While doing Project #2, I came to a realization that not many people take reflection seriously. By that I mean, they don’t realize the huge impact it has on one’s mind. I learned that reflection is essential in everyday life no matter what career you choose to follow, if you’re generally just a workaholic, or have too much to deal with in life. Beforehand, I would rarely meditate but when  I did, it would just be looking up a meditation video on youtube and listening to the soft music. I never really knew what exactly I was supposed to set my mind too. While conducting my research, I encountered meditation as being very beneficial to reflect when you are doing it constantly. According to Drew Paul Bell in his youtube video “The Stress of Architecture” , he speaks about the three techniques he uses to meditate. The first one is clearing your mind of all thoughts by thinking about nothing. Another approach is staying focused on your presence wherever you are. The third way is to focus on one thing like your breath, it’s all about building a muscle about your focus. When a person meditates, they are alone which means you gain power over your thoughts so you become more productive. Most of all, you create a greater sense of independence. 

My main specific audience would be college students of any kind of major but most importantly in the architecture field. College is stressful for many, the downside is that not a lot of people know how to cope with the stress, and the piles of work that is given and worst of all midterms and finals week . I chose college students as my audience because a great issue many students have is time management. When work is not done on time, it creates stress and anxiety for the student, and who wants to experience that? When things are not done in a steady manner, it does not express the best capability one has. In other words, it will be a sloppy job if done last minute. However, sometimes people tend to work better under pressure but that causes even more tension. As an architecture student, if you don’t take time for your designs, plans, sections and elevations it won’t come out the way you want it to. That is where discouragement comes in the picture, many times you want to give up. While doing my research, I found many information on how meditation helped architects realize what are some areas to improve in, and what they have done well. When people meditate regularly you gain better attention skills, and most importantly gain self knowledge. This type of information is useful for the audience so they can know that they are not alone, and that everyone experiences stress and discouragement. My main purpose is to inform my audience on all the benefits meditation brings to oneself, and the first step is always to be accepting of your mistakes. Hopefully one day they can try it out so it can bring peace to their mind. 

The genre I would choose for reaching out to the audience would be through a TedTalk. The reason for this is because a TedTalk is more of giving a speech, and my goal is to inform the audience on the benefits of meditation and to persuade them on why it should be a good idea to do so. In my public speaking class, I have learned on how to reach out to different age groups and communities based on choice of word language and information. A Ted Talk would be a  perfect way to reach out to college students in any grade level. 

I would express this information to my audience using a pessimistic tone in the beginning and ending it with an enthusiastic tone. When giving my speech I will use a formal tone , and not to be too technical so it can be understood by any community without prior knowledge, My first goal is to grab the audience’s attention by relating to what individuals may go through and how common it is. For example, saying something like, have you ever been super stressed it gave you headaches? Or have you ever felt discouraged when things don’t turn out the way you planned? I will then begin talking about my experience with anxiety, stress, discouragement and bad time management, and the research I conducted. When stating my evidence on how meditation reduces stress and helps reflecting I would speak in an optimistic tone to show there is always bright light on the other side. Technically implying it is never the end of the world, there is always a way to fix issues through improvement. This will help me both inform my audience of the benefits of reflecting using meditation and persuade them to try it out. Another thing would be possible using visual aids, like pictures of students being frustrated or stressed . Hopefully in the end I will be able to spread awareness and useful resources that the audience can take home.