What was your inquiry question? Did it shift or change in any way through your inquiry?
My initial inquiry question was “how do women express their opinions through literature?” I wanted to read some feminist literature and write a podcast script about it and how I could relate. In the end I changed my question to “how can I connect feminist poetry to my own life and experiences?” I shortened my original plan to read a single poetry book instead of my originally planned 2-3 books. I also decided what I wanted to make for my final inquiry project was an art piece instead of a piece of written work. I ended with a collage of small images, each based on a poem I read and the images it brought to mind when I read it.
What did you enjoy about the inquiry? What are you most proud of?
My favorite thing about my project was of course my final product. I’m very happy with what I came up with. A lot of feedback I got when we shared was that people thought I should add explanations for each drawing, but it was intentional to not include them. I wanted to have my collage be a random mix of all the points of view from the book and not necessarily need each picture to have a deep meaning. Some pictures were just images from the poem and some pictures were my own personal interpretation of the poem and how it related to me. I’m happy with what I made because I found joy in the artsy side of the Inquiry and exposed myself to some literature I have been meaning to for a long time. I really enjoyed an excuse to be creative in my own way at school.
What did you find challenging?
Personally I find a more rigid inquiry process difficult to follow because I often want to change my direction as I go and having to complete a step before continuing to the actual doing makes the inquiry feel more like a chore. What works better for me is a general outline/idea and then jumping to the do step. It helps me hold onto the motivation and I often come back to the defining steps later when some work has already been completed and I can now decide where I want to go with the project. For this reason, I would say my biggest challenge with this inquiry was the more guided structure and trying to connect to such broad topics like the UN 17 Goals. Such broad topics can leave room for creativity, but they can also feel daunting and finding something to focus on was hard to do when there are so many directions to take.
What would you change?
Unfortunately, this school semester was very busy for me so the amount of time I was able to spend on my Inquiry project was less than I was hoping. I think I could’ve accomplished more on my topic and maybe added a write up explaining the point of my piece if I had given myself more time for the project. I also would’ve liked to have a concrete plan made earlier. I started the inquiry with a strong idea of what I wanted to accomplish, but this plan did not consider the likely number of hours of my work time taken up by other classes. For my next project I should make a stronger plan and have a better timetable or what and when I want to accomplish all my goals for the Inquiry.
Is there anything else you want to share?
Not really. I am very excited for the more open inquiry though and I’m hoping that I can get a lot accomplished towards my plan for the project. Hopefully there will be less class time taken away because of assemblies.
Do you want to continue with this topic, or something related for your Long Inquiry, or will you explore something different?
I will be exploring something slightly different. I want to do some studying on the writing of poetry and short stories. I want to write a small book that summarizes the helpful information I learned and includes samples of my writing where I applied what I learnt. It would be like a book for beginners from the perspective of a beginner. I’ve always been very interested in short forms of literature like poetry and short stories because though I love writing, finishing large projects is unimaginably difficult. I want to take some time to learn about something new and get decent at it so I can enjoy writing in shorter forms. Maybe learning and writing poetry will also give me better skills for reading and deciphering it.
Core Competency Reflection
Thinking
My IDS project revolved around reading some poetry then making art out of it. I read each poem thoroughly and deeply thought about how each could be represented in an image. I took my own thought out interpretation of each and at the end put them together in a collage. The layout of the collage took lots of thinking out and rearranging to make everything fit and still look appealing. I think in grew in this Core Competency because I also needed to put lot’s of thought into the UN 17 Goals and how all of them in some way affected me. I did lots of considering how I wanted to talk about or approach gender equality and ended up with a project that was very introspective and required my own opinion put into the final product.