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By Wilson Purcell

As Alec and Kurt noted, the presentation date falling a week before the final deadline was a bit concerning. For starters, I was underprepared as I had let myself forget about it, thinking all along “Oh, I’ve still got time; I have another week.” I panicked the day of trying to transpose my thoughts from Microsoft Word to USCScalar. Let me tell you… USCScalar was much more stubborn than its promotional and instructional materials let on. Specifically, I had trouble uploading documents to fit well into Scalar. Every time I tried, the text would end up off-kilter, and it looked awful. Maybe I should have seen that coming. Regardless, I am excited to work with the software and figure out the intricacies that make it churn out the linked, polished pages to which Dr. Shrout has exposed us throughout the semester.

Enough about my presentation.

I was surprised and impressed to see the variety of digital media my classmates employed in their projects. Between all of us, I don’t think a single method of digital representation was repeated. I think the diversity in choice reflects on the diversity of our interests as a class. Even with multiple classmates presenting on transportation networks, they all chose to illustrate similar information through different means, showing that they have different visions for the end project. Further, this speaks on the importance of technical presentations as a whole, as they allow the publisher to portray the information as she sees most fit regardless of artistic ability. Different digital media are designed for different digital representations, streamlining this process. Obviously, I have to commend Sherwood for creating his own website entirely, giving him absolute autonomy over his finished product. But this approach isn’t feasible for most. The use of differing platforms is exciting because it leads me to believe that we will have a variety of interesting project topics each shown in its own interesting way.