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Daniel Kiely

Ms. McDermott

English 1 Honors

6 April 2018

Epilogue

1) What did you learn about yourself throughout this process? How have you grown as a person?

I learned that if I put the work into something, then I can really do it well. This is because

I never thought I would be able to learn 5 chords on the guitar in that short of an amount of time,

and for parts of the project I still didn’t think I could. However, when I stopped procrastinating

and I really practiced, it was a lot easier than I expected it to be. I have grown as a person

because I now know the value of putting in the hard work to get the results I want. This applies

to all aspects of my life. For example, in school if I want to finish a project I know that I can’t

keep procrastinating, I must put the work in if I want to get it done and do it well. Also, in tennis,

I know that if I want to fix something I have to go out and work on it, not just expect it to get

done for me. This a very valuable skill to have, so this project has really helped me.

2) What steps are you planning to continue to take to continue your journey?

To continue my journey, I plan to keep playing the guitar throughout my life. I know that

if I keep practicing I can get good at it, and maybe one day I will be able to play multiple songs.

This is a skill that I really want to have because I have always been jealous of my dad and my

brother when they play the guitar around the house. I like the idea of being able to pick up an
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instrument and just play, but I will need to continue to practice if I want to reach this goal. To do

so I want to practice the guitar at least once a week, and if I can, much more than that. This will

help me improve on the guitar, and my dad can show me new chords and songs when I am ready.

3) What surprised you during the process of writing your multi-genre paper?

During the writing of my multi-genre paper, I was surprised about how interesting it is to

write about a subject from multiple voices and points of view. Even though I was the one writing

all of the pieces, I felt like I was able to explore and learn about my personal journey even more

when I considered multiple voices and points of view. For example, writing an interview for a

newspaper helped me see what playing the guitar looks like on the outside, while making a

twitter account for my dad (my mentor) helped me to see what it might have been like teaching

me how to play the guitar. In addition, the creative genres such as the poems helped explore my

journey in-depth because I had to think more about it.

4) What did you learn about writing in different genres as a way of inquiring into your topic and

communicating what you know?

Writing in different genres was helpful to inquire into my topic because it helped me

focus on different parts of my journey for each piece. For example, the twitter feed was about the

actual teaching of the guitar lessons, while the Instagram post was documenting how I felt before

starting to play the guitar. In addition, the poem helped me think about my journey in a more

abstract way, and the script allowed me to re-create my journey. Writing in multiple different

genres is a very effective way to fully communicate what I know because it forces me to show all

sides of the story, and to develop an overall voice through multiple different voices.
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5) Describe the strongest and weakest parts of your project or writing and explain why you

categorize each as such.

The strongest part of my writing is the research paper. I put the most time into the

research paper between researching, writing, and revising. I didn’t know a whole lot about

musical education and its effects on students, so everything that I wrote about was information

that I newly learned. This was fascinating me, because a research topic has never really

interested me more than this one did. My overall interest in the paper led to me putting in my

best efforts. After researching and writing, I took all the feedback from Ms. McDermott, my

peers, and my own self revisions to revise the paper and make it even better than it was

originally. This dedication helped in making my best writing. I don’t think there was a true

weakest part of my MGE, but if I had to choose I would say the poems. I don’t think that the

poems are weak, but I just don’t write a lot of poetry, so I am not very experienced at it. The

poems are definitely my best effort, but I think that if I was more knowledgeable with poetry

then I would have been able to write better poems.

6) Discuss the choices that you made in deciding which genre for each stage. Why and how did

you make these choices?

For crossing the threshold, I chose to do an Instagram post because Instagram was

definitely part of my “known” involving procrastination as I would procrastinate while scrolling

through Instagram. However, crossing the threshold is crossing into the journey, so the picture of

me playing the guitar and the caption illustrates how uncomfortable I am with the guitar at that

point, and how unprepared I am. For my mentor perspective student choice, I chose to do a

twitter account. I chose this because my dad uses twitter all the time, and since he is my mentor
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it is very fitting. In addition, the short tweets were effective at communicating the thoughts and

opinions my dad had on how teaching me guitar was going. Something longer wouldn’t have

been able to capture his voice, but a collection of all the tweets effectively demonstrated how he

thought my guitar learning was going. For the student choice challenge, I chose to do a

newspaper. I chose a newspaper because I was talking about procrastination, and that felt like a

problem that a newspaper could write about. I also wanted to include an interview about

procrastination, so a newspaper was the most logical way to present this information. For my

abyss, I chose to write a profile story because I could then include a personal interview with

“myself”. I wanted to do this because I thought there was no better way to explain what my

greatest challenge was than have myself explain it in an interview. I think that this was the right

choice because it really captured how difficult and concerning my abyss was for me. I chose to

do a script as a revelation because when I had my revelation I was talking to my dad, and a script

was the best way to re-create this moment. I was able to describe my sudden realization of how

this journey has changed me, and this led right into my transformation. For the transformation I

chose to do five haikus. I wrote these haikus in chronological order, and they describe how I

went through a change in perspective and emotion. At the beginning, I was stressed and worried.

However, I was able to overcome this and a new, more hardworking version of myself was born,

as illustrated through the haikus. I didn’t want to be too literal with the transformation because I

was extremely literal with the revelation, so I thought that haikus could represent my

transformation while still being in a completely new genre.

7) What grade do you feel you deserve on the project and why?
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I think that I deserve an A on this project. This is because I worked very hard on my

personal journey goal of learning to play the guitar, and I think that I represented and explained

my journey well through multiple genres. All in all, I know that I really enjoyed writing from

multiple genres and I was passionate about it, and I think because of that some of my best

writing came through. I think because of this I deserve an A on this project.