AUDIO BIO REFLECTION

Audio Bio Reflection, 10/7/16

I chose to write about my experience in Haiti this past January because this moment was very transformative for me as a individual and as a part of this crazy world. Those few short hours really allowed me to understand that there are so many untold stories in the world and I think these stories are worth knowing and sharing. It's easy for me to share this story because I DO think that this story (if told correctly and thoroughly) can be transformative for other people, but I had a very difficult time framing this story in a way which the community partner would not feel that their own story was demeaned. There were several drafts and several complete re-writes in order for me to feel as though this my work was appropriate to share with our community partner. But I am very happy with how my audio bio turned out and I think that I shared just enough in order for the aside about my experience to be impactful.

To be honest, I didn't really have a set process that I followed. I began by focusing my whole bio on my experience in Tilori itself, but after talking to Sana and Chanda, it was VERY clear that this would not be effective. I needed to pull back a bit and focus more on the outcome of my experience rather than the experience itself. After all--my reflection on this experience is what "located me" where I am today. If we hadn't sat down to talk with Sana and Chanda, I don't think I would've really understood the potential issues or diminutive nature that my audio bio could potentially create. I'm so glad that we did meet with them because I feel as though that being sensitive in my writing was an important lesson to learn for this assignment as well as all my future work.

Well...my now dead computer was not the greatest option to record my voice on in the first draft of this bio. The audio that I added to my first draft was also just very, very bad. Unfortunately that's what happened in a pinch for time. For my final draft, I ended up renting an audio recorder from the library which captured my voice much better than the microphone on my PC. This was a bit frustrating because it broke up my voice into about 30 different audio files that needed to be manually placed one after another in Audacity, but I'm happy with the outcome. I'm still not sure I'm 100% happy with the song I chose for the background music, but the other song that would have been perfect was about 30 seconds too short. I think if I would have made my own voice any shorter in length, it would've lost its affect. The song I ended up choosing was the next best thing I could find. Overall, I really like Audacity and I thought this was a cool project even with all the craziness!