explored.

Source:

https://unsplash.com/photos/paBXUXUwJmo

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This is a picture of me sitting on a rock at the most beautiful beach I have ever been to, Cala d’Hort. 

I am a travel fanatic. Those colours booming out of my head illustrate the endless thoughts that strike my head while I am on a trip. Travelling lets me stretch my mental horizon and see the world in micro detail with macro choice. Waves unfurling, and crashing against rocks as their final encore, never cease to amaze me. I chose this picture as my avatar because it represents the imagination I want to put across during the class. I hope to feel the same breeze of creativity while writing during the semester. 

This image is clicked by my dad. I edited this badge through Sketchbook which is quite user friendly. Thus, it was a very smooth process. 

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Image Courtesy: Adulting is Hard by Pinterest user Tee Turtle

I tried very hard to think of an avatar that would represent me. I thought of a couple of ideas, but I was not fully convinced about them. They didn’t feel like they were me.

So, partly out of frustration and partly out of amusement I decided to post an Instagram ‘close friend story’, asking those who know me best to describe me as a bunch of words or emoticons. This proved to be more insightful and helpful than I intentioned. The most common replies that came up were ‘sleepy’, ‘coffee’, and ‘lazy’. I also got ‘nerd’ a couple of times. I found this funny because these were contradicting each other: coffee is supposed to make you feel awake, not sleepy, and lazy and nerd have opposing implications too. I decided to combine these random aspects of my personality to create an avatar.

My avatar is a sloth (primarily known for slowness and overall laziness) who is cuddled into a blanket, drinking coffee– a visual that makes me smile just thinking about it. It is exactly what I do to relax in my free time. I added the spectacles to incorporate the ‘nerd’ part– a reputation I have falsely been awarded for studying too much. A small, possibly irrelevant detail that I really liked about this particular image is that the blanket looks exactly like the one I sleep with every night. I believe that this avatar truly represents me in my ‘natural habitat’.

Week ahead: 3

David's Posts
8/30 Side Quest 1: Avatar
3 9/1
  • “Introduction” from Superbetter: The Power of Living Gamefully by Jane McGonigal
  • Play Depression Quest
9/3*
9/6 Side Quest 2: Combophoto

 

As of writing this on Sunday afternoon, 8 of you have already published your avatars on your sites and I’ve gotten them added to the Students Sites page. The syndication of students posts is still not fully automated because I’m waiting for three more students to let me know the URL for their sites. Once I get those and have finished setting up syndication, I’ll make the process fully automated so that when you publish a blog post to your site it will show up on the Student Posts page almost immediately. Until then, I need to run a manual update to pull posts in, so don’t worry if you publish your avatar post and it doesn’t show up until tomorrow.

Before class on Tuesday, play Depression Quest. It’s a browser based game where you play as someone living with depression. You are given a series of everyday life events and have to attempt to manage your illness, relationships, job, and possible treatment. You do not necessarily need to play to a conclusion, but play for at least an hour or so because we’ll use Depression Quest as our primary text for discussion on Tuesday, where we will be paying most attention to these two issues:

  • You’ll have read a couple different essays by Jane McGonigal (“What is a Game?” last week and the introduction to Superbetter this week) plus listened to the podcast analyzing Monopoly last week so we’ll spend some time thinking about the definitions she forwards for games and how they apply to Depression Quest (and Monopoly).
  • Last week, you also read Andrea Lunsford’s description of the terms we need to consider when we think about the rhetorical situation of a text or an author. Rhetorical situation is a really important term for any first year writing class, so we will spend a bit of time discussing those terms and then I will ask you to think about the rhetorical situation of Depression Quest.

After our synchronous class session, you’ll play the browser-based game Tangaroa Deep and read Steven Johnson’s essay in which he argues, amongst other things, that our increasingly complex games are making all of us smarter. And I’ll publish a discussion thread on Canvas where I’ll ask you to think about how Johnson’s article pertains to that game. We will also definitely spend some time in class next week discussing the Johnson article.

All of these discussions working out definitions of games and what kinds of things games can do to and for us will be really important in the coming weeks when we start playing some games that I have selected for you in greater depth and as you start choosing games you want to analyze in podcast episodes that we’ll publish as a class. We are laying the theoretical framework for future discussions, so please read carefully and come to class ready to ask questions about the texts’ arguments.

Also, your second side quest is another photography assignment that should be fun. You’ll be combining two different photos to create a new powerful image.

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I chose this image because it contradicts with classic social standards. For instance, the big eye and plummy lips represents the current judgement of beauty. Since I am a firm believer to uphold personal insights into society standards, I think it can represent me really well with this badge. There isn’t many difficulties except I had to learn distortion with photoshop. But overall the process was smooth. 

Literacy Narrative Process

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Writing the literacy narrative was really fun as I hadn’t had that much practice on writing papers or essays in the past few months as my school was over and I did not want to study at all. I even know that slowly once this semester progresses I have to write a lot of papers and not just for my English Class. So, not only did it help me with my studies, but also helped me relive one of my favorite moments in the fast few years as I would not be where I am right now, if it hadn’t been for books. So, the link to my Literacy Narrative is https://modiin101.wordpress.com/literacy-narrative/(opens in a new tab)

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