Learning About Myself

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For class, we had to draft a summary on our documentary that we watched. When we came in with our drafted summary we were asked to free write. The documentary I chose to watch was Living On One Dollar.  I am not sure if we had to post our free write or any excerpts but better be safe than sorry.

The reason why I chose this documentary was because in my criminology class we are learning of all sorts of theories people have as to why one may commit a crime. A lot of the theories involve the individual's living conditions. People living in lower class neighborhoods tend to commit more crimes. So the documentary Living On One Dollar, really sparked my interest. Do these theories apply to people outside the United States living in such conditions where crime is needed for survival? After watching the documentary, where the only crime that was committed was videotaping inside a local bank, I can soundly say that crime is not committed because of living conditions. The people living there fight for their lives every day and make choices daily that impact them greatly. 

Anyways back to the whole free write part. We were suppose to answer the question "With the freedom you had for the documentary project, what did you learn about yourself?"

I learned that my intense note taking really pays off. I typically am known for taking too much notes. The amount of notes I took for the documentary helped me a lot though. I was able to easily look back at my notes and recall the film with no issues. Another thing is that I have always struggled to write in one tense and typically write in the past tense. This assignment was to be done with the present tense. That was hard and I am sure that there are some places where I messed up. Grammar is also another issue that I always encounter. I hope it was not too shabby though. My MLA format was a little rusty, so I did have to dust off a lot of cobwebs by visiting the Purdue OWL page. I still missed a couple things. I know I am not a perfect writer and it is okay because practice makes perfect. I know that if I make the effort, I will only grow. 

I really was happy when I found out I could keep my documentary. In my write up I wrote that if I was going to do this again, I would probably just write the summary while watching the documentary, and later fix and add what was needed. The reason being is that my notes were really detailed. All I had to do was make it into complete sentences and I was basically done with my summary. So the biggest thing I learned is that being prepared and taking notes pays off.