Critical Reflection of a pen

This long and daunting task which took me ages to write all started about two weeks ago when my owner took me out of her top draw in her desk and pressed me against the paper. Together we started to write some notes for her piece on the famous face. This she had not chosen yet so firstly we wrote down a list of names. Then she chose Alyssa Milano. Once we had a face, she put me down whilst she searched the computer for a picture of Alyssa to print off so she had something to look at and work with.

She then proceeded to look through magazines for good descriptive words or sentences about Alyssa to underline and later use for her piece which I think she said would be a description. This I could tell was going to be fun trying to create a picture of this face for the reader to imagine as they read. Together we get to come up with clever metaphors which best describe her and also other types of descriptive language. Also to try and help us in trying to write, she read a few descriptions of characters in books, especially of the face.

Then she would get me and do the same as she did with the magazines. After that we both read a few of the set readings in the course book. Well she did the reading I was just in her hand underlining anything important she found. The first article she read was an extensive one entitled “Why Spock could never have evolved” by D. Evans. Throughout this reading she came across ideas such as the fact that emotions and facial expressions are important in order for one to survive and how Spock and his “race had no emotion” (Evans 2001, pg 31).

But when looking at Alyssa’s face she found that it was quite the opposite. Compared to that of Spock’s face, Alyssa’s was very expressive especially when looking at her eyes and smile. The reading also talked about the emotion of joy and how it is classed as “motivators” (Evans 2001, pg 38) or that “joy is produced by actions and events” (Evans 2001, pg 38). This was clearly seen when looking at Alyssa’s face in that she is seen as a positive personality and is happy because of the life she leads so therefore because she is happy and feels joy her face shows this through her eyes and smile.

There is also the idea that “external expressions of emotions provide information to others” (Evans 2001, pg 40). This is clearly seen when looking at Alyssa in that her face is highly expressive and we can learn a lot about the type of person she is. The next reading we looked at is where she got most of her ideas from titled “About Face” by J. Cole. This reading made my head hurt from all the underlining she made me do. I was ready to scream out to her to underline the whole thing but pens can’t talk.

Well to humans they can’t talk and so if her pen was to start screaming out stuff at her it might freak her out a bit and well she was already quite stressed so I didn’t. Ok, so the ideas she got from this reading were things like how a character can be created by appearance, and the idea of “the relationship between a person’s face and his or her personality and self” (Cole 1998, pg 2). We found this to be the case with Alyssa. Like I mentioned before, Alyssa uses her facial expressions well and we can tell a lot from them.

Such as that she has a positive personality and can be cheeky, youthful, sincere, shy and independent. She uses her face well and is comfortable with herself enough to express herself through her face rather than hide behind fake smiles and heaps of makeup. Also she found the idea that “our faces display our individuality, age, sex, mood and much more” (Cole 1998, pg 4). After reading these types of ideas we could in fact see that her face did indeed express these aspects.

The face and eyes are the window of the soul” (Cole 1998, pg 11) and this is especially the case with Alyssa in that if you were to look deep into her eyes you can see the kind of person she is. Well my owner was the one who could see, I was just the one who wrote about it onto paper. So far all these ideas were helping her to get an idea of what to look for in Alyssa’s face especially the eyes and smile so that was her main focus. These were mainly dealing with how you can tell a lot from a person’s face of who they are and so that’s what we looked for in Alyssa’s face.

After collecting all these ideas it was now time to write her description. This consisted mostly of looking at the picture and then using me to write down whatever came into her head. Although at times this would become annoying for me in that whilst she was trying to think of something she would constantly tap me on the paper, which would give me a splitting headache. Also it didn’t stop there for as you all know pens can’t take Panadol so of course I was stuffed. This lasted many days.

There were also times when I would be writing nothing at all because writers block had come to visit but I was still being used for something and it wasn’t writing. Can you guess what it was? Yes it was the infamous ‘Helicopter Spin’ where I am twisted rapidly between fore finger and thumb, which is yet another way to give me a headache. Ok, so once she finally overcame writers block and sent him packing, together we finished the description. She then looked at the list of things to be done for the critical reflection, which was on the description I just wrote.

The last thing was to identify the themes within the writing. So we both looked over the description and together came across the themes to do with facial expressions such as the smile, the eyes and the skin. After finishing all that she went through with me and edited and edited until we both couldn’t edit no more. She then grabbed another piece of paper, with me in hand started writing the critical reflection. This is now where we are up to and where we finish off at and thank god because I think I am running out of ink.