This will be my final blog post of this course. Compared to my other blog posts, this one will be informal and mostly just me talking about experiences over the past few months. The coronavirus came to America at a strange time for me. Spring break was halfway done when I started receiving news about how my college would try to change before the end of the break. Over spring break I had pretty much turned my brain off and stopped thinking about all of the work I had been doing in my classes. I really needed that break, but it ended up hurting me overall when the college decided to shut down and have classes move to online. Spring break effectively became 2-3 weeks instead of one. This meant it was harder for me to get back into my working “mode”. That alone would’ve been hard to deal with, but things only really got worse from there. It seemed like every class I had was going in a different direction with transfering to online courses. There was a lot of chaos and confusion, and it really disauded me from even beginning to think about my work. Once classes began getting back into motion, the workload had changed completely. Three out of my four courses had become somewhat self paced, but not in a way that was beneficial to me. Two of my classes still met in online conferences on set days and times, but the work for the courses were done at your own time. This frustrated me as I already had to do more work on my own, but I had to wake up for classes where we would essentially just be going over material in the textbook that everyone had access to. If the classes chose one extreme instead of the poor balance, my sleep and work ethic could have been improved. Due dates were always a mystery until they weren't, which lead to a big disaster in the last few weeks of the course, as one of my classes made around 20% of the homework for the course have a due date within the week. This forced me to fall behind in other classes to accommodate.
Moving away from college, my personal life didn’t seem to change much at first. I usually talk to my friends online, and had no trouble with that while staying home. My plans for the future have been completely destroyed during the pandemic. I had begun thinking about working while not taking classes and eventually renting an apartment room. I don’t usually have motivation for things like this, but I need to take action now before I make more drastic changes in the future. I am not going to work while there is a single person with coronavirus in my state. I don’t trust a lot of information on the virus and I am putting my health as my first priority. I now have to think about how long the virus will be present in the country. I am extremely hesitant to register for college classes if I know they will be online courses. If by fall the virus is still present, I will have to decide whether or not I take any classes at all. I have avoided going outside at all costs with my father still going outside for work and getting food. I refuse to wear a mask, so staying inside is the best option for me. The one thing that is a little uplifting for my spirit at this time is looking at how Europe fares with the virus. Italy had been one the hardest hit countries with coronavirus for the longest time, but now it is beginning to see a drastic decrease in new cases and active cases of the virus. The problem is that here in America, that is not happening. I can only hope that soon we will start to see change here, but from my point of view we will be stuck like this for a while.
0 Comments
It's been a while, but I am back for my final formal blog post. For this blog assignment it may be necessary to read and watch this article and this video about reflective writing. This blog post will be about GRITT, an acronym you will learn more about later, and a reflection on this course. To begin, I would like to explain the acronym GRITT. GRITT stands for your Genre awareness, your Rhetorical awareness, your Identity as an author, your Theory of writing, and your Transfer of writing to future writing. GRITT tries to explain the relationship with writing an individual may have. Looking to understand each part of GRITT will help make the writing process a more clean and structured one. I will be using GRITT to highlight how my relationship with writing has changed throughout this course.
Genre awareness means understanding what type of literature you are composing. You write an email and a news article differently, and understanding the differences between different genres of writing may make it easier to understand how you should conduct your writing. Over this course, I have learned how genre awareness is important. The two major writing assignments I had were my narrative project and my research project. After working through both of these, I can see the limitations and concepts of each. The research project required me to find sources to provide information on the subject I was writing about, while the narrative project was from my own experience which allowed me to focus completely on my writing instead of looking for sources. Rhetorical awareness means understanding the message you are trying to convey through your writing. Rhetoric is present in all writing, as it tries to entertain, inform or persuade an audience to influence their thoughts. In this course I have learned to always keep myself aware of my own rhetoric in my writing, while making sure my audience is able to understand my rhetoric. For my research project, rhetorical awareness was important, because losing sight of your own message in a persuasive piece like that would completely defeat the purpose of the writing. My Identity as an author has changed throughout this course as well. My past experiences with writing have always been for educational purposes and that hasn’t really changed, but now I feel more able to write for other purposes. This course allowed me to write about topics I cared about in a way others haven’t. In this course I had to name my author’s self, which I chose the name Eren. In previous blog posts, I have discussed how my relationship with Eren had been one of disappointment. Eren is someone who stays true to his values, looks to spread his message, and always tries to improve. I believe I have made better connections with him during parts of this course, though recent events have hindered this thoroughly. I would also like to talk about how having a blog has affected this course for me. Being able to produce work for my own audience and having it be saved online is a nice thing to have. I felt able to output my message for others to see, and that is something I hope will come up again in the future. My writing of my memoir is also an important aspect of my identity in this course. As the most personal of all of my writings, my memoir allowed me to share about an event in my life I believe many others have gone through. I hope the message I was trying to get across didn’t fall on deaf ears. My Theory of writing in this course has not changed, but it has changed how I value some genres. I find it more valuable to convey messages about personal topics like in my memoir than things such as my op-ed. Topics that are usually written about with things like sources and data in mind are more argumentative in nature. I prefer having the message itself not be argued about, but how the message is presented. My theory of writing is passing on your idea along with passing along an idea of who you are. If you are going to make your idea or message something to argue over, then you, yourself, are going to be argued over. Transfering my writing to future writing situations is something that is important in this course to me. Understanding the other aspects of GRITT has made me think about how I do writing for other courses, especially genre awareness. I plan to use my genre awareness to better suit my writing for each specific purpose in the future. My process of writing has not really changed in this course. I still try to find time to sit down without distractions to get my work done in one timeframe. I prefer having my mindset stay consistent in my work as opposed to getting a different one and reworking my writing. I save different mindsets for different drafts, that’s why it is called a draft after all. Rhetorical awareness is important for different writing pieces I will need to work on in the future. Like stated in its own section, I should understand the message I am trying to convey in order to make the writing meaningful. In a future writing piece like a research paper, I could think about the aspects I learned in this course about the genre. I will know how to put the valuable information with sources and form my argument around that. This blog post will be closely linked to my previous blog post. It is, in a way, an alternate version of the story I told. The first half or so of this post will be something like an abridged version of my previous post. It will follow my actions on that day up until a certain point. At this point, I will act differently to how I acted in reality, a sort of "What if" scenario. This would be called a counterfactual, and you can learn more about it in this article that I read prior to writing this post. This post and the previous are connected with my narrative project which you can find here. It is a warm, June afternoon. The doors of the venue are open as students and their families arrive for the eighth grade graduation. A day that should be filled with excitement for students celebrating their achievements acquired over the past eight years, is instead, for me, a day of fear and anxiety.
I talk with my friends as they arrive, and eventually all the students line up for the ceremony. We walk out in a single file line to our seats, and the event begins. We sit in the front row of the room with family members in the back and multiple school faculty on the stage in front of us. The day goes on with speeches from the faculty about our long journey together, and awards based on attendance and grade. I receive my award that equates to around a “B” grade. This only reminded me of how I had all but stopped putting effort into school. The “A” grade awards go by and Erin is called up for one. She was the only thing on my mind for the entire day. I needed to tell her how I felt about her, but I was afraid she didn’t share those feelings with me. After the ceremony, students and family make their way out into the hallway to say goodbye to their peers. I say goodbye to my friends and see Erin doing the same. Our eyes meet. “Michael” she said in a happy voice. We came together and hugged. It was at this time I knew that I had to talk to her. There wouldn’t be another opportunity after this. As words raced around in my head, I finally stepped back and spoke. “Hey Erin, could I talk with you about something?” I say slowly to make sure my message is heard. “Sure” She said. “What’s up?” I responded, “I just wanted to tell you that the last few years have been rough for me. Many things in my life that used to make me happy, just don’t anymore. Over this last year though, you have made me happy. All of my experiences with you have been happy ones, and I wanted to tell you that.” “Really?” she said. “ I’m sorry things have been bad for you, but I’m glad that I could help.” “Do you think we could, I don’t know, go out sometime and do something together?” I said nervously. “Sure!” She responded. “I’d like that.” “That’s great! Here’s my number….” I replied. It felt like the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders. I had an internal sigh of relief, I was mentally exhausted. I had been scared for so long that this wouldn’t work out the way I wanted. Now she knows what I was thinking and she’s okay with going out sometime. A smile breaks out across my face, a real one, not one I put on to not worry my friends or family. A sincere smile, as now I am done hiding and running away from my fears. Erin and I wave goodbye, and I join my family for a car ride home. For this blog assignment, I read the short story Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway. The story had a theme of disconnect and anger. I am tasked with writing about an emotional scene from my life, and my scene shares these themes. My scene involves anger towards myself and my own inaction and fear. It also shows a disconnect from my dreams and wishes and my actions to make those wishes come true. It is a warm, June afternoon. The doors remain open as families arrive and slowly make their way inside the building. For me and my peers, it’s the end of a chapter in our lives, and the beginning of a new one. The eighth grade class of 2015 graduates today, and many are excited to move on from middle school and start their path to a career in high school. I, on the other hand, feel nothing but nerves.
Eighth grade had been a very different school year for me compared to previous ones in middle school. My closest friends were all in different classes and the only people I really knew in my class were “friends of friends.” Nevertheless, the year was relatively nice. Those “friends of friends” turned out to be great friends I had a lot of fun with. We played "Uno" every day during snack, and we just enjoyed talking with each other. It was a nice change of pace for me as the previous two years were marked by sadness, as I was very fond of a girl I liked who I had no chance with. In fact, there were many girls I was fond of over those two years, and all of them either avoided me or just ignored me. It was very taxing on my mind, I had all but given up on girls and focused on my friends in this new school year. Throughout this new year I kept true to my focus and mainly talked with my friends. One thing changed around half way through the year. Sitting next to my friend Shawn and I, was a girl named Erin. I never heard of her before, must’ve transferred here last year. I thought she was pretty, but I stayed true to my word and mostly ignored her. As the year went on, I eventually had interactions with her that weren’t completely terrible as my interactions with other girls had been. She was nice to me, no girl had treated me with kindness like she had. We made jokes, the class both thought we were some of the smartest kids, and it seemed like she enjoyed talking with me. I would never tell her that I liked her though, I could never bear the pain that could come from saying that. Eventually as the year was coming to an end, Erin was the only thing on my mind, she was all that mattered to me. I promised myself that I needed to confess to her, but the thought of hearing “no” scared me like nothing had before. The pain of rejection was very familiar to me, two years of it changed me into a mostly cynical person. Day after day went by, where I only thought of talking to Erin, but never actually making my move. Soon there was only one day left, and that was at the graduation. I arrived at the high school where the event was to take place with my father, mother and grandmother. My first twenty minutes there were filled with just talking among me and my classmates. We all reminisced in the memories we made at the school. I saw my friend Caleer who arrived with only what seemed to be his grandfather accompanying him. I walked up to him and greeted him with “Yo Caleer, you ready for today?” “Yeah Mike, it’s crazy we’re done with this school already” He replied. I responded “yeah I know. It feels like the years just got faster as we got older.” I didn’t know it then, but this was the last time I would talk to Caleer. He and I have a long history. We were definitely not friends in fourth grade, but eventually we looked past our differences and became good friends. A little more than three years later, Caleer would be killed in a shooting in the city. Time passed and I talked to friend after friend. Marco, Kevin, Lucky and Brandon all came here with their families, and they all seemed happy for this occasion. I tried my best to look happy as well, but the main feeling in my mind was fear. I dreaded the moment where I would have to talk to Erin. What’s so special about me? Why would she want to go out with me over somebody else? It was torture for me, but I had to go on with my graduation. Once all the families were sat in the bag of the auditorium, Teachers had us lineup in alphabetical order, just like we rehearsed a week before. I was at the front and behind me was my friend Joshua. Soon the cue was given, and we walked in a single file line to our seats in the front row. On the stage in front of us sat the principal, the two vice principals and one other staff member. They went on and on about how they’ve watched us all grow up from kindergartners to eighth graders, and were happy to see us succeed. The award ceremony began with awards mostly based on grades and attendance. Eventually my name was called for an attendance award. It’s not like I had a choice on whether or not I went to school, my dad drove me every day. Among the other students called was Erin. It reminded me again of what I had to do. Maybe after the ceremony I could talk to her. Next was the grade awards. There were only really grade awards for people who got B’s or higher. I was surprised when my name was called up for the B grade award. I had always been a straight A student. The past three years or so had been rough for me. School had no meaning, and I put much less effort into it. Many things in my life were losing meaning. Erin was called up for the A award, and eventually the highest overall award. It seemed like she took school very seriously and tried her hardest. All things that made me feel worthless in her eyes. After the awards were all given out, each student was individually called up for our graduation certificate. This took a long time for the one hundred or so students, but eventually we all got our certificates and sat back down. Then, we had a slideshow played, it was a collection of pictures from our yearbook accumulated throughout every year since kindergarten. It was emotional and all for a lot of people, but for me it was a long wait. You already know where my mind was, and it was never leaving the subject. Every minute passing was just another minute of mounting pressure on me. After the slideshow, the ceremony was over. We were all let out into the hallway to meet with our families and other students to give our last goodbyes. I was transferring to a high school that nobody else seemed to be going to, so this was going to be the last time I saw many of these people. I met with most of my friends and gave our goodbyes, but we all kept in contact with each other so they weren’t real goodbyes. Next, was all the general peers, who I had little interaction with but they appreciated me either way. Finally, I saw her. Erin just finished giving her goodbye to some other student when she saw me. “Michael” she said in a happy voice. “Come over here.” I came over and we embraced each other in a hug. My mind was racing a thousand miles a minute at this point. This was the last chance I would get to see and talk to her. There is no other time later than now, I can’t push it off any longer. This hug may have lasted only five seconds or so, but it felt like ten minutes. Sentences and words were scrambling around my head, trying to formulate some sort of message I could tell her. Our hug ended and we faced each other for a moment. This was it. Michael say something, say anything, anything at all. I said “_______________________________________________________________” Nothing. No words came out. I stood there motionless waiting for her to answer, but what would she answer? I told her nothing, so she responded with nothing. At that moment it felt like someone punched me in the stomach. I felt so many different things at the same time. Regret, anger, and sadness. There was nobody in the world I hated more than myself at this moment. Erin soon walked away to say her goodbyes to other peers, and my parents called me over. It was time to leave. The door of the venue had closed. It was over. The car ride home was silent from me. My mom tried to ask me questions such as “Aren’t you happy you’re finished?” I wasn’t happy. There was no way I could be. I didn’t answer anything she asked me. This was my own fault, and I needed to be by myself to just think. I would like to tell myself that I learned something from this mistake. Maybe some sort of message could be construed from this. Years passed, I still lived in the shadow of that failure. One day I started to think to myself again. Most of my time since then has been spent in my own head, but this day was different. I thought to myself “If I win, I’ll be happy. If I lose, I’ll be sad. I can’t win if I don’t fight. Fight, fight.” For this blog assignment, I was asked to read these three texts: Teach Writing as a Process Not a Product by Don Murray, Against Vanity: in Praise of Revision by Mary Karr, and Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life | pp. 28 -34 | by Anne Lamott. This blog will revolve around me creating a situation where I meet the authors of these three pieces and discuss writing with them. All three of them will say quotes straight out of the works listed. It should help create a discussion about writing and its processes. It was five in the afternoon on a tuesday. I had an interview for a job at the local news station where I hope to become a writer for opinion pieces and eventually start writing my own novel. It was the beginning of my career in writing, so you could safely assume that I was beyond nervous. Writing could be difficult for me and I had always thought that, those big name authors just had natural skill I could never achieve. I arrive at the building, go up the elevator to the floor where conference room 516 could be found. It was here where I opened the door and saw a large table with three people sitting down waiting for me to take a seat of my own. The three interviewers seemed familiar to me. They were all authors I had read about before, Don Murray, Mary Karr, and Anne Lamott. I had always wanted to ask these authors questions about writing to make the whole subject easier for me, and now was my chance.
After sitting down and introducing myself to everyone, I began by asking them all a question about writing. I said “I feel like starting to write a literary piece is the most difficult part. It feels like a boulder you have to move uphill.” Mary Karr responds to me “The idea is to get some scenes down. Let your mind roam down some alleys that may land in dead ends—that’s the nature of the process.” Don Murray adds “Prewriting is everything that takes place before the first draft. Prewriting usually takes about 85 percent of the writer’s time.” This makes me think that the beginning of the process is supposed to be hard. Anne Lamott tells me “Often when you sit down to write, what you have in mind is an autobiographical novel about your childhood, or a play about the immigrant experience, or a history of—oh, say— say women. But this is like trying to scale a glacier. It’s hard to get your footing, and your fingertips get all red and frozen and torn up.” These authors seem to understand how difficult it can be to just start writing, let alone working around the contents of the piece. I tell the authors “It’s hard to stick with work when it seems like failure is down each and every corner.” Mary Karr tells me “Every writer I know who’s worth a damn spends way more time ‘losing’ than ‘winning’” Don Murray brings up his idea about the three stages of writing saying that “Writing is the act of producing a first draft. It is the fastest part of the process, and the most frightening, for it is a commitment. When you complete a draft you know how much, and how little, you know. And the writing of this first draft—rough, searching, unfinished—may take as little as one percent of the writer’s time.” Anne Lamott then adds in “Say to yourself in the kindest possible way, Look, honey, all we’re going to do for now is to write a description of the river at sunrise, or the young child swimming in the pool at the club, or the first time the man sees the woman he will marry. That is all we are going to do for now. We are just going to take this bird by bird. But we are going to finish this one short assignment.” The image they pain in my mind about writing is, a long, bumpy road that eventually leads to my destination. The process may be hard, but as long as I can see the road just in front of me, I can always continue working towards the goal. I bring up how the three interviewers are famous authors, and how writing must be easier for them in some way. They must have some natural ability to get their thoughts onto paper, that I don’t have. “I make constant mistakes on all of my work, and it really discourages me. It seems like everybody I know falls into constant pitfalls along the road” I tell them. Mary Karr tells me “Revision is the secret to their troubles—and yours.” Don Murray agrees with the sentiment. He talks about how school teaches writing in a strict, narrow way that can be harmful. He says “Instead of teaching finished writing, we should teach unfinished writing, and glory in its unfinishedness.” Anne Lamott then jumps in. She begins talking about how thinking like a perfectionist can really slow writers down. She states “Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong. It is no wonder if we sometimes tend to take ourselves perhaps a bit too seriously.” The message these three are trying to tell me makes sense in a way. Like before, I had always thought that writing came naturally to them, but they know the struggle. They have seen every pitfall, every crevice and crack in this road. Of course they would know about the troubles of writing. They have been writing for a long time, they know about the struggles, because they have experienced it all themselves. After this long talk about the process of writing and its hardships, I show them some of my previous work as an example of what I can offer to the company. They looked impressed and praised my efforts. They must understand that the finish products they hold in their hands, comes after a long, strenuous process of drafts. The meeting ends with warm feelings of acceptance as I get the thumbs up for the job. For this post, I read A Fable for the Living . It's a short story about connecting to your author-self, thought hid behind a metaphor. The metaphor involves a woman who had her fiance die, and she writes her thoughts towards him leaving her on sheets of paper, that she puts into crevices in the dirt. She would get answers back and eventually she gets connected with her fiance on the other side. This letter to my author-self is supposed to invoke a similar feeling, where I will connect with my author-self in a letter. I will write my thoughts about him and try to get a better understanding of our relationship.Dear Eren,
I feel like this letter is long overdue. You are someone who has always been a part of my life, yet I never could connect with you. I had always aspired to be more like you, but I can’t live up to your expectations. It is like you are the cool cousin that I always looked up to, but I only ever lived in your shadow. Half of the problem is me lazily disregarding your message and the other half of the problem is me misinterpreting your ideas, so I would like to make some changes over this next semester. I want to say that, I am going to change for the better and become closer with you. First off, I will try to work harder in aligning myself with you. I want to live more closely by the ideas and morals you have, because I believe that they will put me on the path to success. Secondly, I would like to look at you for what you are, merely an Idea of what I could be, not some higher being or something like that. The crushing weight of strict expectations bogs me down, and eventually I lose all hope of ever becoming connected with you. Lastly, I would like to talk with you more. Hopefully by doing these things we can become closer. Interacting with you may help me better understand your ideas, and understand what I can do to reach your expectations. You always tried to live up to your morals. You had your own ideals and dreams and chased them no matter who was in your way. “Keep moving forward” that’s your motto and I want to take that to heart. I often let things in my life drag me down and that pushes me farther away from you. I feel like this next semester gives us a great chance to understand each other. You can freely express your ideas in a way you weren’t able to before, and now I can freely listen without the deafening noise of the world around me. Now is the time for us to travel the same path together, and this time I would like for us to not deviate again. You were always busy with work, never having a chance to express yourself, but now we have nothing to do except express our ideas. Instead of being the younger brother always being overshadowed by your expectations, maybe we could be twins instead, two halves of the same coin. Becoming closer with you will make me see the world in a much more lighthearted and optimistic way. It is going to be hard, being used to only work instead of thinking about my own thoughts, makes tapping into those thoughts more difficult as time goes on. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to this next semester, and I believe that we can mend the schism that has separated us in the past. Sincerely, Michael. Hello again, This blog post is all about multimodal writing, and me using a website as a canvas for my writing in my English Composition I class. Here are some links to some texts/videos related to the topic:
Creating a website on Weebly Cheryl Ball and Colin Charlton's writings about multimodal writing C.R.A.P principles on design Kent State's process on grading multimodal writings Questions about Mulimodal Writing Why are we creating a website for our English Composition I course? I believe a website is a clean and organized way to gather and present your work for projects, essays, and other writing pieces. How do Ball and Charlton define "multimodal" writing? Ball and Charlton describe multimodal writing as any literary that contains at least two different modes. Ball and Charlton describe mode as "a way of communicating or making meaning." The New London Group describes five modes that writers use to create meaning or communicate a message, those being Linguistic, Aural, Visual, Gestural, and Spatial. An example of multimodal writing using Ball and Charlton's definition would be a blog where you can use pretty much all modes aside from gestural. Blogs allow you to post pictures and videos, attach music, format your writing with titles, categories and more, and allow you to type words just as in any form of writing. Do you agree with Ball and Charlton when they claim "all writing is multimodal"? I do agree that all writing is multimodal. Every basic school essay you have ever written has had guidelines that make you use at least two different modes. The most common modes would be Linguistic and Spatial. You always have to put your name, date, and title on all of your work, so that your teacher/instructor knows who did the work and when it was done. Along with that, you must indent the beginning of each paragraph. That is already a mode of writing, Spatial. Now when you are in the actual body and text of your essay, your choice of words is another mode of writing, Linguistic. If a form of writing, that is so basic, can be considered multimodal, I don't find it hard to believe that all writing is multimodal. As a web site author who will create your own web page content in this course, how would you rank the importance of the five modes on a scale of 1-5? Please provide a brief rationale to support each mode ranking. I would rank the modes in the following descending order of importance, 1. Linguistic, 2. Visual, 3. Spatial, 4. Aural, and finally 5. Gestural. Linguistic is almost always the most important mode of writing in my mind, what you are saying is usually the message you are trying to get across to listeners/readers. Visual is important for a website as it allows you to sort of theme your work, it also gives you another format with which to convey information with a video of you speaking as opposed to just text. Spatial is important, because it gives a form to your writing, a messy looking website may suggest that you don't really care about your message. Aural goes along with Visual, your tone of voice conveys seriousness, humor or any other emotion along with your message. Music is another way Aural helps your message, the genre of music, lyrics, and tone all sets an emotion, for any listener/reader, that is attached to your message. Gestural is ranked last as it only can really be used along with Visual. People can't see your body movements while you are typing in a blog post, but they can in a video of yourself. What does the C.R.A.P. acronym stand for? C.R.A.P. stands for Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity. Contrast is about bringing attention to a specific thing. Make one phrase or word really BIG compared to the rest of the text, and people will be drawn to that word or phrase. Repetition means creating a structured format, which makes it easier for readers to follow along. This blog post has a bold question and then a smaller answer following it, and this stays true for the entire post, which should make it easy to follow. Alignment is similar to Repetition in how it makes work easier to read by aligning things together. If each question and answer here was scrunched into opposite sides of the page, it would be disorienting. Proximity allows work to have a flow to it. One idea goes into the next smoothly and so on. Talking about two completely different topics right after the next can be jarring. As a web site author who will create your own web page content in this course, how would you rank the importance of the four C.R.A.P. principles of design on a scale of 1-5? Please provide a brief rationale to support each design principle ranking. My ranking for the four principles of C.R.A.P. would be 1. Repetition, 2. Proximity, 3. Contrast, and 4. Alignment. Repetition makes works very organized, and I plan on making all of my posts approachable for anyone. Proximity has always come natural to me, as in a regular conversation, you talk about one topic and usually drift around to topics similar to that one. I don't want my writing to seem unnatural, so I pay attention to Proximity often. I don't use Contrast that often as having random words or phrases larger in a text seems unprofessional to me, but I might try something different with topics I feel personally attached to. Alignment is important just as Repetition is important, but I feel like you'd have to go out of your way to make works unlined, so I don't put it that highly. What are the seven sample criteria Borton and Huot suggest writers use to assess a multimodal composition? The seven criteria Borton and Huot talk about are Purpose, Audience, Tone, Organization, Transitions, Synthesizing information, and Detail. Purpose is simple, the work conveys meaning. Audience means that the writer is addressing or identifying a specific group of people. Tone means that the writing matches the tone that the purpose for the writing uses and audience would deem appropriate. Organization means that the author can get the purpose across clearly. Transitions mean the author can link his or her ideas together in a literary work. Synthesizing information means the author connects his or her ideas with relevant information such as a relevant news article. Detail is about all the little things in the work. Does the music, pictures, video, word choice help convey your message? If so, you are good with details. Do the Borton-and-Huot criteria seem similar or different from the criteria we would use to assess a traditional print essay? Why or why not? These criteria do seem to match what you would use to assess a traditional print essay. When looking at a traditional essay, you are always going to look for purpose. There is no point to writing without purpose. Audience, Tone, and Organization are all parts of your writing that would be thought about in the grading process. Transitions and Detail are part of making your essay unique, and a unique essay is usually better than a bland one. Synthesizing information is vital in many essays with required sources. If you aren't using your sources correctly, why use them at all? Hello, This is my first blog post for my English composition class. The first blog assignment was to answer all questions in the Proust Questionnaire. The Proust Questionnaire is a set of thirty five questions created by Marcel Proust, a french writer. You can find the entire Proust questionnaire here.
The Proust Questionnaire __1.__What is your idea of perfect happiness? My Idea of perfect happiness is not one of short term joy from doing actions for the purpose of joy. My idea of perfect happiness can only come from looking at the past, and perhaps at the future. I believe you can feel perfect happiness from looking at what you have accomplished in your time, whether that be winning a competition, raising children, or even getting a raise at your job. __2.__What is your greatest fear? My greatest fear is quite literally bees. If you want a more psychological based answer, I would say my greatest fear is being forgotten or not having accomplished my goals. I want to know that once my time is done, I leave behind something to be remembered by. These things can be (just as stated in question 1) winning competitions, having children ect. __3.__What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? The trait I most deplore in myself is Sloth. I feel as though I have moderate goals for myself, yet I feel a great resistance to working to complete those goals. It is a tough thing to overcome, but something I need to overcome. __4.__What is the trait you most deplore in others? The trait I most deplore in others is dishonesty or contentment. These are two different traits, but they go hand in hand in my eyes. Dishonesty is simple, people withhold information from others for their own gain. Contentment is being satisfied with what you have. It seems many people today are content with people being dishonest with them. This contentment leads to sloth and inaction, making people nothing more to slaves to those who use dishonesty for personal gain. __5.__Which living person do you most admire? The living person I most admire today would probably be Matteo Salvini. He is an Italian politician, leader of the Lega party. Most of his policies revolve around helping the Italian people. Many European governments put their citizens far down the line of priorities for their agenda. Things like the environment come before them, while they may not be a bad thing to focus on inherently, the people should always come first. __6.__What is your greatest extravagance? My greatest extravagance would maybe be my relatively “safe” life. I have a family that cares deeply about me, allowing me to make risky decisions without much fear of collapse. __7.__What is your current state of mind? My current state of mind is one of inaction. My life has reached a point of stagnation. I don’t like how my life is right now. I don’t like where I live, what I do nor the people i talk to, but I have no method to change my surroundings currently (at least for where I live). I am stuck where I am until I finish my education. __8.__What do you consider the most overrated virtue? The virtue I look the least highly of is kindness or Humanitas. One of the main components of kindness is contentment. If you have read my answer to number four, you don’t need an explanation to this. __9.__On what occasion do you lie? While I try to be as truthful as possible, I am human and I lie. I only see myself lying when a situation could turn in an aggressive way. If there is a way to diffuse a situation through lying, I usually try to do it. __10.__What do you most dislike about your appearance? I believe I am overweight. While I’m not the biggest person you’ve ever seen, I don’t like being overweight in the slightest. Only around 3 years ago, I was relatively healthy, despite making no real efforts to maintain that healthiness. Only after a certain event in my life, that you may learn about later, did my health take a turn for the worse. I gained around 50 pounds without changing diet or exercise habits. This only showed that what I had beforehand, was unearned and I need to work to get it again. __11.__Which living person do you most despise? It’s hard for me to point at one single person I despise the most, but the sort of top group all share the same traits. They are usually politicians who try to destroy culture and society for their own agenda. They try to make their message about helping those less fortunate or being more open to less accepted lifestyles or cultures. They use this pretext to destroy anything that doesn’t confide with that agenda. In other words the normal becomes abnormal, and the people usually suffer from this. If you need a single person who personifies this trait, I would say maybe Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, is a good example. __12.__What is the quality you most like in a man? The quality in a man I most admire is integrity. Standing up for what you believe in. I try to reflect this quality in my own actions. __13.__What is the quality you most like in a woman? The quality in a woman I most admire is modesty. It seems many people in the world need to show off how good their lives are. From my experience, women do this more openly. Understanding that people usually don’t care about your life, and trying to keep your achievements to yourself, is a good start to living a self fulfilling life and not a prideful one. __14.__Which words or phrases do you most overuse? Most phrases or words I overuse, I only use online with friends. Things like “bro” are things I picked up from friends, that really don’t reflect me yet I use out of habit. __15.__What or who is the greatest love of your life? The greatest love of my life is someone I haven’t met yet. The few people in my life that I have shared feelings with ended up being people that hurt me overall. I hope to find someone later in my life that I can call “the greatest love of my life.” __16.__When and where were you happiest? I was probably the happiest during fifth grade or so. I was a kid who didn’t know much about the world. I was ignorant to the things that go on today. Those things today get to me much more. I believe most people would look back at their childhood as a time happier than now. __17.__Which talent would you most like to have? I would love to speak many languages. Language is something I have great interest in. Being able to speak to people from across the world would be a very interesting thing for me. __18.__If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I would probably change my inaction. As stated in question three. I am very slow to take action in my life, and I wish this wasn’t true. __19.__What do you consider your greatest achievement? I don’t believe I have done much worthy of praise in my life. Perhaps finding myself spiritually could be looked at as my achievement, although I don’t feel as though I am done with that journey. __20.__If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be? I would give life a second chance, if I were to come back. Maybe I would prefer living in a different country, but I would start life over as a regular person. __21.__Where would you most like to live? I want to live in Italy. __22.__What is your most treasured possession? The thing I treasure most is myself and my family. __23.__What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? The deepest depth of misery is believing you have nothing. You think you have no future, no hope and no meaning. __24.__What is your favorite occupation? I usually play video games. I don’t find as much joy in them as I used to, but I never found something else to do. I like reading, although most stories don’t interest me. __25.__What is your most marked characteristic? My most marked characteristic is probably my face. My face has never changed since I was a kid. __26.__What do you most value in your friends? I don’t really “like” my friends as much as I should. I could say I like that we play games together, but they broke my trust before, and it is really hard for my trust to come back. __27.__Who are your favorite writers? My favorite writer is Hajime Isyama. He writes and illustrates Attack on Titan. While at first it seems like a standard zombie apocalypse story with a little flavor unique to him, it eventually completely changes to a story about perspective and integrity. Fighting for what you believe in, even when everyone is against you, is my favorite aspect of the story. __28.__Who is your hero of fiction? My hero of fiction would be Eren Jäger. He is the main character of Hajime Isayama’s manga series Attack on Titan. Eren is a character that changes a lot throughout the series, starting off as just an angry kid who lost his mother and turning into a one man army trying to become free. Eren is part of what makes Attack on Titan so morally grey. Along with the premise of the show, that isn’t revealed until around chapter 80 or so, Eren adds an element of chaos and perspective to the series that really makes the series unique. __29.__Which historical figure do you most identify with? While I don’t see myself connecting with many historical figures, I would say that Theodore Rosevelt stands out to me among American historical figures. He championed the idea of American populism, that seems to have long died in this country. __30.__Who are your heroes in real life? My real life hero would be Matteo Salvini. He is an Italian politician that is the leader of the Lega party. His party stands for populism and looks to put the Italian citizens as the first priority in politics. __31.__What are your favorite names? My favorite female name would be most likely Isabella. My first dog’s name was Bella, and she was very important to me as I grew up with her as a baby all the way up to eighth grade, when she sadly had to be put down due to the crippling illnesses she had causing her pain. My favorite male name would be Giuseppe. Giuseppe Garibaldi was an Italian general who led the Redshirts and united Italy under one banner. __32.__What is it that you most dislike? The thing I most dislike would maybe be the slowness of my life in the past years. For the longest time, I had no idea what I wanted to do for a career or my life in general, but time would fly by quickly, forcing me to make a decision. Once I had made my decision on what I wanted to do, things seemed to slow down. Now I am just endlessly waiting for me to be able to go out and pursue my career. __33.__What is your greatest regret? My greatest regret could be a few things. I have regrets, but over time I don’t really feel too strongly about them as much as I used to. At one point my greatest regret was not confessing feelings to some girl I liked in eighth grade, but later I found out that nothing good would have really came of that. Now I would say my greatest regret is not learning to move forward, or move on from the past. __34.__How would you like to die? I would like to die peacefully surrounded by family. Hopefully at a point when I feel that I have accomplished what I wanted in life. __35.__What is your motto? My motto is to keep moving forward. This motto comes from Attack on Titan, and is part of the reason why I hold the series so highly, although the saying has a darker meaning in the series than the way I look at it. At some points in life, you need to ignore the past and focus on the present. When other people begin slowing you down or preventing you from accomplishing something, you need to keep moving forward no matter what is going on, no matter who is against you. |
Michael AruffoI use this blog to explore the messy processes of writing and to make meaning ArchivesCategories |