LET'S TALK.
OPINION.
EXPERIENCE
This image represents laughter/humor. I would have used a picture of me, but my phone's front camera does this weird thing of making me ugly. When I think of humor, I think of a pleasant environment that allows for people's true personality to come out. Mrs. Rand's UWRT 1102 class did just that! Mrs. Rand set a mood for the class that was calm by being nice and allowing us to be creative in our writing. I was never given the chance to make writing fun because usually I have to write about boring subjects using boring tones. I realized write off the bat that the instructor encouraged freedom of your own writing. My personality is very dramatic with an abundance of sarcastic humor. I displayed my sarcastic humor in my conflict paper, and it ended up being a grand slam. I have never received good grades on my writing, and now I believe it was because I never was allowed to add my personality into it. For the rest of the course, I would always add my dramatic/relatable humor into all blog posts and the ignite presentation. Every assignment ended up being fun and I would frequently surpass the word minimum on assignments because I was having fun. Activities that are fun go by fast, and activities that are boring go by slow. I believe this class went by so fast becuase I was being myself and having fun.
PROFESSOR MOORE
If I were the teacher, I would preach creativity and strong arguments. Honestly, I feel like nothing else matters because these two skills can make anyone a pro. If one is creative, then their papers will be interesting and fun to read due to the fact that it is unique. If one makes strong arguments, they have plenty of supporting evidence and sources that make it a quality paper. Papers are all about arguing your point, so if you can persuade the audience to agree with you, you are a great writer. I found these two skills to help me during the course, so teaching them would probably help other students. I feel like I was never a decent writer growing up because I relied too much on structure. Teachers would constantly tell me that each paragraph needs 5-8 sentences with a topic sentence and conclusion sentence. Teachers would never stop bombarding me to make a thesis statement and have body paragraphs. All this structure made it hard to focus on the argument/topic that I was trying to write about. If one is given freedom to write how they want, results are much better. This semester, I stopped worrying about not using first person and guidelines on how to write. I began writing creatively, which strengthened my arguments and made my paper more enjoyable to read. Writers never get anywhere with being the same, so writers must be unique. Teaching creativity and strong arguments are a must when being a UWRT professor.
Nathan's
Teaching
Guide
THANK YOU
The authors that I would like to thank are Deborah Holdstein and Danielle Aquiline. These are the authors of Who Says?, and it was a great resource throughout the semester. The best part about this book is the section where it gives researching tips. I wrote a blog post about this topic, but I cannot emphasize enough how much this helped me. While reading the section, I came across a statement that said to use Google's advanced search option. I never knew that Google had an advanced search option. I immediately got my computer and began to play around on the tool. In my opinion, I believe this is the greatest innovation of the twenty-first century. Before this insight, I would spend hours finding three mediocre sources, but the advanced search gave me much more. I was able to find countless credible sources throughout the semester using the advanced search. This tool increased my ethos in all my essays and made me much more efficient when writing. It took me a minute, but I thought of a fun activity. The teacher could tell the class that they are going to have a competition. Everyone gets their laptops out (including the teacher), and the teacher gives a specific topic to look up. The teacher is secretly using Google's advanced search option. Since most students do not know about the advnaced search, the teacher always wins the challenge. At the end, the teacher shows the tool he or she was using to research, and the students benefit from point that the advanced search is useful.
SUCCESSES AND FAILURES
My greatest success during this semester would have to be my conflict analysis paper, but my multigenre project is a close second. Both of these assignments were fun assignments that made my creativity thrive. Whenever one enjoys an activity, they always put more effort and time into it. I remember that I did not want to put the computer down when I was writing the conflict analysis. Plus, it took me 1.5 hours to finish my cartoon for the multigenre project, but it only felt like twenty minutes because I was having fun. Every person has failures, and mine was the inquiry paper. Well, it was not a complete failure because I received an A on the assignment, but I definitely wish I could change some aspects about it. I never revised the inquiry paper, so it needs some changes. I remember it sounding choppy, so I would like to go add more transitions. Plus, I would like to go add more examples and evidence to support my argument in the paper. The topic of investing can be confusing, so extra examples would not hurt. A piece of writing that is becoming one of my favorites is the cartoon I made for the multigenre project. I decided to model it off of cartoons in the New Yorker magazine. I decided to make this choice because the New Yorker's audience is primarily wealthy businessmen, which was a similar audience that I wanted to address in my multigenre cartoon. I tailored my diction to fit into a business atmosphere. I did this by adding the phrases "income statement" and "Lehman Brothers." I knew that this business diction would target the audience I was aiming for, and allow them to get the joke. These aspects made the cartoon a success and helped provide advertising for my newly established J. P. Moore bank.
UWRT STORY
The year was 2315 and everyone was aboard the USS Enterprise. At the time, Captain Meaghan Tyberius Rand was leading the ship through deep space. Her first mate, Nathan "Spock" Moore, was advising her on the dangers of deep space travel. But, since Captain Rand is a risk-taker, she was prepared for anything. Suddenly out of nowhere, a fleet of dumb Romulan invaders attacked the ship. Everyone was frightened, except for Captain Rand. Rand maneuvered the ship through the hurling asteroids with little success at losing the enemies. Unexpectedly, Spock warns Rand of an impending crash with an asteroid in exactly 6.32 seconds. Rand manages to avoid the disaster, but luckily the Romulan invaders were not as fortunate. While Captain Rand is receiving praise by all the passengers, she accidentally flies the ship into a Romulan trap. The USS Enterprise is surrounded on all sided by five Romulan ships filled with dumb, uneducated Romulans. Without any hesitation, Captain Rand decides to risk her life and give herself up to the Romulan forces. Spock tries to reason with Captain Rand, and repeatedly advices her about how illogical her plan is. Captain Rand does not listen and goes across in a transport vessel to an enemy ship. Rand immediately gets aprehended and is forced to speak to the Romulan leader. The Romulan leader tells Rand that her attempts to save her crew are not going to be enough. Rand then breaks from her chains, and instead of using weapons, she used her brain against the dumb Romulan enemies. Captain Rand threw knowledge about citations at the first Romulan, and then spun around and kicked some sense about pathos into the next Romulan. By the end, Captain Rand educated every single dumb Romulan, and made them smart Romulans. She told the Romulan leader to use more transition words to make his writing flow better, and then told him to stay out of deep space. Rand quickly told Scotty to beam her up. Everyone was cheering for Captian Rand. Spock congratulates Rand, and learns from Rand's wild adventure that it is okay to be creative. Captain Rand gets into the Captain's chair and exclaims, "Take us home, Scotty." The ship jumps into warp drive and the Enterprise crew lives to learn from Captain Rand another day.
WORLD PERSPECTIVE
I plan on being an investment banker or financial advisor at some point in my future, so I began to tailor my UWRT assignments to prepare me for my future. My inquiry paper and multigenre project were about investing, so I tried to promote a formal tone in the genres and display confidence in my writing. All businessmen are salesmen, so one has to be proficient at persuading their audience and creating a confident tone. I will continue practicing these skills during my major courses to prepare for the real world. Plus, I am going to be applying for the Bank of America Applied Technology Program, and they teach you how to make business presentations. Learning this knowledge form professionals will be beneficial in preparing for my career as an investment banker. As an investment banker or financial analyst, I will primarily use Microsoft Excel, but other genres will be needed. I will probably have to make dozens of business presentations and reports about strategies a business or investor should take. It will be crucial to have a confident tone in these works because I will be convincing people to like my ideas. My writing might help a company grow to new heights, or it might help persuade clients to use my company's services. My goal is to one day be writing my success story for others to incorporate into their lives.
NATHAN THE WRITER
I definitely consider myself a writer. I can make this bold accusation because I believe writing comes easy to me, now. I can tell it comes easy to me because I have fun writing. Before this UWRT class, writing was the last thing that I wanted to do. In fact, I would actually clean my room before deciding to sit down and write. I finally feel like writing is fun because I am able to be creative with my writing. Structure always kept me from writing because I found it confusing and redundant. Now, I can end a paragraph wherever I choose, and this freedom definitely helps me eliminate writer's block. Plus, my arguments have become much stronger due to the creative aspect. I can ask a question in the middle of a paragraph to strengthen my argument if I want. If my middle school English teacher saw me disobeying paragraph structure like this, I would have probably been sent to detention. All these beneficial things that creativity brings about, makes me feel like the abilities of my writing are limitless. The last reason that I can consider myself a writer is my great improvement. I have never received an A in an English or writing class. Plus, A's were few and hard to come by on my writing assignments. This whole semester in UWRT 1102, I received A's on every major assignment. This accomplishment gives me pride for my writing, and it does not make me fearful to write. When people say hardwork pays off, they are right. I put in a lot of effort into each assignment this semester, and so far it has paid off. Since I consider myself a writer, I will be placing it as a skill on my resume, so that I can carry this activity into my career.
