Reflection of a Not-So-Typical College Student

When starting Project 4, the thought of working in a randomly assigned group was intimidating for all of us, especially because we all knew that the project required us to share our personal in-groups and autoethnographies with one another putting us in a very unavoidably vulnerable situation. When first assigned to our group, we all were excited to learn about each other’s in-groups and explore the potential video-autoethnographies that we could have fun creating. However, when it came to sharing our essays and in-groups, everyone shied away from being the first to share. Each of us looked at each other, waiting for someone to step up and share what they had wrote, and thinking “I really hope someone else takes over and I don’t have to be the one to break the ice” but eventually, Luke was the brave one to step up and share and we all went around in a circle from there. After listening to each for the first time and having not read each other’s autoethnographies, we thought that it would be best to go with Marie’s, which was about her sorority, or Jordan’s, which spoke about his feeling and thoughts about being a social and social media outsider at Wake. Eventually after reevaluating and reading through each other’s autoethnography we decided to go with Jordan’s because we all felt that we could have a valid input in the production because we could all relate to it.

Jordan’s autoethnography was different from the rest of ours because he viewed his “college male outsider” in-group as an out-group and analyzed and critiqued the people, which includes most of Wake’s student body, that he felt were a part of this in-group of being a stereotypical partying and social media absorbed college student. Jordan felt as though he strayed from the normalities of being a typical college student; and more specifically, he personally defines a typical college student as a “social climbing, partying, snap-chatting, conspicuous consumer”. Though that claim may be harsh and very bold to make for an in-group as large as college students because that includes millions of adolescents worldwide, Jordan felt as though from his experience, college students around him, which include students at Wake Forest University and Wofford College, tended to act like and fall under that claimed stereotype. Because this claim could be taken offensively to many students at Wake who feel as though they do not fall under this stereotype, we made the rhetorical decision to have the video be mainly about Jordan and his nature-centered and enjoying the moment lifestyle and why he chose to live this way, which he felt is separate from the majority of students at Wake, rather than the target the in-group that he felt he didn’t belong in.

Our process was slightly scattered at first; we didn’t know whether to start with filming, or the script, or the storyboard, or the literature review, etc., so instead we tried a little bit of everything. We tried making the script and filming at the same time to be most efficient, but then after compiling all that we had together, we realized that what was filmed did not match our script like we thought it would, and our footage strayed away from our central thesis which was a big problem. This realization caused a lot of editing and revising for both the script and the footage, but eventually we found our groove and were making progress on all ends. As a group, we were all assigned roles: Luke was in charge of film and editing, Marie and Jordan were in charge of constructing the script and the literature review, and Priscilla was in charge of helping Luke edit on top of constructing the APA formatted list of sources. By dividing the work up and also constantly communicating with one another, we found we were most efficient and were able to successfully create a video that exceeded our expectations.

Though the end result ended up being a success, there were definitely some struggles and challenges throughout the process on top of matching the script to our footage. One of the biggest challenges was finding a time that mutually worked for each member of our group because this time of year is so busy with finals and organizations wrapping up and all of us were on completely different schedules. To solve this issue, we created a GroupMe and stayed in contact with one another making sure that all of the meeting times worked for everyone, and who was in charge of what, so in conclusion, we can all agree that communication is the key to success when working with a group on a project.

When creating the script to adapt the autoethnography into a video, we struggled to get our so what? and who cares? across because Jordan’s thesis was one of his issues in his paper in the first place because it lacked the answers to those questions. We really pushed Jordan here; we pushed him to tell us his thoughts, tell us why he felt this way and tell us how this mentality has shaped him to be who he is today to get the purpose of this video across. It took a lot of digging deep into the mind of Jordan, but it was worth it because we finally created a thesis that successfully got the so what? and who cares? point across to our audience which drove the entire purpose of the video. After fixing the thesis, we were then hung up on how to incorporate all six scholarly sources into the video without boring our audience and losing our purpose. The matrix that Jordan made that outlined each source ended up being our biggest help for synthesizing each source in our script, so we have to give Professor Giovanelli credit for making us create that matrix and we all can agree with how helpful it was and how helpful it will be again when we use that this tool in the future. Despite these challenges, we were able to push through and solve each problem one step at a time and create our finished and polished product that we are all proud of.

The video itself opens with a variety of clips of Wake Forest with Jordan on the voice over introducing the school and all of its positive offerings in order to provide context for our audience so they know why we are targeting Wake Forest specifically, and when we talk about students in general, we are referring specifically to Wake Forest students. We then transfer directly into the thesis, as advised by Professor Giovanelli, to give our video purpose and to answer the so what? and who cares? questions early on so the audience knows exactly why we made the video in the first place. Our thesis was definitely a working thesis throughout the entire process for we changed it and altered it probably up to fifteen times, because we had to work to draw the so what? and who cares? out of Jordan, but in the end we were able to create a thesis that established a solid purpose with our audience. Our polished and finished thesis ended up covering who Jordan was, why he felt different than his view of a typical college student, why he enjoyed to feel distant from his environmental surroundings, how this idea has shaped him to be who he is today and how this ideology can apply to humans all over. The thesis was longer than anticipated due to the amount of ground that we had to cover for it, but it was a perfect transition to go right into the literature review which analyzed all of our six literature sources.

Though synthesizing sources through audio while keeping our audience invested was a challenge, we rhetorically chose to add graphics and funky background music in order to keep the video entertaining and our audience invested. The literary review concludes with Jordan’s connection to Allport’s idea of in-groups and out-groups, and this provided a perfect opportunity for a smooth transition into Jordan’s personal views on technology, social media abuse, and detachment from environmental surroundings which were all examples of why he felt as though he was an out-group in his own social environment. A lot of the shots in this segment are in nature and in the outdoors for the rhetorical purpose of showing the audience where Jordan prefers to be and where he feels most comfortable which he personally feels differs from the majority of students at Wake. The ending re-emphasizes the thesis and the so what? and who cares?, but on a more broad spectrum in order to create a larger picture beyond those who feel they are outsiders at Wake Forest to those who feel like outsiders anywhere. We purposely had Jordan look up into the sky and the camera shot focus on the trees and sky above in order to emphasize the point that being and feeling different is not isolated to just Wake Forest students and how this social concept applies to so many other people in this world other than just Jordan.

In conclusion, we can all agree that we are very pleased with the end result, but a lot of hard work and compromise was put into this video in order to make it what it ended up being. We all learned the challenges of working in a group in a college environment like scheduling meeting times, assigning roles, balancing our work with other classes work, and having to compromise certain desires for the greater good of the group. There were no doubt struggles and challenges along the way, but we have all learned so much from those and can all agree that we will take what we have learned from those roadblocks that we overcame working on group projects in the future whether it is for school or even our future jobs. The key to success is constant and fluid communication, along with compromise and the willingness to contribute yourself entirely to the project when it is time to work. These key aspects that we have all learned and taken from this group project experience will do nothing, but benefit ourselves in our future academic endeavors at Wake Forest, and beyond academics on a more mature and occupational level.

— Marie Cahalane, Jordan Clontz, Lucas Williams, and Priscilla Djarbeng