Goals for project #2

This project is a very unique one. It is not the traditional styles of writing. This project is based on the visual genres that can express ideas just as well as writing genres. Visual genres include anything that isn’t writing that can be seen and portray an idea to whoever is looking at it. Our group is doing a comic strip as our visual genre. Comic strips are usual not very complex drawings with short captions that explain an idea. Most of the time if a person is making a cartoon about a celebrity, they will make the celebrity have certain features that will make a person seeing the comic strip know who he is. It is an easy way to show your thoughts and ideas to other people. Our comic strip is about a high school senior filling out college applications and selecting a college. The main conventions involved in our comic strip are seriousness and humor. Conventions are what are involved in the genre. It shows what makes the project’s genre a unique one. Our comic strip is humorous because it shows how the student is panicking and stressing out about the applications. This is funny because all of the people in class can relate to this. College applications are very stressful and it is difficult to make the decision on which college to go to. Also, at the end of the comic it shows him picking which college he will go to out of a hat. He is makes something that is a very serious matter and making it into a joke. The serious factor in this application is the fact of how important college is. It is a big decision to make for a teenager because it won’t just be their school for the next four years, it will also be where they live. It is important to like the area you are going to school in because it will make the college experience much harder than it should be. There is a lot to learn from this comic strip. It doesn’t only show how the college process is important and stressful; it shows that something serious can be made lighter than it is. If you put something serious into a joking matter, it may not seem as serious as it really is. A person might not stress over that important matter as much. I have never done a project like this before. This is the first class I have ever used a blog to make a project. It makes it much more interesting to do this than the typical sit down and start writing an essay format. It also makes it easier that we are in groups and can see other people’s perspectives and hear their ideas. The combination of a group’s ideas will make a better outcome of a project because it is a group effort and if everyone does their part, there will always be a better turn out than an individual assignment.