Brianna Adu-Kyei                                Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Senior Project Critical Reflection                        Senior Project Experience

Critical Reflection #1: What I Know vs What I Don’t Know

Essential Question:  How can I share my excitement about learning with a wider audience (through podcasting)?

A lot of my question is wrapped up in not necessarily what I know (though that is important) but whether or not I can explain it in an effective way to someone who doesn’t understand my topic at all. Given the medium I’m resorting to now, a lot of what I can express through my face and gestures now have to be conveyed through voice alone, which on the one hand forces me to work on my oratory skills, but on the other hand severely limits how I am used to talking. This is a good development for me, because I feel like I can leave people behind when I infodump or use expressions or phrases that don’t quite make sense to others. Instead of “Oh, wow! I’ve never heard about this before” and skipping straight to very quickly and excitedly speaking, I have to slow down, choose my words deliberately, and then try over and over again to pick the best iteration. It’s making me practice the process and giving me the chance to evaluate every component. It’s also helpful because in my tutoring job, I was relearning material I hadn’t thought about in years, and then trying to explain it in real time.

I think, going forward, I am trying to incorporate more elements of what makes my irl interactions work. I find I can’t really explain well unless I have an audience to engage with (often having to “talk out” my papers or needing to “talk at” someone). Therefore, I’m planning to find more people to interview. They’re going to be stand-ins for the general audience; after we explore this topic, we can talk about how much this actually matches up with their experience.