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The Invisible Bridge

Writing 420

A chronicle of how writing has not only changed my life, but has changed over the years.

Some people say they’re more right-brained: emotional, creative, intuitive, more artsy. Others say they’re more left-brained: rational, analytical, critical thinkers, more science-y and math-y. For a long time, I struggled with deciding which kind of person I wanted to be because I thought I had to choose. This internal fight went on for years as I tried to figure out where my true priorities and passions lay while feeding both brains. When I began college, I thought I could continue nurturing the artist within as I pursued the pre-med path, but ultimately found it impossible to dedicate over 20 hours to a single portrait when I had a myriad of chemical reagents and biological pathways to memorize. My right-brained self felt like it was disappearing, neglected and left to whither, as science slowly prevailed. But during second semester of my sophomore year, I stumbled upon the Minor in Writing program. Intrigued by writing’s familiarity, having done it my entire life as a student, and the recess it offered from the world of neurons, hormones, and receptors, I decided this interest could be squeezed into the gaps of my confusing identity.  With each semester of writing that followed, I realized writing had become my savior, the one to make me realize that I can be both an artist and a scientist. Writing finally connected two sides that are undeniably me, but had a hard time meshing. By understanding and using writing as both an art form and as a means to express my opinions on health, art and science have taken on new definitions that highlight their mutualistic relationship and challenge their existence as discrete fields.

 

Writing 220 (Introduction to the Minor in Writing) was the first class unrelated to my major that I took seriously. I worked with the intent of doing well to boost my medical school application, however with each additional project, I found myself more and more surprised at the amount of freedom writing actually offered. I was given complete control over subject and structure in addition to the unforeseen, but exciting opportunity to explore genres. Through projects that took on forms beyond the conventional essay, such as informal blog-style articles and advertisement campaigns, I gained many skills that can be applied to my interests to contribute to the improvement of global health and to be a more purposeful and heartfelt artist. In particular, my re-mediation project pushed me to hone my communication and interpersonal skills. I transformed the information I had gathered on subconscious eating for another project into five advertisements that aim to educate the public on visual cues that can affect our food intake and on ways we can use them to our advantage to control overeating. I used a variety of visual elements and persuasion techniques to demonstrate how details can affect how we perceive food volume and ultimately, how much we eat.

 

 

As demonstrated by the diagram, the most obvious need to be concise and engaging while remaining informative was only one of many to consider. As overwhelming as it was to consider everything from the quality of the images to image layout to font to color (each separately and together), the process was incredibly valuable as it tested my creativity and pushed me to learn how to argue with more than just text. Thinking and arguing in such an unconventional fashion is akin to the process of creating any piece of art in which details, ideas, and different elements are constantly being added, deleted, and edited. With each draft, different features become more unified and the message becomes clearer. I was personally driven to convey this important information to the public because the need to eat a healthy and balanced diet is a belief I strongly stand behind, especially as a future healthcare professional who is going to be relaying this mantra to patients daily, so the number of revisions it took to create a work that was both visually appealing and delivered a clear argument was well worth my time.

 

I revisited multimodal writing again for my re-mediation project in my English 225 (Academic Argumentation: Contemporary Food Issues) course. In a previous assignment for the class, I argued that using the word “fat” perpetuates untrue implications of character and causes great damage to people’s physical and mental health, so people should be more aware of the harmful effects the word can have on thought and action. I re-mediated this idea into a video that makes the more specific argument that the word “fat” shouldn’t be used at all (as opposed to just using it more mindfully) because of the tremendous effects it can have on psychological and social health. Creating a convincing visual argument with video testimonials, images, audio clips, music, statistics, and transitions highlighted how important it is for artists to pay attention to details, especially those that aren’t consciously processed, but can still have a great impact on how we understand and believe information. Traditional text arguments ask for clearly presented and articulated evidence, but I learned that visual arguments require an additional focus on subtle persuasion through clever coloring, layering, blending, positioning, and sizing of different elements. For example, I recorded people responding to images of obese people and in the video, used the audio on top of these images, subtitles, and slow somber music to demonstrate how horrible it is that the first thing we notice or think of when we see an overweight person is “morbid,” “repulsive,” or “ew.” These components were essential in establishing mood and tempo, which are critical in the type of response evoked. Instead of losing the priorities I had as an artist in this nontraditional creative project, my desire to make an audience believe a scene and emotion was enhanced by it. The making of this atypical form of argumentation not only improved the skills that I already had as an artist, but it also taught me how to use those skills to argue more comprehensively.

 

My definition and understanding of art was further challenged in Psych 302 (Research Methods in Cognitive Neuroscience), which was a very unique writing course in that I had limited freedom in the subject of my creative products, but had great freedom in my analysis of the topics. We focused on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a neuroimaging procedure that is commonly used in medicine and research, and how they can both benefit and harm society. For our final assignment, we were asked to read the book Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience by Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld and four journal articles, and write a paper that covered the following issues that have emerged with fMRI’s rise in psychology and science: labeling addiction as a brain disease, neuromarketing, use of brain scans as lie detection tests, and use of brain scans in law. I was immediately intrigued by this subject because fMRI scans are a very unique form of art; normally artists have control over the product more than their audience’s interpretation of the product, but in contrast, those who create brain scans with the fMRI have no control over the images that are produced and complete control over how they are analyzed. Different scientists can interpret the same set of “facts” in multiple ways and this paper helped me articulate a side of science the public is largely unfamiliar with. Many people understand science to be a straightforward and objective field that survives based on facts, however, that’s not the case most of the time. “Facts,” such as fMRI images that are considered raw representations of brains, can support conflicting conclusions depending on contextual and procedural factors. For example, whether or not a brain scan was smoothed can affect how much brain activity is observed in a specific brain region. If a brain scan is smoothed, meaning the activity in a designated region was averaged, one structure within this region may appear to be less active than it really is if it is surrounded by very inactive structures. These details are important to consider as it can greatly impact a diagnosis. This course wasn’t valuable in the same way my other writing courses were as I only wrote in the traditional text form, which didn’t really expand my abilities to present information creatively. However, considering fMRI’s validity in hypothetical situations, such whether it can be used to prevent someone from getting parole or how it can be used to predict purchasing behavior, made me much more creative in my critical thinking and analysis of scenarios and pushed me to consider multiple perspectives and different factors that can affect them.

 

I once thought art could only be defined as pictures, but this minor made me realize art exists in many forms: photography, text, video, audio, interactive websites, performance, and any combination of these. The effects of art are expansive and extend into all aspects of life, from medicine to law to engineering to entertainment. No matter what we’re interested in and what we do, we live artistically as everything we do follows some process of observation, deliberation, execution, and effect and asks for innovation and originality. Because we each own “two brains” that are connected to unequal degrees, we are all artists who create things that are uniquely us and come into existence thanks to a special system of neurochemistry that does not live within any other being. My combination of creativity and rationality manifests in a unique portfolio of interests and products that has greatly helped me define my identity and future goals. By exploring art in less traditional mediums through this minor, I’ve come to understand art and science to be not nearly as different as my young adult self originally believed. Critical thinking, a skill required by all physicians, and creativity, a quality necessary in all artists, are actually incredibly similar processes that co-exist within writing. Both critical thinking and creativity require focus, purpose, imagination, thoughtful interpretation, and depth, and writing has been crucial in helping me develop both. Instead of choosing one passion over another, I found a way to meld the two together and create a third passion, one that has transformed who I am as both an artist and scientist.

 

Spacing between phrases to break up the text for easier reading

Pictures of objects taken at the exact same angle and distance in both images to emphasize the effect of the environment

Images placed side-by-side for easy comparison

Larger font size and capitalization to grab viewers' attention

Different colored text to draw viewers' attention to a specific idea

Easy readable font

Contrast between food and plate

Contrast between plate and table

Concise phrases to get the message across quicker and to hold viewers' attention longer

SOPHIA PENG

Writing 420 Capstone Portfolio
The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.
David Hare
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