When I first saw on Mr. Allen's website the words "Jane Eyre Mashup," I freaked. Everything from the bolded, colored words on the site to the amount of quotes we had to compile seemed foreign and almost impossible. Not only did I not understand the task of the assignment at first, but I also didn't understand how I could perform this. While it took time to realize the meaning of a mashup, I've now realized what positive impact the assignment had on my learning experience.
In the beginning, I struggled with defining a topic present throughout the novel Jane Eyre. I spent so much of my time trying to find the perfect idea-one that could relate to the outside world through quotes or film, like Mr. Allen asked for. I searched, and searched, and searched for quotes pertaining to different topics such as love, individualism, and challenging the status quo. Ultimately, however, I narrowed down my top quotes to fall under the individualism category. I'm pleased with my thinking in this sense because rather than narrowing myself in on one topic at first, I allowed myself to search the entire novel for quotes that interested me and were full of rich, deep meaning. This proved to be extremely effective. I went through the each part of the novel with a specific colored post-it note that depended on the topic I was looking for. This method helped me organize my thoughts in a coordinated manner, which saved me time.
After all of my research with Jane Eyre, I chose the topic individualism because I enjoyed the way each quote related and flowed, something that I knew was necessary for the mashup. I continued to use my organization method with post-it notes for the rest of my necessary quote requirements. This allowed me to arrange my elements to create meaning, depth, and insight like Mr. Allen wanted. It surprised me how well this way of thinking worked, but it also taught me the power of organization.
The most difficult process, however, was creating the illusion of one mind. Although my organization method allowed me to easily arrange my elements, my own perfectionist personality made it difficult to create the illusion of one mind. I constantly doubted myself that each quote flowed correctly, because I was so worried about the flow sounding perfect. It took me longer to create the illusion of one mind than to find my quotes because I spent so much time over-thinking myself. Looking back, I now realize that one mind does not flow perfectly. Thus, no quote could do the same. I would have liked for this process to work better, but now I realize for next time.
Ultimately, the Jane Eyre project allowed me to realize the impact that the novel has on our everyday lives. Not only did this project help me relate Jane's life to the modern world, but it also taught me about the power of organization. While I've mentioned about my struggle with perfectionism in other blog posts, this project just proved to be one more reason why perfection isn't always so perfect. All in all, I absolutely loved the Jane Eyre mashup because it was like no other project I'd ever seen.
No comments:
Post a Comment