Breaking the binary of students – the process
Writing a research article was a completely new experience for me. I was challenging, fun, and satisfying to complete. I am proud of the work I have created even if it’s not the best of the best. I feel like I still made a clear point and created an engaging article.
For the first part of my process, I struggled to come up with a single, small but mighty, topic to focus on. I knew I wanted to do something that was a part of my life because it would be easier for me to connect to and work on considering I have never written an article before. I jumped from doing something relating to dance then something about the LGBT community into the trans community specifically and finally just the non-binary community on campus.
Once I found my topic, I brainstormed how I was going to incorporate sound, how I was going to approach it, and how I was going to make it interesting for a broad audience. I decided I would approach the topic from a personal view and incorporate my own questions on the matter at hand. Once I had that settled, I decided it would be a good idea to collect interviews as my sound so I could get information but also read the way people speak to get a deeper understanding. Finally, when I was ready to start writing, I decided to use in text questions and casual phrasing to keep my audience engaged. Rather than use formal text, I wanted my article to feel like a conversation rather than an essay. By writing in this manner, I found it more enjoyable because I would talk to my friends about the subject and I would get new ideas of what I could write based off of what I said in the conversation. I also learned a lot by having this conversation and getting interviews.
By the end of writing, I felt really happy with what I had. I had struggled to add my sound but once I figured it out, it looked really nice. I think I picked a really good topic because it’s rare I see stuff about the non-binary community. I feel like I did a good job explaining my ideas as well as the technical terms. I don’t think it’s the best article out there but I feel like this is a great first research article.
