Play Make Write Think

I did my assembly on the plot of Resident Evil 2. Although it is a horror based game, there are a lot of detective aspects and probing which I find to be my way of writing. Also I like the series.

This is my version of “Assemblies”. It has many different mini themes, but one over-arching theme. The main theme is blossoming. I think that this class have allowed me to blossom in several ways that I did not originally think that it would have. It has given me growth when it comes to both my reading and writing, and I think that it is essential that is has. I think that whatever you experience and put some type of time or effort into it, growth, lessons, or values should come from it. Everything teaches you something, even if it is minor. And this class has taught me a lot in a various ways. So, this assembly overall represents the tools that allowed me to blossom.

At the bottom of my wine glass is a bunch of clocks that represents time and patience. Time and patience are the key factors into the beginning stages of learning in this class. This was a class that is not normally taught (it is a class about games) and I believe that that is the very thing that aided this portion of the cup. This class has taught me patience in various ways. I think the very first time I learned patience is on our very first day of class when we played the card game. I didn’t understand why every time we rotated, people were presenting a different set of rules and it was frustrating me. But by the end of class, there was a larger lesson regarding the importance of rules and dynamics of power. This was the start of my patience. This quickly carried on to my readings. At the beginning of the class, we did a lot of readings. The readings, especially Superbetter, was very annoying for me to read. I was used to reading analytical essays and research papers but here I was reading books about games and how games affect and relate to our lives and views. But after giving the readings a fair chance, I realized that the readings were more than just about games, but was giving me techniques into changing my ways of thinking about games and how thinking in a gameful way may impact everyday decisions. Patience even carried on to my writing. Similarly to my reading style, I thought my writing had to be in the form of research papers or analytical essays. But during side quests, writing was more of a free verse style which I was not accustomed to. However, through patience in the side quests, I began to be more creative and began writing in a more reflective manner that made my writing more interesting and engaging to read.

The next layer to my wine glass is malleability, which is represented by slime. Slime can be changed, bent, and utilized in various ways and thus was the perfect symbol. WHEW, this class really did teach me this one. I learned to read flexibly. There is not one way to read or interpret a piece of work. One thing can have several meanings depending on the context, medium, or personal experience. This hit home with a lot of the readings. For example, Superbetter had a ton of different meanings upon various different students because they interpreted them differently. Even the home tasks..people interpreted the home-tasks differently such as the sporting arena home-task. I interpreted the home-task as at a football or baseball of basketball game in the crowd. However, other peers interpreted it as somewhat of a olympic event that they were in. This taught me that things do not mean just one thing and just because one interpret things differently than myself does not mean that they are wrong. And then you have my writing. As touched on previously, my writing has become more flexible as the class allowed me to practice a new style of writing that does not stick to a certain criteria or guideline.

The next portion is freedom represented by butterflies because they are one of the freest animals on the planet. This one does not need a long paragraph because it can be summed up in just 10 words: FREEDOM OF THOUGHT, FREEDOM OF THE PEN, and FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION.

The final portion is the most important one, at least for me. And that is reflection. This class is all about reflection: reflection of experiences, reflection of assignments, reflection of successes, reflection of opinions, reflection of coursework. I mean, reflection is at the nitty gritty of everything that we do in this class. And this class taught me just how important reflection is. The fact that Dr. Morgen asked us to reflect on every assignment that we did made a big difference for me. Growing up, when I did an assignment, I always did it and then was completely finished with it. But that was a boring and kind of depressing way to go about it. What ever someone spends their time on, it is important to reflect because that experience taught you something. And I think that by not reflecting in the past, it has caused me to miss out on those lessons that I learned from those experiences. By reflecting, it makes me a better writer, experiencer, failure, successor, etc because I retract the valuables and details from the event/task. So, from now on, I’ll reflect on everything that I do because it is important (THANK YOU ENG 101!).

Through all the different assignments we’ve done this semester, I feel like an overlapping theme has been decision making. With the podcasts we have to choose which path to take in talking about the game, with home-tasking we have to decide on an interesting but yet doable task, etc. The constraints of “normal” writing have been uplifted in a sense and we’ve really gotten the chance to let our mind and decisions run loose. In games and in writing, we’re constantly faced with important decisions that may shape the future of our experience, and in this side quest I’ve attempted to pick apart that decision making process (mine, at least). Our decision making may sometimes seem irrational on the surface, but I believe it’s always rooted by some combination of rational thoughts. I thought the most picturesque way to express this was through a tree of thoughts buried underground, and only one decision, the product of these thoughts, rising to the surface. Please excuse my mediocre drawing of a flower, and I hope you enjoy/relate to the tree!

I completed this side quest by turning ENG 101 sec#9 into a dessert store, and as a student myself, I listed the major tasks we completed in this course as forms of different types of dessert, and dissect them into different components, where each component represents my experiences of finishing these tasks, as well as what I learned from them.

I had fun completing this assignment because I love baking and sketching, and I was excited to combine these two to represent my learning process in this course. I had a good time taking this course just like I had a good time making desserts.

I used planets to express what I have learned in this English class. In the first few classes, we discussed rhetorical situations introduced in the book Everyone’s Author, including genre, audience, purpose, context, stance, design, and medium. I believed that it would be convenient for me to focus on these factors to sort things that I learned. I first created “planets” that are labeled by the topics and placed rings around the “planets” that I especially focused on. I expressed “design” and “medium” as UFOs because they were new topics for me. I am planning on explaining how materials and tasks used in class, which are expressed as “meteors,” affect my skills.

#sq14