Digital storytelling is an art on its own. It requires a lot of patience and the ability to not get tired of hearing your own voice over and over again. When I first decided to take on this project I watched a multitude of examples to get a feel of what digital storytelling really was. At first, I thought to myself, oh this seems easy enough, but I later came to realize that I was wrong. My video is around four minutes long, but the amount of work and the time that went into creating it was so much longer than four minutes. At the end of the day, it was all worth it.

The creation of my digital storytelling actually resulted in some bonding time between my mother and I. We sat down and looked through picture albums together until we found the perfect pictures for the video. She was with me every step of the way, from picking the songs and giving me feedback on the final mix. At first, I had a little trouble creating the final copy because I was unsure of how to work the program. After many trial and errors, I was finally able to have a final product. As I was watching my video I came to the realization that my strengths were my images and words. I think my images are my strength because they show real people and emotions. Not to mention my mother was a pretty cute kid. All the pictures were also able to be synced up with the words really well. I think my words were also a strength because they spoke about the story of an everyday individual who has faced struggles just like everyone else does, but she is trying her best to overcome all odds. It was a story that is relatable and does not end in the always boring "...and they lived happily ever after" because that is not how real life works.

At the end, I was also so proud of what I created. Apart from the fact that I made it as a tribute to my mother, I also made it for other first generation kids who are living in the United States. Many children of immigrants have been told throughout their life that they would not be successful because they are not white, wealthy, suburban, male, Christian, heterosexual, able-bodied, Anglo-Saxon, or English monolingual. My colleagues who also created digital stories of their own did an amazing job as well. Everyone focused their digital stories around the idea that different moments in their life that helped shape them and create their identity are just as important as the prior more "valued" characteristics. My colleagues did an amazing job at incorporating images that fit excellently with their words and others did a stellar job on their music mixes. It sometimes got to the point that by the end of the video I was singing along and bobbing my head to the music. Digital storytelling has gained popularity all around the social media world. I believe that my colleagues and I did a great job in making the words "digital storytelling" come alive.