Finding Certainty in the Uncertain

This week, I worked on coding
my dataset so that I can write
my rhetorical analysis. To do this,
I printed out the information I
needed, and then taped it all
to my mirror and used different
colored pens and markers to code
for the information I needed.

It is spring break, and I’ll be spending the majority of my break with family, but the rest of my break will be full of gearing up for my final projects in hopes that I can get ahead and enjoy the last month of my Miami experience.

In most of my classes this week, my professors decided to introduce the final paper I will need to write for each of their classes. While most of these projects are fairly straightforward and similar to papers that I have written in the past, there is one project in particular that is like nothing else that I have written.

In my Writing and Rhetoric capstone (ENG 495: Rhetorics of Participatory Culture), I am working on writing a rhetorical analysis of how people are responding to (thereby, participating) Beyoncé’s music video that accompanies her song “Formation.”

I’m really excited about where this project is headed, but I’m also rather uncertain about what exactly I’m doing. In the past, I’ve done papers on case studies, as well as other rhetorical analyses, and I’ve come to the realization that this paper falls somewhere in between, but I’m still daunted by the task.

This week I’ve been working on the rhetorical analysis portion of the paper, and as much as I would like to say it’s going well, I have my doubts.

The dataset I am looking at is quite expansive, so I’m struggling to put it all together because I have so much to look at and so much to examine.

I know that in the end, I’ll end up with an interesting paper, but because of my perfectionist tendencies, this is hard to recognize that when I feel so uncertain about where my paper is currently.

I’m learning to find certainty in the uncertain.

I’m recognizing this same sort of feeling with my future, too. It’s all up in the air for now, and I’m finally at a point where I can reconcile the uncertain feeling by realizing that someway, somehow, I will end up employed.

It may not happen as quickly as I would like, but one way or another, I’m certain that everything will work out.