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Peer Review Photos

1.     I think that something that was interesting to me was the discussion regarding regulations regarding anthems and how freedom of choice is important in her argument two:: “You may be from a country where there are different regulations surrounding when the national anthem is played and how you are supposed to act.I believe whether you chose to stand or not it up to you because when I choose to stand for the American national anthem it’s not because I’m a citizen and it’s not because I don’t want to be disrespectful, it is simply because I’m giving respect to the country I now live in.”. This made me think a lot about how freedom of choice clashes with being respectful to different countries when you aren’t associate with them. Nothing was confusing to me as all her arguments were relatively straightforward.

2.     I think that the visuals on the third argument do a great job of attracting the eye. I like the gifs, I think they come full circle and bring in the spirit of the Tumblr posts from this class.

3.     Argument One: People should stand for other nation’s national anthems in order to show respect. Argument Two: People shouldn’t stand for other nation’s national anthems because it’s disrespectful if you don’t know much about their country and because national anthems are meant to inspire unity between members of their own nation. It should be your freedom to choose to stand. Argument Three: Learning your national anthem and why.

4.     I think that her main idea behind is that writing is very expansive and that writers aren’t limited to one specific type of writing. People can write in many different styles. I’d recommend adding some quotes. With regards to the maps, there was mention to individuality and how the maps allowed for different styles of writing to come together.

5.     I think that there was a lot of ethos and pathos that shone through throughout both of Nicole’s first arguments because there is a big conflict between respecting other countries and not disrespecting your own. This comes in the form of if standing for other countries anthems is seen as disrespectful to your own country in a way and I think that this argument isn’t just on paper and extends to the real world.

6.     Yes I understood the arguments as they were well written and ordered cohesively. Throughout each of the arguments the focus was clear and based off of what the arguments were trying to achieve, I think that the writing helped to prove those points. They convinced me of the points trying to be made at least for the arguments I agreed with.

7.     Make sure to proofread the third argument and the colors really popped, great for a younger audience!

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Sunday Something

Week 8? Pretty damn hard. Week 9? Wha??? I don’t have that much work??? Oh my, thank GOD. Week 10? Yeah you thought you were finished with this quarter but you ain’t seen me yet.

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Self Reflection

I think that I’ve done well in this course by my own standards. These standards are the one’s I’ve held myself to throughout my years studying English and those consist of two main things. Firstly, that I learn something new about my writing and become a better writer through the awareness of that. Secondly that I connect with the material and make the class worthwhile to myself. As for my first standard I think that Tumblr has been a unique way to achieve what i wanted. I’ve had to write a little more in my literal voice rather than my academic because the audience is different and the rhetorical situation calls for me to write as myself. At least that’s how it’s seemed to me and that’s the way it seemed K.T. was prescribing I challenge myself and my writing. I think this has been very evident in my meetings with K.T. and I need to continue to try to implement these new ideas into my writing. I think that going into my second standard, I’ve had so much more success than in almost all my previous English classes. Our constant analysis of our theories of writing and learning about rhetorical situations has been a blast and I’ve had a lot of fun throughout these processes. I don’t think I’ve ever analyzed what writing is to me as much as I have in this class and it’s been a very helpful practice. I’ve come to understand myself as a writer better and I’ve learned the ways in which I can improve my writing, to some extent.  The Sunday Somethings have been a fun way to talk about my week through relatable pictures and videos and the maps have also been fun in taking my learning of English and expanding it beyond the usual kind of learning.

Rate my student

I think that Stuart has shown time and again, his deep interest in the course materials. While he hasn’t been the most successful in implementing the new styles and ideas that we’ve learned in class so far regarding writing, I believe he’s constantly working towards it and has succeeded in a number of places so far. I’m looking forward to see the edits on his written assignments as I hope he remembers what we’ve learned in class and uses that knowledge to his advantage

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Sunday Something

Life has been pretty shit recently. And I know that even while Im saying that, it isn’t fully true but it feels like everythings against me right now and I’m barely keeping up

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The Unveiling of a Writer

I think that I’m a very analytical and straight forward writer in most cases. Sometimes, when i’m given the liberty, I can write very much in how I’d speak which is always fun but I think it isn’t as thought out or well spoken as it could be as I kind of just splurge my mind and thoughts onto a page. So I’d say that I’m a creative writer when given the chance but for the most part i am fairly analytical. I like to follow a method to communicate my point and I like to try to communicate it in a very persuasive way. I have found that although it is more fun, to me, to just speak through my writing and ramble on about any topic, the skills I’ve developed in persuasion have very much helped me in other aspects of my life. They’ve made me a persuasive person, if not always a persuasive writer. I think that in the future, finding a balance of my direct thoughts and persuasiveness / being analytical would serve to greatly help me as a writer and as a communicator in general.

Reflection:

I think that I picked the characteristics that I did, being creative, analytical, and persuasive, because they represent the writer I’ve tried to become since the beginning of high school. I definitely haven’t succeeded in finding a perfect balance of these but I hope one day I will. My high school heavily consisted of creative and analytical writing assignments but it never blended the two which I think could make for a very interesting and quite persuasive piece. I think that writing about my theory of writing throughout this class hasn’t really changed my perception of my writing, but has allowed for me to gain a greater understanding of what my writing consists of. I sort of knew already but the numerous times we’ve written down stuff have proven successful in giving me a much more in depth understanding of my writing and where I’d like it to go in the future. I think I’m an alright writer and while it isn’t in the future I see for myself, if I were to make a sort of career out of this, I think I’d love to write philosophical pieces. Pieces that make people question there morals and there places in society, in this universe, because I often have these thoughts and while I chalk a lot of them up to mindless day dreaming, I’d be interested to have people think about them as well.

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My Moments

I think that my first moment would actually be a recurring one that happens almost every class. K.T. mentions in almost everything we do whether it happens outside of the classroom or in the classroom that we need to read the rhetorical situation. I’ve recently had to do that in my life to the best of my ability and it still wasn’t enough to achieve what I wanted to....I got close and I really did read the rhetorical situation right for one party involved but I tried to apply the same logic or maybe just didn’t consider the other rhetorical situation at all. I think that in the future all I can do it try to be better.

My second moment would have to come from the tumblr posts we have been doing, specifically the comments on other’s posts and how that relates to my writing process. As Sommers put it, she believes that revision has been absent from the discussions regarding writing due to the fact, “that current models of the writing process have directed attention away from revision.” Commenting on Zara’s post I believe, I agreed with her that in high school there was a large problem in that the teachers stressed the importance of edits but not to the extent of revision. I think that this moment taught me more about how high school writing is very limited and formulaic.

My final moment goes back to one of the first questions asked by K.T. to the class. She asked us why we are taking this class. While I still have the same answer, because it’s a required course on the path to my major, a nicer way of phrasing what I said comes from the Yanez reading regarding the big picture. In the Yanez reading it’s said that, “We are all Big Picture People when it comes to most thinigs...but of course we most specialy in our lives...writing some more or less specialized genres, such as a history class essay, is necessary to successfully entering adult life.” While I knew that specializing was necessary to achieveing a career, for example my major, I didn’t really consider specializing in topics seperate to my major as important but I realized from our discussions in class in addition to this reading that all types of education are necessary to making a well rounded “adult”.

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Sunday Something 7

I’m headed back to Portland this weekend to visit my parents and this song gives me a nostalgic feeling whenever I listen to it (while composed by Home, that isn’t the reason why haha). There’s actually a really cool video explaining why this song makes people nostalgic which you can find if you do a little youtube research.

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Murder! Rhetorically Speaking

Detective: The scene was gruesome, bloody. The crisp cold morning air stung as I breathed it in. I stood over the body of a Mark Smith. He was a middle aged man the night shift in a garage, innocent and in the wrong place at the wrong time. Forensics had guessed he was killed the night before around 10:30. His body was found when the person working the next shift came and found Mark’s body on the ground outside the guard’s station. We could see from the amount of blood having come from different parts of his upper torso that he’d died from multiple stab wounds. Forensics is assuming he bled out within the course of 15 minutes after his assailant finished his work.

Coroner: The victim’s name is Mark Smith. Cause of Death: eight stab wounds, three in the lower stomach, four in the upper stomach, and one in the right upper chest. Seems that the victim struggled against his assailant at first as the first wound was clean in the upper chest but the next three in the lower stomach weren’t as deep and weren’t clean in. However, it seems that through the loss of blood through these stab wounds, the victim lost strength allowing the assailant to stab four more times deep into the upper stomach of the victim before leaving the victim to die.

Eulogy: Mark Smith was a wonderful man. Beloved by his family and friends, what happened is a tragedy of the worst kind. The impact he had on the people he met is one that could never be replicated. He motivated those around him to do better and in turn that motivated him to make the place he worked in as wonderful and friendly as he could. He will be sorely missed, thank you Mark for the place you’ve had and what you meant in all our lives.

Lawyer: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I wish to for the last time state the facts leading to why the accused should be deemed guilty. Mark Smith, an innocent well respected family man who was working the night shift at his job where he was beloved by his coworkers, was brutally murdered on the night of June 6th. Following multiple stab wounds to his chest he was left to die by (assailant’s name), all for 35 bucks in Mark’s wallet. I think it’s clear to see that with the absolute atrocity of the crime committed towards the man Mark Smith was is punishable to the full extent of the law.

Discussion: 

1.  I think I found the detective piece the easiest to write because in pop culture, people focus much more on the nature of a crime rather than the aftermath of it.

2. I found the eulogy hardest to write because I believe it is nigh impossible to fake real sincerity if that makes sense. I didn’t know Mark as a person and so I couldn’t really emotionally connect to the idea of writing a eulogy for him.

3. I think that the audience of academic writing is dependent on the topic that you choose to write about. I think the tone should be formal in most cases and should aim to get one’s point across as efficiently and persuasively as possible.I think that a lot of academic writing is a waste because students are pressured to make their writing long and expansive so they start coming up with bullshit to fill the pages when really the same point could be made in just one paragraph.

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First-year Writing & Learning

I think that transferring knowledge and practices from one situation to another means not dismissing the potential and opportunity for the use of those techniques. I think that it means a person shouldn’t limit what they’ve learned within a certain class to just that class’s material. The example used in the reading was that people tend to dismiss what they learn in first year writing classes and don’t make use of that info except for in that class. This I feel is a waste and is detrimental to the progress of a person in their writing. Preliminary writing classes serve to teach people about basic writing skills that they can and should employ in their writing and I think there are a few important reasons for why people dismiss what they learn in these classes.

I think the first reason is that people know they are in beginning writing classes and go about their learning and work in the class with the assumption that they are learning non important things in the class since it’s only a beginners class and with that thought in the back of their mind, they absorb the info less and appreciate it less as well.

The second reason for their dismissal of things they learn in preliminary classes is that people might assume that they will just learn something contradictory of what they've learned already and those new things they'll learn will come from a  more advanced class which might lead them to assume it is more reputable. I think that this could be applicable and accurate in some situations but not in writing because there is no one way to correctly write and if anything I think that people shouldn't end up dismissing what they’d learned in the past but should much rather welcome everything that they’ve learned and use that vast multitude of info learned from the beginning of their writing experience up until right now to establish what their writing style is and what tools they would most effectively make use of in their writing.

By being aware of and avoiding falling into these stereotraps? people can successfully maintain all their knowledge and make use of it all in multiple disciplines and more importantly future classes.

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Reflecting on Maps: Take 2

This map is kind of a whole random splurge of stuff that popped into my head while I was making it. I think it very well relates to what I understand writing best as, which is fluctuating. My mind doesn’t stay in one place it’s constantly changing thinking of new things, new thoughts, different ideas, random concepts and that never stops similar to writing. I think that writing is never one constant thing, at least in practice. It’s always changing, always evolving, always adapting based on a virtually infinite number of factors dependent on the writer, the audience, the subject of the writing, and many more things. Relating to Darwin’s theory of evolution, writing is also a constantly evolving thing, but it differs in that evolution isn’t final and doesn’t take an extremely long amount of time. Writing is constantly in flux. While some might argue that some definitions are constant and unchanging, I still don’t believe that to indicate that individual meanings don’t fluctuate and change over time. As can be seen in our reading about ancient rhetorics, it’s stated that “when Americans hear the word rhetoric, they tend to think of politicians’ attempts to deceive them. Rhetoric is characterized as “empty words”...but that isn’t the way rhetoricians defined their art in ancient Athens and Rome.” Here we can see that the definition of rhetoric has changed over time, evolved to mean different things to in this case the average american, but another person of our time may still hold the same definition of rhetoric as the ancient Greeks and Romans. I think that one thing I can draw from my map is that I really am not good at doodling haha. I’ve learned in the past through exercises like this one that I do better when there is a little more structure to my assignments and don’t do so well when it comes to being creative. I think that through visual representations of what writing and the parts of writing are maybe allow us to distinguish important pieces from less important pieces in regards to key terms and facts about writing are. I think that for example my use of the word fluctuating allowed me to doodle a few things that the word made me think of and after considering the words in a different way, I find myself still believing that a key element of writing is that it is fluctuating. That it is constantly in a state of change and is never the same for two people. I hadn’t been able to put my theory of writing into one word or at least focus on the most important word within it but now I think I have a better footing off of which to develop my own theory.

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Revision vs. Editing

I think that revision is so important to wriing because, when a writer considers revising, in my mind it often means that the way they wrote before didn’t successfuly say what was intended. I think that Revision vs. Editing isn’t an appropriate representation of the relationship between those two concepts. I believe that revision is most probably the most important step within editing. Revision is a much bigger change or adjustment to whatever material the writer could have produced. I think that the reason why a lot of people may see revision as a seperate entity from editing is because in their minds, editing consists of small changes to words, sentences, grammar, or other smaller pieces of wriing, where revision is a whole rethinking (and in turn rewriting) of a large portion of writing. Revision is still editing, just on a grander scale. If not for revision, important documents in history such as the Bill of Rights. Initially, there were seventeen ammendments that were supposed to be added to the Constitution, but through revision and reconsidering of what values should be inscribed on such a foundational article of writing, ten of those ammendments were passed. Very seldom does anyone get ‘it’ perfect on the first try and more often than not bigger edits must be made, such as revision, in order to bring a literary piece to its fullest form.

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Sunday Something

This weekend I had a swim meet in which I improved my times in all my events and I also restarted the first ever Pokemon game I played when I was around 7 years old so I think it’s fitting that I feel like the very best, that no one ever was ;)

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Reflection on Reflection

Reflection to me is a way for writers to examine how they write after the fact. I think that without reflection, writers would very much fail to improve on their writing and expand on the depth of their writing. By reflecting, we analyze what we’ve done instead of putting it on a shelf in our minds to gather dust and be forgotten about. If no one reflected on what they’d done, humanity wouldn’t have stopped making the same mistakes, and on a smaller scale, writers wouldn’t have stopped making the same mistakes (although I to reflect and still tend to make a lot of the same mistakes). I think that reflection should happen mostly at the end when you are analyzing the whole piece, but honestly speaking, I reflect after each sentence and sometimes after certain words. I think about whether a different word would work or if a sentence could be formatted better. I also think that reflecting on the individual pieces that comprise one’s writing is important to make sure the writing flows, or doesn’t flow depending on the writer’s wants and expectations. Throughout this course we’ve gone into some personal things and I think that it’s impossible not to reflect when we discuss those things because a surface level response wouldn’t really be that personal in my mind. Without reflection people wouldn’t be able to grow in all aspects of their lives.

Now to answer what writing is after my time in this course, I don’t think it’s much changed from the definition I had going into this class. Rather, this class has just proven time and again through the discussions we may have about entitlement and gender exclusive environments, to the conversations about what makes us us which we write the contents of down that writing is a method of communication that serves to unite us, humans in our pursuit of knowledge and togetherness. This class is full of a lot of people, no one the same, agreeing on some things and disagreeing on others. It’s through our writing and our discussion about writing that we are able to have civil, educational, informative, and interesting discourse about our lives and the lives around us in this expansive beautiful world. To finish of my reflection on reflection, on this class, and on what writing is I’ll use the same quote I used in a past assignment (and expand on it a bit) to showcase what writing is to me and the wonderful diversity it contains. This is from the Johnson reading, my favorite so far: “But the truth is, when one looks at innovation in nature and in culture, environments that build walls around good ideas tend to be less innovative in the long run than more open-ended environments. Good ideas may not want to be free, but they do want to connect, fuse, recombine. They wan to reinvent themselves by crossing conceptual borders. They want to complete each other as much as they want to compete.”

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(En)Trenchment

I think that throughout many people’s writing careers, they often learn to write in one way that’s effective at that moment. This leads to one writing style that may be effective to a certain type of audience but for the most part will not be useful in convincing said audience. A computer scientist once told me that the greatest tool a programmer can have is the ability to adapt. To understand new concepts, to learn new languages, to employ them in your work. I believe this to be true for writers as well. My threshold concept is: Knowing your audience and knowing how to write for them. I think that that it’s integral to know your audience, because if you’re writing for the wrong audience then your writing will be interpreted the wrong way and may go to waste. Understanding how to write for your audience is even more difficult than knowing your audience. Being able to manipulate the way in which you write depending on who you’re writing for is an essential tool in creating persuasive writing that fulfill’s the needs of your audience. It’s also very hard to learn the ways you can change your style of writing but being able to do that allows you to cater to any type of audience. I don’t think anyone can master this without consistent and constant practice towards learning other styles of writing and analyzing one’s target audience for every piece of writing.

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Where Good Ideas Come From

So this is my collage. It represents where I believe my good ideas come from so I’ll try my best to explain it. I think that good ideas come from inspiration. From the world around us and all the wonderful things it has to offer. From our communities rich with different experience and cultures. I think that our families give us good ideas and raise us to be like them and go through life with their ideas. I think that in more modern times, a lot of good ideas make themselves popular and well known through social media. They’re easily accessible and can impact a wide variety of audiences. I think that we feel the need to challenge ourselves and discover new things, think in new ways, and come up with ideas we previously never could have. I think that universe is an expansive and terrifying place, but it’s also beautiful and full of ideas that we might never think or know but one day someone might...and most importantly I think that good ideas come from yourself. Because you can think, you can feel, you will make your way through this confusing, amazing, fucked up, and enchanting world and you will come up with ideas. Good ideas are everywhere and I think that the final words of the Johnson reading best sum up the place of good ideas in my world: “Good ideas may not want to be free, but they do want to connect, fuse, recombine. They want to reinvent themselves by crossing conceptual border. They want to complete each other as much as they want to compete.”

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Sunday Something

My weekend was pretty boring so here’s a song that I last listened to in middle school.

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Theory of Writing

Theory:

I think that writing is a constantly changing thing and that if my writing stayed the same forever, I would never grow as a writer and would never incorporate new ideas and styles into my writing. I think that for this reason, it is a great idea to always go out of one’s comfort zone and welcome in new ideas and new styles of writing which may challenge previously believed notions. A quote from the Russel and Yanez reading says that “The case we'll use addresses the role of specialized discourses in activities that involve non-specialists—a crucial problem in writing research, which is a typical scenario as many undergraduates are required to take courses that do not pertain to their chosen field.” I’d actually disagree with this statement as I think that by taking courses not pertaining to their specific major, college students welcome in new perspectives which could change the way they think, they perceive their major, and how they might approach problems in their major differently in the future. I find it interesting that I disagree with the first part of said reading because later on in the reading, it is stated that “We need a way of going beyond specific interpersonal interactions (the unit of analysis of transmission models) to understand ways broader social interactions, mediated through various tools, condition interpersonal interactions.” and with this I fully agree. I think it relates into my theory of writing as well in that the constant inclusion and awareness of new ideas, styles, and thoughts into one’s writing serve to create more interesting and challenging writing. While I can’t honestly argue that I’m a good example of my own theory of writing, I think that I try to embody the values within it in my interactions with people and ideas of different cultures so that I can become a more aware person with a better understanding of the world.

Seuss Poem:

We must challenge ourselves

to learn the culture of elves.

And gnomes and fairies

and wizards and airies.

to greatly expand our bookshelves.

Video: