Copywriting
Student portfolio
THREE CHALLENGES
Lockdown journal
The three challenges I encountered during COVID-19 and lockdown were the absolute shock of adjusting from social, integrated environments to practically confinement, the stress of losing interest and love for things that I took for granted, as well as the inescapable feelings of loss, anxiety and nostalgia.
I found myself internalising many issues that were out of my control during lockdown but were experienced by many in the peripheral. These issues were empathy fatigue from constant social media access — including the current political, social, activist climate — that affects anyone that happens to scroll through their daily feed in present day. I discussed certain articles that I found during lockdown that affected specifically Capetonians as it revolved around the homelessness, social problems as well as governmental applications of Lockdown restrictions. The specific shock from adjusting to being at home day-in-and-day-out has been massively challenging as it has cause countless hours of possibly destructive inflection, reflection, and deliberation of myself as a friend and companion to others. Having a father being a doctor during this pandemic has also caused me to evaluate my current choice as a career, whether or not I will succeed or let my family down, or if I am being too dramatic.More often than not, I came to the conclusion of being melodramatic. Many of my images that I compiled and created were pertaining to myself or body with circumstances occurring over and around me. This was purposefully done to indicate the immediacy of my feelings relating to circumstances. I became more comfortable with recognising the infallibility of being perfect 100% of the time, as well as the mental real estate that the perception of longing for a different time takes up without compensation.
The challenge of being alone when I was accustomed to being around humans all the time is yet to be overcome, however; gratitude, hope and anticipation of being alive during this pandemic prevails.The second challenge that I encountered reared its ugly head once I started developing an almost empty feeling whenever I busied myself with activities that brought me joy. Reading books, playing guitar, writing poetry, painting in the sun; these all started to feel redundant in the grander scheme of things. I found myself luckily being on a road-trip once restrictions eased with the friends I made at Vega as well as my partner of a year. We were travelling through the Garden Route and ultimately arrived in Jongensfontein, where I caught a second breath of life.
I am yet to completely overcome this challenge as it is encountered in daily activities. This challenge has been emotionally and mentally taxing, as I can imagine many other people feel. The best way to approach this challenge is to take it as it comes and not overexert my internal resources by focusing on a temporary problem
The third challenge that I encountered was far more intimately challenging as it causes a frequent personal problem. As a teenager with acute anxiety and depression, the tendency to overthink and procrastinate hurts the creative individual inside. The subatomic levels of inflection was the root of a lot of my self-doubt, anxiety and nostalgia. The feelings of loss were accentuated by the significant gender-based violence protests and influx in South Africa specifically. These affected me personally as my mother lived through the first protests during the 80’s and as the first image of femininity for a girl, I view my mother as strong/resilient. The protests caused her foundation as a woman to crumble and it left me to pick up the pieces – inadvertently losing my mother whilst spiralling and losing myself during lockdown.
Emotionally, I am drained from the internal war with ambivalence when being a girl in South Africa, as well as being a woman prematurely. These two vastly different levels of womanhood caused me to feel very primitive feelings of nostalgia for my grandmother, who passed away in January before I started at Vega. I longed for her advice as a woman and as carer. I felt as if I have become a shell of who I used to be. These challenges have consequently overwhelmed me, however, I feel that I have overcome them with the active decision to put myself first.The people affected by the challenges are myself, my immediate family such as my father and mother, as well as my friends and partner. The internalising of my challenges have caused me to push these people away. The outcome of me choosing to be proactive in my own issues, decisively working towards being a better daughter and sister, and additionally becoming a better friend and partner have allowed the leeway of overcoming the challenges as I have been given the grace to grow. The success is in the process, as I have been reminded by family and lecturers at Vega.Therefore, my process was in the forms of sketches and image compilations which eventually became multi-media collages.
LU3 THEME 1 HOMEWORK
Context questions
Based on the graphic, the social context has the greatest impact on one’s sense of self. This is due to how humans are social creatures. Because of this, human beings adapt to social environments and base their opinions, experiences, emotional reactions, and relationships on social interaction
There is a foundational relationship between the self, and the context. Context gives reason and atmosphere for the self to be able to flourish or grow. This is during the developmental stages of oneself. The dynamic atmosphere that is any context, has a direct relationship with response. This can be illustrated by the age-old conversation, nature versus nurture. One’s “self” is what is given. That is the nature. The “context”, is the nature.
Impact questions
Culture impacts one’s personal identity by giving a guideline of who or what one wants to become, based off of the familiarity or complexity of the culture one is born into. Very often in today’s society, people drift away from their culture in pursuit of finding more identity. Culture is how family and generations of family adapt to survive – may it be cultural activities such as dancing or serenading, or the cultural hereditary acts of prayer. It depends on which culture one resonates with in terms of morals, values, and code of conduct.
- Society takes a person and offers differentiation. Without society, people would be forced to answering questions that they do not have the answers to. Society is very much a herd, however, and often leads to sheep mentality. This can change one’s identity into either becoming a part of social normality, or becoming an individual.
- Geography can cause a person’s identity to take a physical manifestation of aspirations, ambition, goals, weaknesses, fears. If someone is raised in a vast mountain-range, they might embrace heights. In this cases, this person can have their identity be associated with nature or where they are happiest. In other cases, this individual can absolutely abhor height, small-town living, and feel claustrophobic by the wide expanse of openness. Geographical context can cause one’s racial identity as well. The personal identity sculpted in geography can cause the person to desire to discover, or to stay.
- Economy impacts one’s personal identity by giving the financial and social tangibility to achieve dreams, or to be held in place.
Identity questions
Personal identity is hand-in-hand with cultural and social identity due to the role of culture in one’s life, and how social interaction introduces a person to differentiated beliefs. Culture is what a person defines themselves as – being religious, belonging to an ethnic group, activities and pastimes, even how one’s internal household reflects their culture. Culture gives a person an identity by being able to identify what the future and aspirations for a person can be, based off of the current lifestyle. Social identity is how one interacts, stands out socially, whether a person is introverted or extroverted, which type of personality a person identifies with. These are the parts of a sum total. A person’s identity is created through engaging with the community which can happen through cultural gatherings or activities, and within this the social identity develops.
- The particular role within the greater social, cultural and economic context is to diversify one’s worldly perspective. By being socially conscious, one becomes more understanding and open-minded to society and the fluctuations of trends, social responsibilities, general awareness of socio-economic and political issues. These particular contexts relate directly to the specific role of identity by shaping one and leaving space to choose one’s identity, simultaneously.
- When telling a story, one must be cognizant of the fact that every person comes from a different culture and value system. Regardless of how generic or seemingly comfortable the conversation is, one could be treading on thin ice when veering into different conversation topics and/or issues that could be triggering for some, meanwhile for others it is insignificant. The best way to tell a story is to be as sensitive as possible without showing clear subjectivity, or bias to any specific belief system, orientation, or opinion.
TASK 3 FINAL
Oorwinning se refleksie
I found that through overcoming the challenges recorded in my lockdown journal, a surreal sense of pride settled on my shoulders.
It was shortly hereafter that I realised that I had in fact not overcome any of these issues, and that these challenges would rear their ugly heads at me at some point again. The brief stipulated writing a lockdown journal and turning it into a comic or visual session with a narrative revolving ourself.
By creating a three-act narrative explaining these emotions, fears, and overcoming them, I felt slightly more in control of my life and fears.
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