reflection

1. Reflection-Neeshjiizhi Instructions
Myranda Morgan
The purpose of this specific project is directed towards anyone who enjoys cooking, are
interested in trying something new, and who are interested in learning about a different culture.
My project is a long-slow cooking process of one of my people’s favorite dishes. This soup,
known as Neeshjizhi (Steamed-Corn), is very popular to the Navajo people. This soup has been
known in our culture for many centuries. Although preparation is now different, we can still
enjoy this dish with our own modern touch, while still preserving the traditional taste.
I expected my audience to be not as familiar with this dish due to a more scarce
platform. The type of audience that my project was directing towards allowed me to make some
certain changes. In this project, I changed my normal tone of voice, attitude, and perspective. I
thought about how I would approach a topic that I was not as familiar with and what my
expectations would be. With these different views to consider, I knew that I would create a
project that would become a greater understanding to most individuals. These changes that I
have made should hopefully educate individuals so they can have a significant level of
understanding of my purpose and reason.
During this project, my main source of information was my mother. I had interviewed her
asking the in-depth principles and technical aspects of corn and this dish. She had provided me
with various important points and traditional values to my questions which was very beneficial to
my level of knowledge. She is my primary source because this type of valuable information I
would not be able to obtain from the internet. My perspective changed on this dish when she had
explained to me why this dish is so sacred to our people, so I felt more appreciative of

2. Neeshjiizhi. With my secondary source, it was more of adding additional knowledge that I knew
already but others wouldn’t probably know. My secondary source is of a website that had been
created by another Navajo person that portrayed the same intentions as me, to educate. Both of
these sources were very helpful to me and the creation of this project. Comparing the two
resources, they both were very well understood such as academic language and grammar. My
primary source was the most important because my secondary source did not include any
in-depth explanation of traditional values. There was another website that had a similar recipe
but it was blatantly obvious that there were far too many contradictions and was not a suitable
and reliable source for this project.
I’ve already had a good amount of knowledge about Neeshjiizhi, but my mother went
into deep explanation about how the corn is actually prepared. The corn must be planted after a
prayer song is sung for good growth, abundance of rain, and healthy crops. I had no idea what
the process looked like but I was not surprised that it took a long time. Corn is very sacred in my
culture, it’s involved with almost anything such as any type of ceremony, feast, duty, and more.
The value of corn to my people is so high, without it, there is no foundation. After learning from
my two resources, I understand the importance of corn.
During the research process, I was lucky enough to have easy access to the type of
information I needed. I was also very familiar with my project so it wasn’t such a hard task. My
mother grew up very traditional, with her parents being medicine people and growing up in the
mountains, I have received very authentic and valuable information. With my other sources, I did
have to do some digging but I was able to find some information on the internet.
During the drafting process, my instructions did not seem very pretty. It was very rough
and I appreciated the critique that my peers had given me. Minimal things such as including the

3. prep-time, duration of cooking, portion, type of cookware, and such, were some things that I had
not included in my rough draft. Those are the things that they commented on, which had helped
me improve my instructions and overall attitude towards the project. I believe that I did not
disregard any of their criticism and revision because they were things that I most certainly
lacked. I was very open to hear what they had to say or what they have noticed which helped me
improve my work tremendously.
During this whole project, I had struggled to finish it. I had no idea what had come over
me. I had already filmed the process way before the due date, but due to reasons that I don’t even
understand, I was not able to turn it in on time. This was not the only project that had suffered,
my performance in other courses stooped to its lowest as well. I did however, manage to
gradually add more to it over time. I had felt guilty many times because the work was overdue,
so I thought ignoring it would help, but it did not. As a procrastinator, this project began to
burden me over time, which created great disappointment in myself. I knew that I needed to
finish this project, at first it seemed like a huge thing, but now I feel that I had been over
dramatic and just made things harder for myself. Now that I am almost finished with it, I have
learned that the longer I ignore something I feel guilty about, the more strain and stress it brings
me.
While I was feeling this type of burden, I had also experienced technical difficulties. I
was not familiar with editing videos at all, so I had no clue where to start. This is one of the main
factors preventing me from completing this project on time. I had downloaded an adobe
application to my laptop, which I had edited my video with. On premiere rush, there are many
templates to choose from but for some reason, I wasn’t allowed to include any into my video.
This type of struggle led me to become frustrated and tired of working on this piece. After

4. bringing this problem up to my instructor, he told me to reach out for help. I went to see someone
about my issue and later found a solution for it. Even though I had solved my problem, I still felt
the urge to avoid my work and focus on other assignments. After a while, I realized I couldn’t
avoid it any longer. Now at this point, almost finishing, I wished my performance was better than
what I had to offer.
With this assignment, I knew that AI could not help me because it would not give me the
information I was looking for. I also did not in fact ask AI to proofread anything for the reason
that I do not simply trust it. My own beliefs and superstitions did not allow me to ask AI a
culturally-related personal question. So, this is why I avoided AI because I did not want to rely
on the information that it might give me when I know that my primary source would give me
more than enough information. If I were to rely on AI or ask it questions, it would be related to
more modern topics such as revision, grammar, trending news, specific structures and such. For
the reason that my project is based on something very personal, I knew that it would be a waste
of time trying to ask AI about it. AI can be helpful in other areas, just not what I was basing my
project on.