Repurpose:

 

           My journey through the repurposing project wasn’t an extraordinarily difficult one. The second my instructor, Ray, brought up the assignment and asked us to begin to think about a piece we’d like a second shot at, I knew right away what I wanted to do. I had written a research paper in a public health class I was taking about the FDA banning gay men from donating blood after the AIDS outbreak. Blood donation and support of the LGBT community are two things I care very deeply about, but writing this paper in a research format didn’t give me the liberty to have my own voice and opinions become part of the final product. For this reason, I decided to turn that research paper into an editorial of sorts, explaining the background behind the ban and how its presence today perpetuates what is still a discriminatory culture in many ways.

            One of the biggest challenges I faced was maintaining a balance between a professional, informational tone and a very clear stance on the issue. I was worried the final draft would sound accusatory and rant-like. While this emotionally charged tone was what I had in mind when I started writing my first revision of the paper, by the end of the process it had evolved into an exposé of sorts. Many people do not know the history behind the FDA blood ban, nor the on-going battle in attempts to have it repealed. By the end, my goal shifted to a desire to simply educate and persuade anyone reading my piece that the blood ban certainly does more harm than good, and that the minor revisions the FDA has made in no way compensate for the discrimination it upholds.

Most of the research for the informational aspects of the paper was already done, since I needed all of it in order to write the original piece. From there it was simply writing the more emotional, persuasive sections of the piece, weaving it in with the contextual information. Truth be told, I don’t think my final draft is quite where it could be, but as a whole I am pleased with how it turned out. My voice as a writer isn’t explicitly apparent; I don’t think I took as many liberties writing the repurposed as I could have, but I still am happier with it than I was with the original piece.

 

Remediation:

 

            The remediation was the biggest challenge for me of the three projects. I was stuck, having a hard time choosing a direction to go in. After acknowledging that my repurposed piece was in many ways a timeline of the battle gay men have fought with the FDA over blood donation, I decided to bring that timeline to life through an info-graphic. Using a website called Piktochart, I created a timeline of the biggest events of LGBT history in the United States, starting from the 1960’s and ending at present day. Never having created anything like this before, and I’m certainly no graphic designer, making it visually appealing was a big challenge for me. I’m still not completely content with the way it looks now, but I do believe it still serves its purpose of giving a broad look into the history of homosexuality in the United States and the biggest events that impacted the LGBT community.

This project also involved a bit of research, but not quite as much as the repurposing piece. I selected what I deemed the most impactful and meaningful dates, or dates that demonstrated a “battle” between the LGBT community and the broader, heterosexual, United States population. If I were to re-do this project I would likely go much more in-depth, and perhaps take some more risks in terms of the graphics choices and overall layout. 

 

Why I Write

 

            This project was the easiest of the three for me, because it came straight from the heart. I wanted to truly dig down and find the reason why I write, a question whose answer had eluded me until now, and truthfully, a question I had never thought about. I still don’t think I can fairly say that I absolutely know why I write – the answer is more complex and nuanced than is possible to articulate, but I think I uncovered one of the larger factors in the equation. Nothing prompts someone to take certain action like a disdain for something else. The project was pleasant to complete because it gave me a chance to inject as much of my writing voice into it as possible. I mentioned that I wish I had done more of that in my repurposed piece, and the Why I Write gave me this opportunity.