In the start of the production of my Debunking Ageist Myths project, I had no specific idea or plan of action, the final result came together almost seamlessly. I have been able to fall in love with all the concepts learned about in Life Course Scholars and I wish that I could debunk ageism in its entirety and choosing a topic was the first difficult challenge. When I was drawing spider webs trying to think of ideas, I knew one thing I had learned outside of the content taught in class, was that not everyone goes out of their way to learn about the aging population and that if I didn’t engage in a conversation with them about it, they wouldn’t have otherwise known. So this prompted me to actually interview a couple of my friends that I hadn’t really talked with about these ideas yet to see what they thought.
The questions I had developed were 1. When thinking of old people, what are the first five words/phrases that come to mind? (Taken from Leland’s Happiness is a Choice You Make) 2. Do you see aging as the end of life or as an extension of life (taken from a question I posed to myself after reading Leland’s book) 3. What do you want your life to look like at 80? (sprouted from LCS Retreat). In the end, the last question was more fun than productive for my project so I only used answers from the first two questions for my final video!
This part was actually a lot of fun because I didn’t tell them what I was interviewing them about, we just so happened to call each other and I was like hey can I actually interview you for school, it's not super intense, and they all said yes, so that was fun surprising them with my questions. Their answers were funny, questionable, but also some aligned with ageist beliefs. After I had enough content, I decided then what direction I would go in from my project. In a way, I worked backwards. So, I dove into common themes as well as what prompted me to ask my questions. So that is where I decided that I really wanted to tackle the idea that getting older is a problem to ~overcome~ or a burden, an enemy, even. I have learned the beauty of accepting aging as a natural process of life and truly wanted to debunk this idea. So then, I got creative with making little GIFs to make the title boards and used my handwriting to make it more personalized. In the end, it was a lot of fun and I loved my final product!
The questions I had developed were 1. When thinking of old people, what are the first five words/phrases that come to mind? (Taken from Leland’s Happiness is a Choice You Make) 2. Do you see aging as the end of life or as an extension of life (taken from a question I posed to myself after reading Leland’s book) 3. What do you want your life to look like at 80? (sprouted from LCS Retreat). In the end, the last question was more fun than productive for my project so I only used answers from the first two questions for my final video!
This part was actually a lot of fun because I didn’t tell them what I was interviewing them about, we just so happened to call each other and I was like hey can I actually interview you for school, it's not super intense, and they all said yes, so that was fun surprising them with my questions. Their answers were funny, questionable, but also some aligned with ageist beliefs. After I had enough content, I decided then what direction I would go in from my project. In a way, I worked backwards. So, I dove into common themes as well as what prompted me to ask my questions. So that is where I decided that I really wanted to tackle the idea that getting older is a problem to ~overcome~ or a burden, an enemy, even. I have learned the beauty of accepting aging as a natural process of life and truly wanted to debunk this idea. So then, I got creative with making little GIFs to make the title boards and used my handwriting to make it more personalized. In the end, it was a lot of fun and I loved my final product!