Author: Kirsty McInnes

I (unintentionally) completed my gateway and my capstone on relatively similar topics. The progression from my gateway to my capstone is so visible, both content and design wise, that I wanted to write a blog post to reflect on it.

My gateway was funny (read: I tried to make it funny). It was framed to debunk common misconceptions that people had about Scotland from movies, books, TV shows, etc. It was niche – I know.

To give some context, my family is Scottish, and we immigrated to the United States when I was 6. All my life I knew about the funny components of being Scottish, because that’s how my parents raised me. My project was fun, it joked around, and didn’t take anything too seriously (even the Scottish referendum, which was actually very serious). My website reflected my tone, and there were light hearted pictures (many of which I took) and animated texts (why is that even a feature, Wix?)

Fast forward a few years. Michigan has opened my eyes to so many perspectives and taught me so much that I slowly learned to think of myself not only as someone from Scotland, but as a Scot who is also an immigrant in the United States. In this day and age, being an immigrant is no small thing.

My capstone project reflected that, as I worked to uncover media misrepresentations of immigrants, and ultimately remind everyone why America is known as the “nation of immigrants.” Much less niche.

The design of my website has changed so much too. From cheesy pictures to (what I like to think are) professional layouts and serious tones.

It has been so rewarding to see how my thoughts and ideas about myself and about how the world views immigration have changed over the last few years. It is especially cool to have both perspectives in an interactive website that I can show people!

Confession time! For everyone except Ray because I’m pretty sure he’s figured it out by now. I HATE EDITING. Confession #2…I have actually turned in papers without re-reading them before…oops

Bring on the heat, writing community.

BUT, I assure you I took my sweet time editing my capstone project and while I won’t say it’s perfect grammatically, it better be pretty damn close.

In the past I have relied on others to help me with the editing process. Having another set of eyes on my work always reassured me that A) my work wasn’t terrible and B) they could catch mistakes that I wouldn’t. However, for this project, I have been fiercely possessive over my writing and haven’t let anyone else read it other than my workshop group members.

That means I edited alone, and for me, it actually took four days. Once I finished adding raw content, I went back through everything on my computer and added in words/phrases wherever necessary and fixed any glaring mistakes. Then, I printed out each web-page of my site and line edited my work with a pen. Finally, I ran everything through a grammar checking software, and have been reading and re-reading it all on my computer ever since (I can’t seem to stop, can anyone relate?)

For the amount of work I have put into this project, I wanted to make sure that those who read it, can read it coherently. It feels good to have a product that I’m happy with and that will (hopefully) look professional.

But, Ray, if you find any possessive apostrophes where there shouldn’t be…I’m sorry.

I read about my capstone topic in the news every single day. I had google alerts set up for different key words (this is a horrible stressor and I would not recommend it) and yet I still do not feel like an “expert” on the topic.

I am not sure I have ever written about anything that I was worried people might get angry about, accuse me of being wrong about, or simply disagree with me. Writing about immigration forced me to think about other perspectives and others’ opinions with everything that I wrote. This was an invaluable lesson!

I have often been told that I don’t write with a lot of confidence, and that’s probably true. The tough part about writing about controversial topics, however, is that no matter how confident I am in my thoughts and opinions, someone will most likely always disagree with me.

I do feel like the writing in my project has been fairly confident this time around (maybe even a little too “in your face” depending on who you ask). This may be due to my personal attachment to the topic, or it may be because I did a lot of research. Either way, I hope that if someone reads my work and has a completely different ideology and perspective, that my words and thoughts are clear and cohesive enough for them to at least understand it, maybe even acknowledge it, as a valid point or idea. I would also invite them to message me! As I mention in the conclusion of my project, in the conversation about immigration, collaboration is key.

I most likely am starting this challenge journal after classes have ended for the same reason I struggled with my capstone project – there are no guidelines! I have a hard time functioning without guidelines…

In terms of my project, that meant I often did not know when to stop, what tone to take, what content to focus on or what to skim over. It began to feel like it would never end.

However, as we approach the Showcase, I have thankfully seen the end, and am (also thankfully) very close to it. It is interesting looking back because I don’t feel as though there was ever a point where I thought “this is how my project will look.” Instead, I took an idea and ran with it and this is what I ended up with (something that I am very happy with if I do say so myself).

I’m not certain this is generally a good strategy for writing, but it is something I have often done in the past. It was beneficial for me in the sense that my project was able to be malleable to new content that I discovered and new avenues I wanted to explore.

Most of the content that I included, and that I liked the most, wasn’t known to me when I began. Therefore, I don’t think I ever could have thought up a project that looked like this before actually doing all of the writing.

This may also be a great excuse for procrastination and laziness. It also made the project very difficult to start. What do I write about first? What am I trying to say or argue? Having the first workshop content be an intro page was slightly more helpful in getting my ideas on paper, however getting started was definitely the most difficult part for me.

Either way, I think my strategy of more or less going in blind was beneficial to my project.