Finding yourself. It’s something that everyone goes through, worries about, and beats themselves up over. With this multi-genre collection, I wanted to give a bit of an insight to the truth of the matter. I know there are many many resources out there that can be used to learn about this theme but I wanted to give my own spin on it, because what I bring to it is that it is something that I myself have a deep connection with.

My two informational pieces were the magazine article, and the interview. The first two things I thought of as great ways to inspire someone were these two genres. I thought that if I used ways that involved real people who have real feelings, it might be more justifiable. People tend to steer more to believing someone who has experience than a piece of paper covered in facts and statistics. I interviewed someone who I believed to have a great deal of wisdom on the subject. The interview makes light of the difficulties of finding oneself and what mindset as well as actions you need to get through it.

The magazine article I wrote  was what I believed to be something that hadn’t quite been seen before on the internet. It’s arranged to introduce both factual information and knowledge from experience. I tried to fill it with insight as to how I believe the act of finding yourself is carried out but also wanted to give a bit of a background to reassure how natural it is for not everyone to go through the exact same stages.

For the fiction genre, I chose to write a short story and a poem. The story's theme of finding yourself is more subtle than it is in any of the other texts. You have to read between the lines a bit to understand how the girl is feeling, what she is running from, and where she thinks she is going to discover who she is. The poem repeats the main focus of having to lose yourself to find yourself. It recounts the worrisome feelings that one faces when trying to reveal who they are yet still feel like they are grasping at straws.

The piece that was created for the nonfiction genre was the journal entry. I just so happened to have a passage that I had written a few years ago that fit what I needed. To me, questioning the life around me leads to learning my thoughts and opinions on the matter. The piece of writing is meant to remind that there are so many people in this big wide world and it is incorrect to think that you’re the only one feeling lost or confused. I make the analogy of life being a cassette to put into perspective of how easily this could all just be a routine. Finding yourself will happen eventually because we’re all just going through the motions that will lead us the the end of the tape.

Last but not least is the artwork I painted for the visual/multimedia genre. The piece is called I Am Found because after all someone goes through to find themselves, eventually they do succeed. The painting depicts a girl stepping away from a dreary grey world into a bright and colourful one. Her arms are behind her back because she is slightly hesitant, unsure of what this new world is like when truly, it is full of self-acceptance and a complete understanding of who she is.

As I said in my Dear Reader note, this project really encouraged me to try something new. I’ve always been into writing and I’ve previously had to write poetry or magazine articles but having to make my own piece of art for the visual/multimedia text, that’s just not something I’ve ever done before. I put time and effort into that painting and I’m happy with how it turned out in the end. I talked about art in my multi-genre study as being the text type that I don’t really get, I love it but don’t understand it as easily as other genres yet it was the one that I was most fond of. Now, the poem I wrote is a whole other story. It didn’t stand out as something that I had fun doing and I’m pretty ashamed with the end result. I’ve never thought myself to be the very good at poetry.

From the get go, I had a clear path for a few of the pieces. For instance, with writing being a natural thing for me I had already planned on writing a short story. But I found it challenging in the beginning when I faced having to decide what form I was going to create each piece in. Seeing a page full of the different manners that our work could be made into was just so much more agonizing. If I were to do it all over again, my decision on what each piece was going to be would have happened a lot sooner so that I could give myself more time to stress and change my mind. Having said that, I still love the work that came out of all of this.

I’ve always been very interested in writing and the process it takes for a writer to get all of their work out on paper but to look so deeply into what it takes to compile the knowledge that a columnist needs to get their point across, it nearly astounded me to realize how much it takes to accomplish just one article.

To be utterly honest, it’s somewhat uncommon for me to feel genuinely challenged with the schoolwork I’m given. From the lengthy list of never-ending genre possibilities to the scramble to figure out how I’d manage to pull off the whole thing, this project kept me on my toes. It’s not everyday that I’m inspired to interview someone. This multi-genre collection grew on me once I got down to business. Six pieces spanning four diverse types of text targeting the theme of finding yourself. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.