I was really worried about my Re-Genre Project (like most of us, I'd imagine).
All I had was a personal essay which was too personal, and a Research Essay that had researchable qualities but was mostly personal.
As much as I want to talk about Third Culture Kids and their struggle in finding a country they belong to, the only audience I can present to that would find this topic immensely interesting would be other Third Culture Kids.
Even my mother was having trouble with how to re-do an essay into a new genre which didn't have much information that you all would be interested in.
Finally, I talked to Dr. Ballenger and he made me realize that I had to attempt this project as if Im delivering it to an audience made up entirely of Third Culture Kids.
Once that was out of the way, the question remained: How do I re-do my research essay about what makes up one's personal national identity into a new form? What form would it be?
Dr. Ballenger informed me that the most obvious form my essay could take would be a radio essay.
Ok.
Now what do I write about?
"Your story."
Ok.
Now what do I write about?
I have so many stories related to me being a Third Culture Kid. Do I talk about when we moved to the NL? Do I talk about living in the NL? Do I talk about moving back to the States? How the transition between Europe and America was? Take directly from my research essay and how I struggled with being both European and American?
I have the beginning of the essay- starting with explaining the situation and when we got the call to move overseas, but I don't have anything after that.
What do I write about?
What experience do I have that is interesting to listen to, moving, and still connected to my research essay?
Honestly, I think you should just write about all of it! You are the only (I believe) in our class that has had to deal with something like this, so you have a completely open audience to work with. I think we would be really interested in hearing about the transition between America and Europe and back again. I would imagine it to be a fairly big transition.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it would help you to just sit and write about it, like Dr. Ballenger's fast writes. Just write until you have nothing more to say and then go see what you did. I'm pretty sure that you will find something amazing in that!