Kenyatta Bundy Jr

Podcast Reflection

            This project was an eye-opener for me in more ways than one. This project revealed a few things for me that I didn’t expect it to do. Those things include, understanding of my father, understanding of how GarageBand works, as well as what it means to really struggle and overcome boundaries at a young age. This project allowed for my father and I to sit down and have a deep conversation that was unlike any other that I’ve ever had with him. The deep interaction that occurred allowed for all walls to be broken down and the truth to come out. Throughout this project, I realized some of my own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to podcasts and creating them as well as when it comes to the interviewing process. The strengths that appeared for me during this time included; my mastering of GarageBand, as well as asking the necessary questions that allow for a true story to be told by the other person. I was able to get my father to talk for over an hour and fifteen minutes with only about ten simple questions. Although I had to edit about 90% of it out of my podcast in order to make it only twelve to fifteen minutes, this long conversation allowed for me to get some things that I normally would not have been told if I only asked simple questions about the specific story. Once the interview/conversation process was over, the editing had to begin and this is where I believe I did the very best. The cutting out, and mixing and mashing of different parts of the conversation in order to get a good twelve minutes of recording allowed for the best podcast that I could produce. With the many positives that I just talked about, it’s obvious that I would have a few weaknesses considering no one is perfect. My most apparent weakness came from my procrastination as well as lack of overall focus on the project after the recording was finished. Although I do not think my procrastinating affected the final outcome of the project, I do believe that if I were to actually not procrastinate I would have been a little less stressed out about the entire thing. To conclude this I would just like to say how much I enjoyed this project, and thank you whomever you may be for listening to this, and also thank Ms. Pahomov for allowing us to do this project. 

Everyone knows there are 3 simple steps about life. your born, you live, and you die which will never change. They way you decide to live your life is only in your control. We all will experience death but it becomes a harder pill to swallow when there is a death in the family. I imani holness will be interviewing my mother viola jackson on the challenges & diffculties she faced with losing a loved one at a stage in her life were she didn't expect it. 

Will Amari 

3/5/13

Silver

This is a podcast about a man born under a strict environment, and how he managed to stand up to his father. Despite his fathers expectations of him becoming a doctor, he realized he wanted to become something different, forcing him to stand up for himself, and follow his heart. 

Crossing Boundaries Reflection

At first I was a little worried. I didn’t think I knew anyone who had ever crossed a boundary with anyone or anything, no one close to me seemed to have an interesting life. I thought about making some story up. Literally— I could had just pretended that my sister was some skanky alcoholic, say that she crossed the boundaries of innocence, recorded it all in fifteen minutes, then call it a day. This was before I realized that someone close to me, did have an interesting life, did cross boundaries, and he lived right under the same roof as me. I’m talking about my dad. 

I’m glad I interviewed my dad because he had an interesting relationship with his father, also he told the story so well and he very so specific. I loved all the detail and actually learned a lot about him, that I didn’t know before. He also didn’t get emotional, and I’m happy about that. It would had been uncomfortable to see my dad cry. 

Audacity is not my favorite, and I had some trouble uploading it. I had to wait until I was back in school to have some one show me how they did it. It was very hard to control the volume especially if you had music and dialogue playing at the same time. Not to mention how frustrating and time consuming it was to move all the recordings around. All the tracks looked the same, it would had been better if they were color coated, but whatever, it was fine over all. It got the job done. 

I was surprised how much everyone liked my podcast, no one seemed to have any real complaints. They seemed pretty entertained by my dad, which is weird, because I don’t see how you could relate to some old white man in his fifties. Also my dad talks about being an artist a lot. (I don’t see this class as a very artistically interested stream.) I which my music could fade better but my effect amplifier was weird and difficult to use. Next time (If there is a next time) I’m defiantly using I movie. Honestly, this project was kind of stressful, I’d rather just right a ten page essay (yes I said ten) on telling my fathers story, instead of making a pod cast. 

My definition of crossing boundaries is to go through a rough time or struggle to do something. Some factors of crossing boundaries is family, friends, relationship, race and gender. The causes and effects of crossing boundaries can either be good or bad. If your boundary is finance issues the cause would be you don’t have a job or your spending money too much. A good effect could be you get a job and get back to be financially stable. However a bad outcome could be you ignore the fact that you aren't financially and keep spending money you don’t have or not get a job and make the problem worse.

My crossing boundary was teen pregnancy. While I interviewed a did learn a little but I was previously very familiar with that topic. But some things I did learn from interviewing. I kinda knew it was hard to do and it made you grow up a lot faster. But when the interviewee talked about how his girlfriend and daughter lived with him it shocked me a little because he’s just a child and they’re living like a married couple and they didn’t even finish high school yet. Another was how when he got home from school the first thing he did was go take car of his baby. That scared me a little because It made me realize that his whole life had change and that he has to go straight home and when he gets home he cant sit down and relax and he has to do homework while holding a baby. 

While editing this some things were a little hard because I never used Audacity before and I kept scrolling the wrong way and I thought i lost my project about 12 times and because this is a benchmark I was beginning to stress but then I realized it was still there. The feedback from my peers was pretty good. I did agree with a lot of it and it helped me. 

This podcast tells a story how 23 year old African American, went through life totally standing out from the rest of the world.

When other people go through a great loss, its not the same impact on you as the other person if you weren’t close to that person. Losing people is probably a fear most people have. When you lose someone you make the realization that nothing is forever. You only have a limited amount of time with the people you care about. I think people more than anything try to stray away from that thought. Something that was new for me was how my great grandmother died. I hadn’t known her, and was never aware of how she died. Though I was aware of how some of my great uncles had died. We are a big family but as the years go one we lose members and we gain them. This is true for every family. We all hope that we are carried into old age with the people we love and cherish. Though it isn’t always that way, and it seems like it should be. I fear losing my mother though I try not to dwell on it. She’s an important aspect of my life, and I know that no matter what she’s there if I need her. 

Making this podcast was the best benchmark I have ever done in previous english benchmarks. I really did enjoy making this podcast because it gave me chance to know my friends better and it can definitely give advice to other people that making assumptions can be a pretty big deal. The thing I learned about myself is that getting through to someone like Enthony Chhin showed that he can trust me and that was also a strength for me. I was aiming for this podcast to be a sad one and it did and the background music just made it even better. It showed part of my creativity and I just really liked it. The only weakness in my podcast was that the volume was too high and I fixed it. 

While doing the interview with Richard Yoeun it also just gave a twist to the podcast and it also made it ever cooler. His story in this podcast made it even more interesting and it was really good. 

This Podcast is about my sister, "coming out of the closet" and how it affected her life. 

I was really happy to do this project because I knew I would learn so much about my sister and understand why she feels the way she does about her childhood. Izena always told me that her childhood was hard but I never knew the reasons why until know. I learned about how being gay has affected her life. When she told my family that she was gay, there was a huge uproar and people in my family made her feel bad about her sexuality. This was very surprising to me because everybody in my family seems to have no problem with Izena being gay. They even invite her girlfriends over to family parties and seem very welcoming. So, for these reasons it's surprising to find out that they did mistreat her for being gay when they first found out. I also didn't know that when she was young she though being gay was a sickness. It makes me proud of her to see how many obstacles she's gone through yet,  she still loves our family and is also very honest and open about her sexuality. To me interviewing Samirah was the perfect touch because it was interesting to hear how Izena's sexuality affected Samirah and how the families reactions affected her lifestyle and how comfortable she was with them.  I enjoyed this project because I learned so much about my sisters and my families. I have newfound respect for my sister, Izena and I will continue to support her and remind her that there is nothing wrong with her sexuality. 

Many who have been raped often have trouble forgiving their rapist; it's also hard for them to completly heal. I interviewed two of my friends- a victim, and a friend of a victim, to hear how they dealt with this traumatizing experience. 

Throughout the project, I learned things about my friends that I never knew before. The amount of courage they showed, and the forgiveness they gave just amazed me. They taught me that even when a trusted friend or family member crosses the line and hurts you, that you should forgive them. In a way, they themselves crossed emotional boundaries when they found the bravery to get over this experience (and not dwell in the past) and to eventually tell the authorities about it. Some who have been raped can never get themselves to tell anyone, and for my friends to cross those emotional boundaries to tell me their story was just great. They taught me to never hang on to things that only cause you pain. 

Also, this project taught me plenty on how to use Audacity, and how to edit audio so that it sounds okay. I had to edit out my friends voices because they wanted to be some-what anonymous, and it was fun and interesting to learn about that as well.  Finally, I learned how to convert .mov files to .mp3 just by using itunes- made everything a lot easier. 

Reflection:

After interviewing my friend Emmanuel on his anger problems and crossing boundaries I learned people can cross boundaries in good ways and bad ways. As I was interviewing Emmanuel I learn that control your anger can be hard for you. I learned that it can impact your life. I also learn that it shouldn't impact the people around you because they can't handle your anger. I really didn't learn anything about myself well interviewing Emmanuel about his anger because I don't have anger issues and if I feel like Im having anger problems with a situation I can control it. My weakness was just editing, audio problems, trying to figure out the parts were I messed up and putting everything in order. My strengths were finishing the final piece and getting everything in order. Doing this project made me realize the actually meaning to crossing boundaries.

While doing this interview I learned a lot of things while doing this podcast. I learn that my family is really messed up, that they supposedly want the best for my sister and I. I notice that they only want them selfs to be happy, use it doesnt matter, as long as my parents are happy they think we are happy. Well that is not the case. Falling in love is scary, not because we'll get hurt, it's because they fact that the people we are suppose to trust, won't like our partner and try pulling us apart. As they are doing to my sister.

I learn my sister has so much pain in her. While telling her story she wanted to cry, but she didn't, she kept that smile I see her fake everyday. She tried hard not to cry while telling her story, I know it may not sound like she wanted to cry but that how good she is because she been trying so hard not to cry for past year or so. As my sister I know her well. She likes to hide her feelings from other. She keeps away to avoid me seeing her cry, but sometimes she breaks down and comes to me and cries in my arms. She is in pain, and the people we thought we could trust are making us go threw that pain. I am in a similar situation my self but not as bad as she is. I learn so much threw doing this podcast, I learn how to edit which I never knew. I learned how to understand how my sister is feeling.

The comments with my peers I agree with them. They were positive comments. I think I did good as well. Had a little mistakes around, I fixed them up and my podcast was like I wanted it to be. Doing this podcast taught me a lot. This was my favorite project because it was interesting to know how others cross boundaries, how other people feel.  

            My father, associates with people in his everyday life have very different backgrounds than him. People who he does not share many common similarities with. He is an outsider. How did he get here? Listen to this podcast to find out!

           Through the process of interviewing my father and mother, I learned things I had no knowledge of before. I learned aspects of his life I did not know about, aspects of my parents relationship that were new to me, and ideas about crossing boundaries filled my head.  

When crossing boundaries, there are things to be gained and things to be lost. When my father went to college, he did the unexpected, and crossed boundaries. No one in his family had, and in that way, he lost some ability to communicate openly with them. What he did gain was a whole new perspective on life, and a window into a world he had never know. It was like he got an invitation to a party that he had always dreamed about attending. When he got there, he learned that no matter how fancy the party, you can still feel out of place.