Writing “Who Am I? Quién Soy Yo?”

Upon entering this project, only one of the four members of our group had successfully collaborated with others, and we all entered with certain reservations and overall negative mindsets in the prospects of working as a group. In project four, we learned new lessons through our difficulties and successes in choosing specific rhetorical devices to adapt our scholarly writing to fit a popular video audience while working cooperatively as a group.

Heidi was worried about sharing the workload, as she is sometimes a perfectionist and likes to control the finished products of projects. Many times she compensates for group members who don’t work as much and is too willing to take up the slack that other members of her group leave behind. Much like Heidi, Kingsley was worried about having to depend too heavily on someone else to get a good grade. He had faced this in high school and was afraid that the same conflict would arise in project 4 because group projects have elements that can be out of one’s control. Kingsley was worried that there would be one person that would bring down the rest of the group. Sasha was concerned about the scheduling and idea conflicts that would arise while working in a group. In previous projects, Sasha and the members of her group had trouble agreeing on certain aspects of their projects, and people were unable to have an open mind on other people’s opinions. As a result, it was hard for her group to make progress. She was also worried about finding times in which everyone could meet. As everyone has a different class schedule, it can be difficult to find a convenient time. Nathan often experienced problems with communication in his previous group projects and was worried that this project may result with the same outcome. He was nervous that the group text would lack the participation necessary for an efficient project. Although Nathan had a positive group project experience several years ago, he had trouble remembering all of the successful components that contributed to his group’s productivity. The main concerns addressed by each group member were taken into consideration and deeply dissected with the creation of “Don’t be that guy,” also known as Guidelines for a Positive Experience to a Group Project, and what each member must contribute.

To address Heidi and Kingsley’s concerns, our group worked on dividing the workload, creating deadlines and practicing honest communication with each other. From the beginning of the project, our group acknowledged our own individual strengths and weaknesses and how each person would contribute to the final project. Heidi was a strong writer, Kingsley had the pictures and videos for his autoethnography, Nathan had creative ideas and Sasha was good at organization. This allowed us to equally break up the group work to capitalize on everyone’s strengths. In order to make sure we finished our project on time without procrastinating, we created a schedule and set deadlines that held us accountable. This kept our project on track and we were able to turn in our video early. Finally, we agreed to be honest and open about group participation and the progress of our group. While we did exercises in class, such as writing how we felt about our group, green, yellow or red, we also talked openly about ways in which our members could work better together. After every meeting, we talked for five minutes about the progress we accomplished in that session and if there was anything we needed to focus on moving forward. We acknowledged that if we let our uncertainties control our actions, like it had done in previous experiences, not only would it affect our grade, but it would hurt the rest of the group. We knew when it was the right time to speak up when someone was slacking or not contributing towards the group’s effort. Our demanding tone gave the rest of the group an inspiration to work at their highest level of performance.

Immediately following the drumroll and unveiling of our group assignments for project four, we gathered and formed a group text. Our initial intention of this thread was to ensure an open line of communication in-case any problem arose. We soon began to realize we all had significant time conflicts with setting a meeting. As a group, we came to a consensus that it should be our top priority to find a day to gather in person. It became apparent after this first meeting that we must continue to work in person and not just over text to remain efficient. In just one meeting we were able to adapt Kingsley’s scholarly essay into a script, which better suited a popular audience. Even though we continued to revise and revisit this, the ability to meet in person allowed us to accomplish a far greater amount in the same period of time. We were also able to spot any challenges with editing early on such as with Kingsley’s audio’s volume, the timing of certain scenes and the inclusion and flow of sources such as the interview with his brother who lives in Rhode Island.

The rhetorical decision to include this interview was made at first to ensure full emotion and authenticity in Kingsley’s brothers story. We chose to use old photos of Kingsley and his family in order to create both an emotional tie, pathos, with the audience and build credibility, ethos, while giving background on Kingsley’s upbringing. We implemented the element of pathos through the stories Kingsley’s Mom and brother in the form of face-to-face interviews. The effects of the visual components of these interviews helped create a stronger feeling of attachment to our thesis and Kingsley’s story. Along with the interviews, we provided evidence from scholarly sources. These contributions develop a strong sense of credibility towards our arguments. For example, we used information from one of Degges-Whites’ studies on transgenerational trauma to support and add credibility to Kingsley’s mom’s interview. We also implemented College Niche, Wake Forest, and U.S. News scholarly data in a way to appeal to a popular audience by clearly citing the data. The visual element of the percentages allowed for the scholarly information to be portrayed to our audience without the information being overwhelming. In our video we also used the element of kairos to attract the attention of the popular audience with sources about the politician Donald Trump, who is currently running in the Presidential campaign, as well as images of protests against immigration, a current topic in many of the presidential debates. We focused on ethos, pathos, and kairos as key rhetorical elements to aid our adaptation of our scholarly essay into a video that attracted the attention of a popular audience.

During this project, we felt as though there wasn’t enough work to be split amongst the four of us, and moving forward we think it would be beneficial for this project to have groups of three. If the number of group members is brought down, those working on it will not feel as though they aren’t contributing and the work can be split more evenly between a smaller group of people. Scheduling times to meet up will also be easier because the possibility of conflicting agendas will decrease. This project provided each member of the group with experience that could not be gained another way. We developed new concepts of how to maintain a proper working environment with others and ideas about rhetorical devices and choices. Looking forward, this project will benefit us in a variety of environments from another writing class to a job setting. All four members agree about the value of the skills gained. We believe that learning to communicate with others in a personal environment regarding research or developing ideas was something we previously were not strong in. This project forced all of us to contribute our own research into building ideas to fit our new rhetorical situation and find a way to synthesize our separate findings. It is often difficult for a young person to admit that they are wrong or that someone else may have a better contribution. We considered all our ideas to be a collaborative work of the group. These considerations and ideals all provided the base for a positive group collaboration and learning environment. Working in a group is not as bad as we all originally thought. Group work can function properly as long as you take the lessons learned from mistakes and enter with a positive mindset.

Kingsley Bustamante, Heidi Hunt, Sasha Fyre, and Nathan Osborn