The Process
Origin Piece
I wrote this research paper for my first-year writing class, ENG125. As I said, I've always been intrigued by the Electoral College, and this felt like the perfect opportunity to dig deeper into the topic. The piece is a literature review of different sources discussing the negative side effects of the Electoral College on American democracy, especially in the present day. I enjoyed the academic vibe, but I found it incredibly difficult to leave my own thoughts and opinions out of my writing. This is a large reason why I decided to choose this paper as my origin piece. I wanted to see what would happen if I blended opinion and feeling with research and fact.
Experiment #1
Experiment #1, I must be honest, was a little bit of a crap shoot for me. I was deeply uncomfortable with the amount of freedom that I was granted with this project, and I ended up staying pretty safely within my comfort zone. I decided to format the arguments I made in my origin piece in the setting of a high school debate, which at the time felt clever, but now feels very underwhelming. I was still able to use facts and figures and could make arguments about an issue that has been argued over forever. In other words, I did nothing new or groundbreaking with this experiment. I will say, though, that this was a good jumping-off point for my next experiment, as it taught me that going in a more creative direction and speaking my mind was going to serve me well.
Experiment #2
Experiment #2 started with the idea of just doing a Ted Talk-esque sort of speech about the Electoral College, but eventually morphed into an existential, questioning-reality-and-power-dynamics sort of situation. Before the morphing, however, I created these slides with the idea of them being used as a backdrop/visual aid in a speech. I almost immediately realized that the words on the slides were actually the speech itself and probably shouldn't be typed up on some pre-made slideshow template, but alas, you live and you learn. Without these slides, I never would have realized how far I could actually take my thoughts with my extended experiment, so I am forever grateful and visually satisfied with my oh-so-verbose presentation slides.