Project Reflection:
Project Description: What did you do for this project? Describe it so that people who don’t know about this project will understand it.
To start off this project, we spent some weeks learning about globalization and its effects on the world. Afterwards, we were tasked to examine globalization and/or a topic connected to globalization, develop an opinion about said topic, and then express that opinion through an Op-Ed and a political cartoon. I chose to focus my project on the relationship between globalization and religion, specifically religious conflict. Oversimplified, the opinion that I developed about their relationship is that globalization causes religious conflict. I go into depth about how it does in my op-ed, and I present the oversimplified summary in my political cartoon.
Learning Reflection: What new understanding do you have about globalization after completing this project? What are your big takeaways?
Before I wrote my op-ed, I thought of globalization as a mostly positive force. I love to travel, and I thought that something that mixes and connects cultures would be a good thing. Religious conflict, on the other hand, is a force that has caused a tremendous amount of pain and suffering in the world, for as long as there have been religions. During the process of writing my op-ed, I learned that globalization plays a role in causing religious conflict by first creating existential uncertainty, which clearly displays how globalization can have negative effects. Knowing this, one big takeaway that I got was that in order to combat this existential anxiety, people need to look towards collective identities that bring more positivity into their life, not negativity like violence.
Cartoon Reflection: Look back at your first draft of your cartoon. How have you grown as a cartoonist? Be specific, and address some specific techniques you learned or changes you made between drafts.
My first draft of my cartoon was incredibly disorganized and very roughly drawn. I had panels of confused people and an ambiguous hand reaching out to existentially anxious people. The panels were in the wrong order, my "people" were stick figures, and the hand had long nails like a vampire. I was attempting to use labels, analogy, and symbolism as techniques. In my final draft, I refined my analogy by comparing identity to a sun shining on people, with globalization creating a shadow, an area without identity. In the sunlight of identity were different religious groups that were recruiting people and insulting the other groups. This analogy made much more sense, especially with words to label the different components. Compared to my first draft, my final draft of my cartoon conveyed the message of my op-ed a lot more efficiently.
Op-Ed Reflection: How was the writing you did for this assignment different from writing you’ve done in the past? What did you learn from doing this type of writing that you could apply to future writing assignments?
The type of writing that is used for an op-ed is opinion writing. Although I've used opinion writing in the past, I have not previously used it to write about such complex concepts. The concepts that I argued for in the past were usually fairly straightforward and direct. For this piece, I had to first teach the reader about religious conflict and globalization before I could describe their relationship and how an effect of globalization can cause religious conflict. This piece is definitely one of my more sophisticated opinion pieces. It will help me in the future by improving my ability to express my opinions powerfully and precisely. I will possibly need to write opinion pieces for any professional work I publish that makes a judgement, in whatever field. Closer in the future, my ability to write eloquent opinion piece will be useful with college applications and essays.