Above is photo from 2002 when Keala Kennelly won the Billabong Pro which was a surf contest. She was one of the first openly gay professional surfers on tour.

Reflection of Major Project 1

To start off a little less technical than the other reflections, this was one of my favorite assignments of the quarter. There was so much that went into writing this piece and I found it really enjoyable to have to write about something that is such a sensitive topic and try to bring light to it. Not being part of the LGBTQ community and writing this piece was a little bit strange at first, and like you mentioned, I was putting much too much of my own voice in my essay. While I didn’t necessarily take any of my own voice out, I added the voice of people who are actually a part of the community to make sure I maintained a good balance.

The assignment for this project was to pick a word and completely dissect it. The goal was to write about the significance of the word itself and what that word truly is. I found it very interesting to look at the different meanings of the word “gay” and how it has developed over time and has been used for better and for worse and how here in 2021, the effort is being made to have that word as something that is strictly positive.

The two outcomes that this project focused on were 2 and 3. Outcome 2 for this specific project really focused on recognizing patterns across different forms of media and different sources. I would say I did a pretty good job at focusing on this more my second time around. My first draft was made up of mostly personal experiences which don’t get the point across as well as if it were coming from someone who is actually part of the LGBTQ community. After rereading my paper before revising, I knew that it would be a really good addition to add part of an interview that was with a kid who was bullied and was called slurs to show how much the significance of words can hurt someone. The kid was so upset with being called gay after coming out that he believed he didn’t even deserve to be alive. This was a really powerful quote that I really think added true substance to my paper and strengthened it as well. 

This draft shows my critical thinking ability because rather than have a one dimensional paper that was all about the negative way the word can be used, I also threw in a paragraph that shows how the LGBTQ community is reclaiming the negative slurs. While most of my essay was about the negative ways the words can be used and how much it can affect a person, I also wanted to show the growth of the LGBTQ community to stand tall and reclaim a word that has been used negatively for years. That in itself is such a powerful message from a strong group of people that I completely left out in my first version.This strengthens my essay because it shows more about how the word is currently developing as opposed to my previous version which only showed the history of the word.

I worked hard on outcomes three in sort of the same way. Outcomes three for this specific paper meant engaging with cultural and academic conversations. I think I did a really good job balancing the academic part which was talking about the word but also incorporating the conversation that people have revolving how these words interact with peoples emotions and how they feel. I did this through statistics of people in the LGBTQ community and compared it to either the nation as a whole or people who are heterosexual and I think it added a really good touch.

                     Keala Kennelly catching the biggest wave of her entire life. It didn't go as planned after this photo was taken and she had a massive wipeout.


Final Draft of MP!:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14argplrYbCLjmQcbAplkIVpO_UikG2XhXMNGeitjsAM/edit?usp=sharing