Blog Post 14: Changing my Final Project?

I know I’m writing this post very early in the week, but I have SOOOO many things on my plate that I have no choice but to start early and get ahead! I have one of my Cal exams on Wednesday, and I still plan on finishing a draft of my final project, which I think I’m completely changing, by the end of the week. When I talk about wanting to complete a draft of my final project, I'm talking about both the text and the reflective essay. Even though it isn't due until next week, and I probably won't COMPLETELY finish a draft, I’m hoping to get a good portion of it done so I'll have one less thing to worry about! On top of that, I have to study for both a History final and O Chem exam that I'm taking next week. It’s definitely going to be a long and dreadful week, so hopefully I can time manage and prioritize well enough to get to everything I want to finish.

So I had my student conference with the professor on Monday, and I’m now thinking about taking a different direction for my final project, as I’ve mentioned in the previous paragraph. I was originally going to make an argumentative text with my audience being representatives in government, but I think I’m instead going to create a website about guns and gun control directed towards college students (maybe UTRGV students?). The professor and I talked about how having a more focused and narrow audience makes the project easier, so instead of writing to politicians at the national level, I’m going to be targeting students on college campuses. This idea still isn’t set in stone, as I still need to consult with the professor about it, but there are two reasons why I want to do this. First, having a more specific audience will make the project easier for me, and second, I’ve been writing texts ALL semester long! I want to change it up a bit, especially since the map of the world was the only assignment to contain a visual, and even that assignment was by far the most frustrating to me! Hopefully I’ll enjoy working on a website much more than writing another text!

Anyways, I hope everyone has a better sense of direction after meeting with the professor! Good luck on your final project!

Blog Post #9: Invention and Inner Lizzie’s

Hello everyone I hope you all are having or had a wonderful week. We didn’t have any readings scheduled for awhile and I’m sure we were all ecstatic about that. The theme for this week and the next is invention. With the Invention Journal due this week and the Map of the World due next week, we are all showing the steps to get to a research paper. Both of the articles talked about how to come up with and formulate a research question, while controlling your writing anxiety. As someone who has major problems with formulating a research questions and writing anxiety, I understood these articles on a personal level.

In Antlitz article she talks about how to start writing and roll with it. Antlitz gives some amazing advice on how to map out ideas. Her taking flight approach was something refreshing to see. Often we put our personal feelings into our writing which isn’t always a great thing. By writing your feelings on one side of paper or wing, and writing the social context on the other, it gives you a balance between your ideas and a group of peers ideas. Being able to bounce of the two to not only draw similarities but differences.

My favorite writing advice that Antlitz gave was the random words idea. I find it hard to connect my ideas on how I want my research paper to go with articles I find. So this exercise will help me connect not only my ideas but articles together to help form a connected work. The idea of putting two things together that wouldn’t necessarily work is always a little scary but, it could make something beautiful in the end.

In the second article Murray talks about how all writing is autobiographical since we are writing it. What I mean by that is we all have different writing styles and different inner people.We all have that different inner voice that comes out when we write. Which is what I call the Lizzie McGuire affect.

Anyway I stand with Murray on the fact that all writing is indeed autobiographical. We all write with our own cartoon Lizzie’s. As we grow older or learn more about the topic our view on that changes but our writing style always stays the same. If I go back to look at my writing through the years my ideas may have changed but my voice that I find in my writing is always the same. Even if I wrote a poem in 5th grade I can still find my writing style that I use now as a sophomore, just more developed.

In the end of all my blabbering I find this week's theme of Invention really helpful. I am also a little nervous about next week's assignment. As always I’m sure I can get through it somehow. I hope you all have a great week next week, see you soon, Bye.

Blog #9

Good afternoon everyone! I hope everyone has had an awesome week so far. I enjoyed both readings assignments for this week. The first reading assignment entitled, “All Writing Is Autobiography by Donald M. Murray was really captivating because it he was so raw and honest with his audience. He openly discussed the topic of death and his perception of growing old. I enjoy talking to older people and listening to their life experiences. I appreciated the honesty of Mr. Donald Murray as he shared how being over sixty had its freedoms with a “deeper appreciation of life” but also “brings with increasing frequency, such terrible responsibilities as sitting with the dying.” It was so interesting to me how I think of life and death often but never really thought about sitting with dying people as a responsibility. My grandmother told me earlier this week her neighbor passed away and nobody knew for over a week. The topic of death was already on my mind because of what she told me and reading this article made me think of it in a different perspective. In many ways, it is our responsibility to be there for our loved ones and sometimes we get busy and forget to be there for them.

In the same reading assignment Murray quoted Don DeLillo'S and wrote "I think after a while, a writer can begin to know himself through his language. He sees someone or something reflected back at him from these constructions.” I strongly believe that statement was true. I have analyzed my writing style more than even before because of this course and see myself in my writing styles. I also noticed a big difference in the way I write compared to others in this course with our blog posts on Tumblr.

The second reading assignment this week was “Taking Flight: Connecting Inner and Outer Realities during Invention” by Susan E. Antlitz. I tried The Two Wings Exercise and the Random Words Exercise. The Random Words Exercise was difficult because thre were words I just could not connect like “litter” and “utilities.” Susan Antlitz offered several creative ideas to help think of topics and issues to address. I was kind of impressed when a stone she collected made her think of a night at a beach with silvery waves. Looking at a rock has never made me think of a beach or anything of the sort. I feel encouraged to slow down, take a closer look at everyday things, and allow myself to be inspired instead of always being on the go 100 mph. The rock moved Susan to PAINT. When was the last time you felt that inspired? For me, the last time I felt inspired to paint anything was before this semester started.

The anxiety portion of the second reading assignment helped too. I laughed a little when the article said, “Staying positive gives you the best chance of doing your best. So, imagine an audience that will be delighted with everything and anything you write.” Inside I’m praying our Professor will be delighted with everything and anything I include in my Invention Journal.

 Best wishes to everyone! Hope everyone has a high grade in this course so far. Have a great weekend! Only one more month... we can do this!

Blog Post #7

I can’t believe it’s already week #7. Where is the time going?!? So this week we didn’t have a reading! Which was fine because I’m still drowning in other school work. It was a goal of mine to develop a better work ethic this year. It is already halfway through the semester and sometimes I feel defeated. Although I do, I still won’t give up! I am still trying my hardest, I just need to find ways that work better for me. Work is really stressing me out right now too. I contemplate quitting all the time because I just want to focus on school, but that seems impossible. I am very thankful for my job though. Working as a waitress can be very interesting and entertaining at times. I meet people from around the country everyday and they always have insane stories. Coming home to my excited puppy makes it a little easier too. Actually a lot easier! Anyways, this week was pleasant and I actually started writing in my journal. Hope my fellow classmates had a great week!!! Stay awesome.

WEek NUMBER six!

Looks like this week’s assignment was a podcast. Overall, both podcasts by Grammar Girl were interesting. To think that there are actual people that keep track of the words we use as time passes is pretty crazy. One thing that I kept going through my mind was the fact that our language is fluid. What I mean by this is that it changes. Living on the border and working retail (have the privilege  (NOT) of providing customer service to  Mexican nationals) I have to keep up with two languages. With that being said, these past few years I have started to hear the “You are in the US so you HAVE to speak English” argument. I am not so sure I agree with that. Soooo... what’s my point? Listening to the first podcast, I could not help but think that English, isn't really English. It changes with the times and adapts to the type of culture or overall way of life that we are living at the moment or in this case year. So the English of 2000 really isn't the English of 2017. 

As the weeks go by, I keep wanting to write on here a bit more but I don't really know what to write about. I like reading comics so that might be one way that I can practice my writing as I move forward in this class. 

Hope you all have a good weekend!!!

Blog Post #5

Wowww! These new readings we had this week were entertaining to say the least. The different perspective John Berger has are somewhat new to me. I can say that of course his points were obvious but most people wouldn’t of though that deep into just what they see. I liked how he brought in that different audiences will have different perceptions of the painting. I feel like it ties into our critical response from last week and how we had to change the audience we were writing to. Many of the paintings in the first video were new to me which brought me new feelings and thoughts. Seeing the video a second time let me see new things in the paintings which I didn’t see before and also the perspective in which I was viewing the paintings. The second video was a bit bias towards war and was pointed towards the audience that was against the war and against President Bush. I think it’s easy to look for the bad in what someone is doing because the good will never be shown because the good is not interesting to people. Well enough of that, my week went by real fast this time. I guess it’s because I did all my work early so I wouldn’t have to stress so much at the end of the week and just think about it all week. This Texas weather is so bipolar that I can’t even wear a pretty sweater in the morning without the weather getting boiling hot by the afternoon. My Critical Response work went very well so I’m happy about that and at least now I know what example to follow. Alright till next time guys. Toodle Loo

Still Clear as Mud, but I smell rain...Blog 4

Sociolinguisitic community versus Sociorhetorical community...okay, so maybe the material this week was drier than a pack of saltine crackers with no milk or water. Look, the author John Swales makes a strong case for discourse communities, makes clear distinction between speech communities and discourse communities, lays out identification criteria very methodically, and even gives examples of such conceptualized “communities”. It can be said that we, here in this class, could be classified as a discourse community, since we do not speak nor follow common criteria for a speech community. We are developing our own lexis the more we post here and reflect on our readings, we have common goals of succeeding in this class, and share this Tumblr medium to communicate and share our rhetoric.

As far as the Critical Response goes, depending on what your research question is, changing your audience could DRASTICALLY change how your source will be utilized or even whether it is relevant to the new audience or not. It was entertaining and fun to imagine how this “new audience” would react to the summary “repainted”...which brings me to the subject of reach. In advertising terms, the predetermined reach of an ad campaign is influenced by three factors: timing of release, past performance of similar campaigns, and dissemination. For example, a “standard” reach of a direct mail piece is 1 in 100, or a single person is likely to respond favorably to 100 mail advertisements sent. Reach in literary terms is different and not formulaic, but rather relies more on how certain audiences choose to “digest” their reading (ie. media format such as iPad, Kindle, Nook) which is harder to measure, other than digital purchases and customer reviews. So my question is, writing to a specific audience is one thing, but being able to reach them with your content is another!

WEEK SIX BLOG-

Whats up Everyone! Hope everyone is having a fine week.

We are now on week six and for this weeks “Reading” consisted of two audios from Grammar Girl. I became aware of Grammar girl for the first time today and as I listened to this week's audios I found myself very intrigued with the way the information was being portrayed this week. AS the weeks have gone on I like how we’ve been given different

    First audio episode was “#551 Words of the Year. Easy Tips to Improve Your Writing”

Grammar girl first talks about online dictionaries. Online dictionaries are very helpful because it's given an idea on what words are being looked up and used. One word that stuck out to me specifically was Hygge. Grammar girl states that the danish word was used with major different dictionaries.

    Living in Washington I’ve been on A TON of hikes. Washington in my opinion is one the most beautiful places to ever be. With the mountain ranges surrounding the state, the San Juan islands and trees that covers acres, it is such a breathtaking view when able to scope it all out at once. BY climbing up mountains and experiencing the view I have always felt sense of genuine pleasure. I was never able to describe that feeling of -hyggee- comfort and peace I encountered until today. I feel a bit confused with how that has been one of the most popular words looked up this year and I never knew it existed.

  For the Second episode ” 510 GG How Aphasia Causes Difficulty Speaking”, Grammar girl introduces language disorders. She specifically talks about Aphasia. Aphasia is a condition when you lose the ability to understand or express speech, usually caused by brain damage. My major is psychology so I've been over most of the stuff Grammar girl covered.

    This weeks Learning Journal consisted of a few more things than the previous weeks because I had a lot on my plate. I am feeling more anxious as the weeks go by because our midterm portfolios are due here soon. Even though it’s over everything we’ve been doing, ill feel this way until we turn it in.

Blog Post #2

This week has been very confusing and stressful for me. I have had a ton of work for my other classes and I have been trying to manage my time in the best possible way. Throughout this whole week, I have been trying to figure out everything in Google Docs and also all the assignments for this course. However, it has been a relieve to know that I wasn't the only one who was majorly confused as to what was due and what the assignments were asking for. We were all on the same boat of confusion and I'm hoping we all manage throughout the coming weeks.  After reading that we had a research summary due I started to panic. I shed my first tears of the semester due to the frustration I was feeling. Once the semester is over I'm sure I'll be able to laugh about it. I have never been an A+ writer and I 've always had trouble picking a topic. I spent many hours trying to come up with a research topic that would be both interesting to me and the reader. The stress kept piling on until I finally came up with something. I am an art and business major, therefore, I think it would be ideal for me to write about something I enjoy. Art. 

As far as the reading goes I found that one part of the text really stood out to me. Greene stated, "Seeing research as a means for advancing a conversation makes the research process more real, especially if you recognize that you will need to support your claims with evidence in order to persuade readers to agree with you." I had never thought of a research paper like this and I thought it would help me develop the way I write my research paper.

I’m lost, can someone help me. My understanding is that we need to post blogs once a week based off the reading. Though I’m new to google docs I can’t seem to figure out how to connect with class or at least with the professor. I’m in need of library exploration sheet. 

Blog Post 15: Just me Ranting...

Ok guys, so I’m going to use most of this post to rant about how TERRIBLE this past week has been and how the next week will be no better, if not worse. For this week alone, I’ve already taken an O Chem II exam, U.S. History II final, completed a draft of my final project and reflection essay, finished my final review for Cal II, and BEGAN teaching myself two whole sections of O Chem II for my comprehensive final exam next week. In addition, I’m also trying to start my final portfolio! On top of this, I need to find time to create a resume for a tutoring job I want to apply for at the Learning Center. I’ve been staying up until about 4:30-5:00am on average for the past five days, and I don’t remember the last time I’ve felt this fatigued and exhausted. The amount of stress I’ve been under during this term’s finals period has definitely surpassed that of last semesters, and I’m already at the point where I just want to give up and turn to summer!

So I completed a draft of my final project, and I honestly feel much better about it now compared to how I felt a week or two ago. At first, I was convinced I was going to create an argumentative text directed towards representatives in Congress, but I can see why changing my project made a big difference on the difficulty of the assignment. Narrowing my audience down to college students and then UTRGV students specifically boosted my confidence, especially since the biggest problem I’ve faced all semester is identifying and coming up with audiences.

Anyways, I hope everyone is doing better than I am, and I hope you’ve finished your final projects! Don’t forget to start working on your final portfolios as well! Also, if anyone needs their project to be peer reviewed/a partner, let me know!

It’s been loading for three days. Never trust Blackboard.

Rain Rain Go Away: Blog #8

Hello everyone, I hope you all had a great week. Last week was a little bit stressful when it came to balancing work and school, but other then that I'm doing pretty good.However, this week was an easy train to calm town. I hope everyone had a less stressful week.

Anyway this week's reading was about tools to help your writing. Peter Elbow talks about turning your chaos into something you can actually turn in. Elbows tool about using a collage to get from chaos to coherence is actually something I kind of already do, Along with using a skeleton. 

I tend to kind of just through out words to try to form anything.Basically just free writing like Compose Design Advocate says. If you have read my writing you know this because a lot of time I just don’t make any sense. I do a hybrid of chaos and structure so I did find the skeleton method most helpful and most like my writing style.Trying to find time to read and re read everything about the topic and finding the most important information. Making little notes while you read, germ sentences. Is something I really try to do when forming a paper.

The one thing I really need to concentrate on is figuring out a main idea. I always have trouble figuring out what I want to write about. I can create a collage and list about anything but trying to put it all together into something cohesive, is not my forte. I defiantly think the skeleton method is something that I will keep on coming back to.

I see myself using both methods and ideas from The Need for Care: Easy Speaking Onto the Page is Never Enough and from Compose Design Advocate.

Anyway sorry if this was more chaotic than a coherent work. I’m currently typing this with the horrible rain outside trying to get this up before anything happens to the wifi. As always I hope everyone has a great week. Off to go sit by the window with some tea and a book. Bye bye for now.

Blog #8

Hello everyone. I found our reading this week on The Need for Care in Writing really interesting and relatable. I am taking two English courses this semester. The professor from my other English course was very harsh on the first essay I submitted which has caused me to overthink and rephrase literally every sentence I write in his course. I remember he commented on one paragraph and said it “was not thought through or organized well” which hurt like crazy because I spent hours working on that paper. The comment was only on one paragrah but I felt like he said that about my entire response. When the reading this week mentioned how “unrelentingcare--the feeling that you can never relax your skeptical scrutiny” could be a problem made me reflect on how that habit could actually be harmful to my writing which is something I had not thought of before. I use the collage style of writing very frequently. I type 80 wpm so when I am writing I think of an outline, then type everything I think on a word document as I think it, delete what I believe is not especially persuasive/relevant, work on the structure, and then work on the smooth transitions. I am a messy writer and I know it which is why I constantly restructure and rephrase my work until I am thoroughly satisfied. For this reason,  I also related to Mark Twain’s quote: “Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words” because it is the third step of my writing style. I find the collage style of writing more natural than the skeleton style of writing. Peter Elbow’s explanation of how the four stages get carelessness and care to interact was especially helpful. I am definitely going to follow these four stages in my next assignment.

Blog Post #6

So this week we listened to “Grammar Girl” and I really enjoyed her tips and facts. I loved how she mixed humor with grammar facts, it kept things a little more interesting. She explained in episode 551 “Words of the Year. Easy Tips to Improve Your Writing” many of the top searches in online dictionaries. Miriam Webster’s word of the year for 2016 was “surreal”. The searches for the word started to spike after occurring terrorist attacks this past year. I find it so amazing that the most searched words had a lot to do with politics in 2016. It seemed like everyone was on their toes the election, and this proved that. Grammar Girl also gave us some pretty good tips to improve our writing in 2017. My favorite and most relevant tip was “write for fun”. I’ve been telling myself to start writing in a journal for YEARS and I’ve never actually pushed myself to do it. 2017 is my year and I will finally start writing in the journal I bought for myself back in 2014.....

In episode 510 “How Aphasia Causes Difficulty Speaking”, I learned about aphasia which is a type of brain damage in which you lose your ability to speak or understand speech. I loved this podcast because I had absolutely NO idea was aphasia was. The brain damage is most commonly caused by stroke, which is overall very sad. The most severe cases are called “global aphasia” and it may make the person mute. Less severe cases such as “fluent aphasia” and “non fluent aphasia” makes the person have a harder time structuring sentences. Dyslexia is also very common among people who suffer from aphasia. I learned a lot about my brain in this podcast! I had no clue who “Grammar Girl” was before but I’m going to challenge myself to listen to 1 podcast a week. Why not learn some more grammar tips this year?! This week was all about setting goals for myself and I’m excited to see where this takes me. Hope my fellow classmates had a great week! Stay awesome.