For the second assignment within my English 105H class I was to write a rhetorical analysis of a documentary film. Out of the available films I chose Buena Vista Social Club, a movie about aging Cuban musicians. At first glance I thought that this would be a relatively easy assignment. I had to watch a movie and then write about it, not hard right, well I soon learned differently.
At first just choosing one documentary was tough, there were so many good ones from which to choose. After I had made my decision I started to try to analyze the film per the instruction of my professor to find that I really had no idea what my professor expected of my in this paper. In high school I could always count on my teachers to tell me exactly what they wanted from a paper right up front, even tell me how to approach the paper I was writing. After floundering around for a while I finally had a conference with my professor about it and, God bless him, he told me exactly what is was he wanted from me on this paper. It seems that I had lost my ability to direct myself in English after high school where all expectations were explicitly stated.
This assignment showed me how much more independently I would have to act in the future. My bosses will not tell me exactly what they want, just generally what they want I have to figure the rest out myself. Along with that valuable life skill, from this project I also learned to question my environment much more so than I had. By looking just below the surface and looking at the motives of those behind a project I got a whole new message than that on the surface of the film.
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