Before taking multi-modal writing I had not a clue as to what the term multi-modal writing even meant. This course has helped me develop a full understanding of what the term multi-modal means and how it can be used effectively to a wide array of audiences. When first told about the refugee project that we were going to working on the whole semester I was quite nervous as to how I, someone who has no knowledge of the refugee crisis was supposed to tell a compelling story about a refugee. Before conducted the interview, we had many small projects to work on, which helped build a foundation for the community storytelling project.

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      The audio biographies that we had to do really helped me to get an understanding as to how difficult it is to tell your own story. It also helped me understand how to tell my own story, which one would think is quite easy but it is quite difficult once you realize how much you want to tell, but you can only tell the details that make the story flow well together. I really enjoyed doing the audio biography because it helped me gain an appreciation and an understanding of how hard it is to tell a story, how much effort goes into it as well. Throughout the whole process of writing my audio biography I was thinking to myself as to how my story was nowhere near what the refugees went through. I had to think to myself though that everyone has a different story and each person’s story is meaningful.

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     I thought a really important part of the process of getting ready to interview people was to do the research on the country that both Ma Sarah and Mama Sani are from which is Liberia. Before doing the research I had no idea about the refugee crisis in Liberia. From reading the articles it really helped me prepare for the interview and how emotional it might be, and how much both of these women’s went through. Even though the research helped, it never really prepares you to hear the stories and they struggles that both of these women went through.

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    Before going into the interview I was quite nervous because I had never filmed anything before, but it was pretty simple. The interview went really well, and doing the research really helped us form our interview questions. Both Ma Sarah and Mama Sania were open to telling their stories and very eager to share most everything. After looking at all the footage that we had, as a group we decided that we wanted to make the point that these women are still suffering today and it never ends for them, especially focusing on the issue of PTSD.

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    The hardest part was cutting the footage down, since we interviewed them for about an hour and a half. From the reading that we did in “Out in the Wire” about how to make a good radio, a couple of the things that I thought about were sequence and music. Sequence is very important so it is easy for the listeners to follow along. Music was the last thing that we did in our video but it is also important because it has to match the tone of the video.

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