1st Thesis Group Session with Beth (Feb 15)

I missed the official first group session last week, so will be making up for another one next week.

This group session was really helpful to me, a lot of useful feedback from Ai, Chelsea, Jheanell, and Beth.

I discussed my crisis in finding a focusing point to dive in for a thesis, and started with talking about the previous project on Swastika symbol. During my presentation of the previous poll project this time around, I realized I got a little better in presenting the project, and really telling what the project is about, without intended to misdirect audiences. I have a tendency to misdirect people in reading my work in the past, it’s unclear to me why and when it became a habit, but I have to constantly reminded myself to stay sincere and honest when I present. I’d say I did a decent job this time around.

Some feedbacks I got is that they appreciate how my works invite difficult conversations into the room, topics like this can easily gone wrong, be careful of creating  “dog whistling” unintentionally. The humanity and acknowledgement of ignorant are also what’s appreciated in my previous works. As for participants, it’s also fun to learn about the different reactions based on the same project.

Another interesting point is how I describe things, the amount of self-analysis and criticism in front of the audience is almost a project idea itself. Can maybe look into that. We also got into some discussion on the confederate flag usage in the south as an example of how symbols mean very different things for different people.