Reflection

As I grew older I realized that so many stories are lost simply because people don’t take the time to write them down. My paternal grandmother had so many stories but many of them were lost because they weren’t written down or recorded. I didn’t want my maternal grandmother’s stories lost, so I chose this as my EDGE project.As I interviewed my grandmother, I realized that she had a wealth of information and experience to share. She had been a lot of places, she had experienced some of the most transformative years in the United States, and she had seen many things across the world. It seemed that as I began this process, I assumed I would be able to fit everything into one book. As I interviewed her, I quickly realized that I would need significantly more time and energy in order to tell her whole story. Thus, the most challenging part of the process was choosing what would go in the book and what would have to wait until next time. My plan is to continue this process by interviewing her and adding to the book. I want to be able to complete a book that has stories from all of her life, not just her childhood and teenage years and her retirement years.

The process of completing this project began with interviewing my grandma. I visited her at her home with some questions. I turned on the camera, asked her a few questions, and let her tell her stories. After recording the two interviews, we went through her photos and took pictures of them. The work after that consisted of me transcribing her interviews and then creating the book on Shutterfly. The process of actually creating the book took a long time. I created a design for the book, placed the photos and text, and then worked on fine-tuning everything. I wanted the book to look professional, so this process was more intensive.

My goal was to compile a book of my grandmother’s stories and I achieved that goal. I now have a physical copy of my grandmother’s stories and this is something that I can share with my family. My final outcome was to expand my writing skills to include biographical writing, which I did. In addition to this, I used my editing skills throughout this process. However, I did not achieve my outcome of learning Photoshop. This is simply because I chose to use another design program that worked better for the book. I also gained the skill of learning how to create a scrapbook, something I had never done before.

EDGE stands for Education Designed to Give experience, which for graduating seniors means that this education gives them real-life experience that they can use in the future. I believe that SUU put an experiential learning requirement in place because they wanted to provide a way for people to work on a project that inspires or challenges them, among many other things. It provides a way for students to work on something that will benefit them now and in the future.