When I look back on my 30 day challenge, writing a blog about it, making a digital story, and now finishing this “ePortfolio”, I have decidedly mixed feelings. When I was told that my 30 day challenge had to have a positive effect on my life it became apparent what I should do for it, quit smoking cigarettes. It was easily the best decision I made the entire semester. Completing the 30 day challenge in itself was unchallenging for me, to say the least. What seemed to be difficult was writing the blog entries about my challenge. I had little to talk about. There did not seem to be much to tell other than that I stopped buy and smoking cigarettes. I had to think of other topics to talk about that I could somehow relate to quitting smoking. I talked about going on hikes, taking my brother’s dog for a walk, and how my emotions sometimes got the best of me while driving. All of those are things that replaced my nicotine habit.
Creating my digital story was the most demanding assignment I was given this semester. I have plenty of stories that I know I could have told well. Each with enough pictures for any of them to have made an amazing story, yet I had to somehow make it about my 30 day challenge. This, coupled with the fact that I am technologically illiterate, made the project difficult for me. I finally decided that I could tell the story of the first time I saw combat action, while deployed to Afghanistan, which was the reason that I started smoking in the first place. From here I started the task a little differently than most. I put together my video without having completed my narration for it. I had an idea of what I wanted to do and where I wanted it end up but no plans on how to get there. After playing around with the WeVideo program for a few hours I had finally put together a semi-coherent stream of pictures that almost told a story. This is where is got interesting for me. I watched the video I had made two or three times to figure out the timing of the pictures and the black screens. I then played the video and recorded my narration off of the top of my head. Doing so took me six or seven tries to get just right. This meant that each time I recorded myself the story I told was slightly different. The finished product turned out to be better than I had originally expected it to be.
If I had the chance to go back and do the 30 day challenge over again I know I would have done it a little differently. I still would have chosen to quit smoking, which was something that I had been wanting to do for a long time, and I’m happy that I completed that goal. I think I would have written the blog in a different way, though, maybe adding more information about health and quitting smoking techniques. Overall I enjoyed this English class. It had been ten years since the last time I had taken any formal classes and I feel like I did well with my writing although I know that I could have put a little more time and effort into it. During the last semester I learned that I am able to write better than I had previously thought and I actually enjoy writing. I could see myself becoming an author of sorts, but only if there was money in doing so.
