Hello everyone! I am Alex Marin, a freshman MSE major from Sanford, NC who plans to graduate in May 2022.

Me at the Summer Palace in Beijing, China

While English has never been my favorite subject, I think this was largely due to the emphasis on writing and broad topics that many of my English classes focused on. During my senior year of high school, I experienced my first English classes on more specific topics (Southern Literature and Literature of the American West), which I enjoyed a lot more because they incorporated historical culture as well as just writing. This past summer I took English 1101, where I got my first taste of multimodal communication through the lens of the American Civil Rights Movement. I enjoy casual communication with friends through oral or electronic means, but I sometimes get nervous and stressed out when I have to give a formal speech or presentation. As this class is focused on television, I anticipate a lot of challenges with visual communication, where I need to choose visuals to accurately portray shows and statistics about television. As outline in my week one video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9RD5_0irqs), I have come up with several goals to help me improve my verbal communication skills this semester.

Although I have never been a big television fan, I have enjoyed several historical and dramatic series including Showtime’s Billions and Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle. I recently binged the Netflix series American Vandal and started watching Game of Thrones with my roommates, so my exposure is growing quickly. However, I have never previously given much thought to how women were portrayed in television shows or whether they played significant roles in the production and writing of these shows. I am excited that this course’s theme will allow me to do just that, forcing me to view television in a new light.

I have chosen to review Netflix’s well known Orange is the New Black in my blog posts this semester. I chose this series due to its positive reception from some of my friends and critics alike, as well as the fact that it is a comedy and I love a good laugh. The series follows a women who is imprisoned in a women’s prison for a long ago minor drug offense and her and the other inmate’s struggles.

Season 1 Trailer for Orange is the New Black