Metacognition: Jane Eyre Mash-Up

I like trying new things; I enjoy being adventurous; I live to challenge myself. This Jane Eyre mash-up we created in class was something new, adventurous, and challenging for me. I had never done anything like this project before, and I thoroughly enjoyed the idea of not having to write an essay after reading a book for once. At first, I wasn't all that optimistic about doing this project, but then as I began to get into it, I started to realize that it was fun.

Our group worked well together. I started off by suggesting that we do a theme from Jane Eyre that wasn't listed on the English website, because I thought it was something nobody else would choose to do a mash-up about. We chose the theme Void. It's merely a word, but in relation to Jane Eyre, it became so much more than just a simple word. I won't lie, it was definitely difficult trying to find 20 passages from Jane Eyre that truly captured the Void theme, but with patience and persistence, we managed to find the perfect excerpts. When it came to our other book sources and our magazine articles, newspaper stories, pictures, and YouTube videos, we found more than enough passages that would fit perfectly with our theme.

I think the part of this assignment that really made me think was trying to find a way to fit all 59 of our sources into a list that allowed the previous source to flow smoothly into the next source and still have the theme of the project remain somewhat apparent without losing focus. This definitely challenged me, and it took me as well as the rest of the group around five hours to figure out how to arrange the sources. I think one of the things that helped us the most was coming up with a system of organization for the sources. We ended up categorizing the sources according to sub-themes within the main theme. For example, we put all of the quotes relating to isolation (a sub-category of Void) in one pile, and quotes dealing with political, relationship, poverty, religion, love, etc. into corresponding piles. This way, we would be able to keep our evidence in order, while at the same time, also creating a flow of information that fit flawlessly with one another.

All in all, I thought this was a very unique and exciting project. I enjoyed being challenged and forcing myself to think way outside of the box. I would definitely recommend doing this project again next year.