Ana Perez
Prof. McIntosh
ENGL 210
October 22, 2021
Reflection
Creating this visual piece was a bit challenging due to my topic of choice, the effects of quarantine on mental health. Creating PowerPoints are easy tasks for me because I enjoy doing them and is something that can be used in many ways. This visual was different due to my topic, I could’ve gone two ways with it. I could’ve approached it in a scientific way or a more emotional and compassionate way. It was difficult deciding because the topic of mental health needs to be treated in an empathetic and compassionate way, but the statistics made it more educational and scientific, indeed I could’ve done both but that’s where the difficulty started.
I decided to approach this visual in a more scientific and educational way, therefore, my genre of choice was media, it is a new genre that is used mainly in classrooms and for teaching. The amount of statistics in this topic is immense and new information constantly comes. Covid- 19 cases continue to grow and the effect on mental health continues to exacerbate. The information provided by this topic are mostly numbers, so it is a bit difficult to create an empathetic piece with numbers. My audience impacted my choice of genre and I had to slightly change my audience of choice because the information I was going to provide was mostly targeting young adults, ages 18 and older, seniors in high school or college students. One of the rhetorical strategies I used was statistics from the New York Times, information from the CDC and WHO because they are organizations that deals with these types of situations. When it comes to high school and college students, many are visual learners that need to see the information to be able to understand and comprehend the information, as a result, I added graphs to be able to help those learners. Since my audience is mature, I did not add colorful images or graphics because I wanted this visual piece to be more professional and mature.
When writing a traditional essay, we have an idea of the format and how it should be done, for example, the opinion editorial. However, when you must get creative and create your own format, it becomes challenging. I like to have a set format and organization when I do any type of written work because it makes the process easier, however, with this piece I had to come up with my own idea, and that format needed to get a certain audience’s attention. Essays have a structure, it’s either MLA or APA, but with a PowerPoint, you need to just rely on your topic and audience to produce the appropriate work. I find that writing a personal piece, like the personal statement needed for a college application, is as difficult as creating a visual piece, like a PowerPoint, because these things need to come from you and your creativity.
