It Finally Happened

• Lauren B
• 0
• on Nov 03, 2022

When I was in elementary school I read a book called “The Time-Traveling Fashionista On Board the Titanic (The Time-Traveling Fashionista” and though I didn’t know it at the time, that book was the start of my Titanic interest. Around that same time, I walked into my future middle school library, and right there, front and center was “Titanic: Voice From the Disaster.” I remember asking my brother if he could check it out for me and he said, thus, out of spite for that moment the obsession phase of my interest had begun. As you can see Titanic has fascinated me for six to seven years but never, not once have we learned about it in school. This greatly disappointed me as I wanted to properly learn, not just through my own research, about the ship I found so interesting. So my friends and family were often subjected to Titanic trivia time where I would make them ask me questions about the ship so I could show off how much I knew. At this point in my life, I had given up on learning or doing anything about Titanic for school so I was ecstatic when I saw that one of the letter of note options was Titanic. 

I was really excited not only to write an essay but give a presentation about a topic that had so deeply fascinated me for so long. When I first got the assignment I had no idea what I wanted to write about, for all my knowledge about the event I had no clue what part of it I wanted to analyze. It wasn’t until we made a mind map for “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” and went through the process of creating one that I realized I could use the same process for Titanic. At first, I wanted to comment on the mysteriousness of Titanic and why that made it so intriguing but I didn’t love that idea. I realized that a part of me wanted to find out why I myself was so fascinated by the ship because even though I’ve been researching this ship for over five years I’ve never been properly able to answer the question why? When I was creating the mind map I asked myself what the main themes of Titanic were and immediately luxury and misinformation came to mind. From that I decided what the sub-themes were; perfectionism, external pressure, perceived notions, and mistakes immediately sprang to mind. I asked myself if any questions had arisen and I realized that I was wondering how the luxury of the ship played into everything, thus, forming my essay. The format of making a mind map and the simplicity of it all allowed me to look at the event, not through a historical lens but an analytical one. The outcome of this activity was the thesis and overall argument I wanted to make in my essay and presentation. But most importantly, I finally found out why I love learning about Titanic; because the luxuriousness and miscommunication of the ship was the implicit reason for sinking while the iceberg is the most obvious. 

Writing the essay was a relatively simple task for me to complete. Once I had gotten started I had quite a large idea of what I wanted to write about. I finished my essay in about six days and then spent three days cutting it down so it would fall under the word limit. I already knew a lot about the topic and what points I wanted to bring up so a lot of my work was simply putting words to paper and finding sources that corroborated what I already knew. But this wasn’t as simple as it seemed. My extreme knowledge of ships hindered my writing process in some cases, there were times when it was hard for me to let go of just saying facts and instead analyzing them. There was a section I was writing that I would use as evidence but when I looked at what I had written I realized it was just the historical background for my upcoming quote. I remember quite vividly being really frustrated with myself because I couldn’t figure out how to analyze something that was all fact and plain information. It wasn’t until I had taken a break and came back to the essay that I realized it wasn’t evidence at all. I was simply overzealous with what I wanted to include in my essay, wanting to show off everything I knew even though that wouldn’t make my essay better, only longer. As I mentioned previously I had to find sources for the evidence I was bringing and this was a slight struggle for me. As I had been researching the ship for years at this point I knew a lot of information but didn’t necessarily know where it came from, this made finding sources for that information really difficult as well as frustrating. Often I would be looking for one specific point but need to use two sources to justify it because I couldn’t find one that mentioned everything I needed. I completely recognized the thought that this was something that I had to do and in the end, it taught me a lot about research and how you may not always find what you’re looking for very easily.

The presentation came easily to me as well since it was based on my essay. The only problem I really ran into with it was actually practicing it. The one button studio wasn’t as simple to use as I thought it would be and every time I timed my presentation for length it was all over the place. While doing one button I ran into a lot of technical difficulties which caused me to take an hour to do something that only should’ve lasted 15 minutes but now I know how to use the studio so something came out of that experience. But my main problem was timing my presentation. Depending on who I was giving my presentation to, the amount of words I wanted to say, and the situation I was in my presentation would run from just under eight minutes to just over ten, both numbers in the range of something that could cost me points in my grade. If I was practicing alone or in one button the presentation would be just over ten minutes but just saying my script is just under 8 minutes. This was really frustrating as I could never quite guarantee how long my presentation would take and if I needed to either talk more or less. During the presentation this became apparent to me when I was almost done presenting and yet I felt like I raced through everything. When I’m presenting to public groups like classes I get nervous, my heart starts to beat really fast and I forget everything I’m about to say even if I know the subject really well. Today I was concerned that because I was so nervous my presentation was just under eight minutes so I tried to slow down and talk at a more normal pace which hopefully helped me in that area. 

Overall, I’m happy to say that even though it took six years I finally got to do something related to Titanic for school and that I found out the true reason why I’m so fascinated by the ship. It’s not something that I expected to happen and I had all but given up on finding why but I’m incredibly grateful that I did find out. These projects taught me how rewarding and eye-opening it can be to write about something you love, even when it’s hard.