Podcast

About Izzy:

Hello! Currently I am a Senior at Mountain View High School as well as at Freestyle Academy. Currently at Freestyle, I am focusing on Animation so in my free time I am brain storming my Zenith project and drawing. When I’m not doing that, I am working to save money for college or I am doing water polo, swim team, and spending time with friends or family.

Introduction:

As the title of this page entails, for our Senior Narrative unit we focused on creating our own personal podcast. In it, we had total creative freedom on what we felt like writing and discussing. For me at least, the goal of this unit was to express your personal uniqueness and creativity using a different way of storytelling than usual. Podcasts are a very freeing and democratic way of self expression. Anyone who has access to recording equipment (even just voice memos on your phone) and the internet is able to say and express whatever they so choose. My inspiration for the podcast was my personal connection to my topic as well as John Green. He recently released the Anthropocene Reviewed where he has about 10-15 minute podcasts that I found extremely moving and entertaining to listen to.

About this Podcast:

With this podcast assignment, I chose to focus on mental health and mental illness. More specifically, I discussed the great and urgent issue within our society that the majority of people with mental illnesses don’t have access to the help and health professionals to get better. This issue is close to my heart since I have lost loved ones to suicide, and I wish that they could’ve gotten the help that they needed so they never got to that point. Mental health is a very real thing that a lot of people could use help with, and by raising awareness on this ongoing issue, hopefully at least a little bit of change will be invoked. If not for me and my generation, for others.

The Process:

Below is the final results:)

Reflection:

This project was challenging for me for a number of reasons. One of the main ones I think was having to create audio on this subject. It’s a sensitive subject that is close to my heart and trying to get audio for it that didn’t include me choking up in some points was extremely difficult. I’m relatively comfortable writing about the subject itself since its a way to help myself cope and process what I’ve experienced. Talking about it however makes it feel a lot more personal. However I valued how personal it was, because hopefully it’ll feel more personal and touching to the audience as well. I appreciated the creative freedom of this project, it allowed me to choose what I wanted to reveal about the subject and myself which I really enjoyed. Tips I would give to a first time podcaster is to not procrastinate and to record on something you’re genuinely passionate about. Honestly it was a really fun project that I will do in the future.