When I first learned that we were to create a digital story I was more struck by fear than excitement. I knew that this assignment would require an immense amount of thought and time but that was the least of my worries. As we went over the requirements in class, I thought I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do- I was set on doing a story on an incident that had recently occurred and had a huge impact on my life. I saw this opportunity as a chance to give my classmates as well as others insight into my life and hoped that they would be able to take something important away from it. I sat in class and typed as though I was possessed and I had a huge script sitting in front of me by the time we left. The next day I examined what I had typed. I was mortified by how horrible the script was. I couldn't manage to paint the story the way I wanted to without it being too confusing and quite frankly, it would have ended up being more of a sappy love story than something other college students would enjoy watching.
I decided that it would require some outside help to even get started on this assignment. I paid a visit to our professor and shortly after sitting down, I poured out my situation. As I had suspected, there was no clear way to paint the picture that I wanted so that a wide audience would have something to take away. I did mention that if anything, I wanted my story to be very personal. I am the type of person that has no problem talking about the things that have occurred in my life and I honestly thought that by sharing them, some great things would come out of it. In a previous meeting, I had mentioned that I came from what I would considered a very backwards area- students rarely went to college and most people spent their entire lives there, never seeing a decent job or half of the opportunities that were possible out in this world. This had really caught our professors attention and she said I should consider that as a possibility. I instantly loved the idea and was shocked that I had never thought of that myself. That night I sat down and within 20 minutes I had my script.
My next obstacle was tackling the technology. I'll be the first to admit that when it comes to computers, I know barely enough to get by. This is what caused my initial horror at the thought of this assignment. Luckily, our professor did a great job at explaining things, so I dove in and decided to learn as I went along with the project. Luckily, working with the technology was not as terrible as I imagined. If anything, the time required to do this project was the only thing that was difficult.
I thoroughly enjoyed doing this project. I never thought that I would be doing something in class that I became so passionate about and felt like I needed to share with others. After my conference, I posted this video to Facebook and right now I think I have about 200 views. Several people have mentioned that they have shared it with their friends and that this really made them think. I expected to make some folks from my hometown upset, but fortunately, I only got one negative response. I love the fact that my decision to share a personal experience has inspired others and has stirred up thoughts within them that they probably would have never considered. I hope to do more stories in the future.
