Getting Started

Metacognitive Reflection

442 words

This selected process piece is a timed free writing task that we completed before getting started on Project #2. I selected this piece because it reflected my understanding of detailed narration and how to depict something as specific as possible before learning the genre of autoethnography and “thick description.” This piece marks the starting point of my journey of learning autoethnography.

Interestingly, because of a class scheduling issue, I had an opportunity to complete the task twice. The process piece consists of two parts: the first one is a response to the task, and the second one is to add as much detail as possible to the depiction in the first part. As a writer who has been mainly working with scientific writing, I feel I’m good at depicting things with precise details. However, I don’t often write about scenes or places – especially, for this task, I need to recall something from my memory and try to extract as much detail as possible. I was not very confident when I looked at the task, and it even took me several minutes to recall before I started to write in the 15-minute timeframe.

In the first part, I tried to narrate a story from my childhood memory. I typed as soon as the story was popping out in my head, and it didn’t take me long to complete the narration. I understood the task wanted us to create a scene that could make the readers feel like they were actually at the place. So I added some details like the sea wind and the ocean’s smell in my narration to make it more vivid and attractive. Still, because the time was limited, this part is mostly a narration of my experience with moderate detail.

In the second part, I tried to add more details to this narration. I recalled all those scenarios when I was actually there, and I converted them into sentences. I attempted to create scenes like images or movies to make readers easily imagine how it was like and be immersed in my depiction. I used the sense of vision, hearing, smelling, and pain (sore legs), as well as my interaction with my parents, to achieve this.

Overall, this process piece reflects my initial understanding of detailed narration and how I would achieve it before learning “thick description” and all those elements in autoethnography. It also set the foundation of the narration of my personal experience that I would use later in the autoethnography project. It was just a start, and I was hoping I could do better in detailed depictions as I would learn more in this class.

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The Process Piece

Part II: In-Class Freewrite on Monday (please wait until class time to do this)

Think of a specific place that you have lived in the past or have spent a great deal of time in.

Now, pick a spot outside on the ground where you can imagine yourself standing.

What do you remember? Be as specific as you can. Write for 10 minutes.

Post your response as a reply to your original post. And be prepared to read what you wrote in a small-group breakout session.

If you need help getting started, pick one or more of the elements listed below:

• the sensory details (what you saw, smelled, heard, felt, tasted)

• the physical geography

• the built environment

• the human geography

• the flora and/or fauna

The Prompt of Project #2 Getting Started, Posted by Kathy Patterson

Response 1

I was living in an apartment building on the coastline of my city. When I started to remember things, there was a scene of sea outside the windows of my apartment. It was actually a bay, with three sides of lands around it. I could see seagulls flying around the coast and even, when the weather was good enough, the buildings along the coastline. Usually after dinner, I would go out for walk with my family on the coast. When I went downstairs, I could feel the sea wind and smell the taste of sea – It was kind of salty but really delightful. However, this scene changed several years later. Lands were reclaimed from the sea and many new buildings were built in front of my home. I could no longer see any of the sea from my home, and it would take more than half an hour to walk from my home to the coast. The smell of sea had gone – and it was replaced by the smell and sound of cars and bustling people on the streets. It was no longer delightful – but stressful, as I would be very careful when I make a cross of the street downstair.

Response 2

I couldn’t remember a lot when the sea was still here – I was about six years old at the time and the memory was really fuzzy. But I could remember when things got changed. Every time I went downstairs I would be annoyed by the noise and smell coming out from the construction sites. The number of cars and people drastically increased as more buildings went up. The sounds of horns, the smells of automobile exhaust, the noises of people arguing – all those came into my mind after the land reclamation was done. My parents would always remind me to be super careful when crossing the street downstairs – it was extremely dangerous and there even weren’t a traffic light for that. I could still sense the smell of seas, but I needed to walk thirty minutes longer. And if I did that, I would have sore legs the other day. I would just ask my parents to drive me to the coast if I really wanted to.