When the idea of the Capstone Project was first introduced to us by Paul, I knew that for my last writing project as an undergraduate I wanted to explore something substantial--i.e. that would contribute to my growth as a human as well as a writer--and reflective, due to the fact that this would likely be my last major piece of writing that would be scrutinized to this degree. I had been interested in the concept of identity for almost all of my college career and even more so around the start of this semester, as evidenced by the connection I had stuck in my mind while reading Game of Thrones. However, I'd never really had the proper motivation or situation to look as deeply into this concept as I craved to; this seemed to be the perfect chance.

 

Originally, I planned to explore the forces that contributed to the development of my own sense of identity as it existed at the start of the semester. Specifically, I wanted to trace my lifelong love of baseball as it related to how I viewed my place in the world, and so began exploring pieces of evidence related to this connection. I hit a wall with this idea pretty quickly though, as I couldn't find enough evidence--anecdotal or otherwise--to make a compelling argument to potential readers...or even to myself, really.

 

As a result, I decided to change the scope of this project entirely, focusing less of the idea of my subjective identity and more on what the concepts of identity and purpose have meant to society as a whole, both historically and in the modern day. In writing this, I wanted to inspire my potential readers to examine and challenge their conceptions of these abstract ideas, both on an individual and societal level. I thought that drafting a TED Talk-type of script would be the best way to accomplish this, and so began diving in.

 

As I previously mentioned, I wanted this project to be both substantial and reflective, and so I chose to examine these concepts through both a scientific lens, which I was familiar with and would help me reflect on my growth as a scientific writer, and a meta-physical one, which would be very challenging but also, I'd hoped, enriching. My first few attempts at this synthesis were choppy and lacked any kind of flow. Eventually, I found a way to tie the two perspectives together a little more smoothly by looking at the historical and modern conflict between science and religion as a mechanism for discussing the deeper issues I wanted to look at. This breakthrough essentially brought me to my final draft of the text as it appears in the magazine.

 

All along I'd known that I really wanted this project to be multimodal, since some type of visual aids would be required to clarify both the idea and the emotions I was trying to get across with my writing. Ultimately, I decided that the TED Talk format would not be realistic to attempt, due to both the density of my writing as well as logistical issues with filming, etc. However, I do think that I was able to get across all that I was originally going for with the final "magazine" format that appears on this site, and I'm pretty happy with it overall.