Month: December 2021

1. What I did this week:
   -This week, due to asking for an extension on my two revisions, I spent a lot  of time reviewing ideas to try and write a better paper. In the end I had decided on maintaining a theme across both my revisions and that was to add more humorous elements into my papers. I chose set my analysis project and my literacy narrative projects as my targets for revision because those two papers were papers that I was truly satisfied with writing.
   -I also worked on my Auto-ethnography Polished draft by adding the parts my professor had instructed me on from my rough draft. Although I’m sadly not yet finished I am very close.
2. What went well this week:
   -Anything regarding writing went really well for me this week. I didn’t feel the same distress I felt during my research paper project, instead I felt full of energy and inspirations on how to write any of the papers I wanted to write.
3. What was hard:
   -Nothing was actually too hard this week in the department of writing. Refraining from the writing subject, I had recently gotten my 2nd dose of the Pfizer vaccine and fortunately I didn’t have any major symptoms besides some fatigue. Meaning I slept through a couple days but other than that I was fine.
4. To-do list:
   -Finish my Auto-ethnography Polished draft by tomorrow morning or by noon tomorrow at the latest.
5. Where I left off this week:
   -Currently I left off of just finishing adding the parts my professor had advised me to add in my polished draft. Now I just have to include some details to wrap up the entire essay and I’m done.
6. I’m pretty satisfied with my writing this week because I’ve noticed how much progress I’ve made in comparison to my previous works. What I did for my Revisions was that I had copy and pasted my polished drafts into a new page so that I could then revise it from the original. As I was editing many parts from it I came to realize that there were many parts the I could’ve made do without or how I could’ve included more humor into different sections of my paper. Or simply that I’ve become more adept at incorporating humor into my writing which was a skill I had developed during my analysis paper project. It was nice to be able to see the progress I made in comparison to my first project the literacy narrative. The same goes for my Auto-ethnography Polished draft. Originally I’ve made a couple mistakes on matters regarding what the writing prompt encompassed in it’s description. However I’m glad to be able to realize my mistakes to actually learn from them. I’d rather make a ton of mistakes now so that I could genuinely learn from them for my future writing pieces.

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• The skill that I think I would take away from this course isn’t one from the goals we had learned but more of a skill that I had learned during my analysis. In my opinion the analysis project was a lot of fun because I was able to pay close attention to one particular chapter that helped me realize a new style of writing. That style being one of humor. Before I had kept any comedy in my writing to a low because I thought it wasn’t an acceptable style of writing due to the lack of availability. After analyzing Michael Theune’s chapter on humor, I learned the effectiveness of humor and began to start incorporating a lot more into my writing.
• I learned as a writer that there is a lot of work to be done to truly write a good paper. With all these rough drafts, polished drafts, and ultimately revisions at the end of the semester I realized that even when you think your paper might be perfect as is, it can always be improved upon. You just need to know whether or not you’ve revised your paper enough to receive a grade you are satisfied with.
• Some things that I would take with me to other writing classes would definitely be the use of Zotero and OneSearch. Although I made a mess of their usage during the research project portion of this class, these two utilities were incredibly helpful. Zotero for organizing my sources and OneSearch for finding the information from professional sources.
• My advice for future ENG 2100 students would have to be that they should pay close attention to readings from BIAW textbook. Not only are there interesting reads, but you can really learn a lot of techniques taught in each of the individual chapters. It is a very helpful textbook so honestly don’t slack on the readings.
  PS: Another piece of advice I’d give would be to send any little notes either at the end of your papers or through an email to your professor to receive feedback. It doesn’t have to be long just give your honest opinion about any concerns you have about your writing and you will receive feedback on it that will only help you improve your writing.
• For week 1, I don’t think I wished I knew anything in advance. I tend to believe in admitting to one’s own mistakes to be able to truly learn. Therefore if I had a second chance to warn myself in preparation for week 1, I wouldn’t tell my past self anything. I’d rather allow myself to make some mistakes now so that I could learn from them in the future.
• For students wanting to get the most out of this course I could only tell you to just apply your 100% into every one of these projects. If you truly want to improve then don’t half ass your writing projects because you’re too lazy or something. Genuinely try your best in each writing project trying to take the most out of what your learn from your textbook. Make your mistakes in the rough drafts so that you can improve upon your paper and submit it as your polished draft.
• I don’t really have much advice for managing the course online. You have all the resources you’ll ever need given to you on the website for your class assignments. If you have a question then you can either search for it online or just send an email to you professor. If you chose not to use the resources available to you then it is only your fault for your failure.

1. What I did this week:
   -This week, similar to last week, I did a lot of brainstorming on how I wanted to organize my revisions as well as what major projects I wanted to target with my revisions. I thought about the tone I wanted to assume as well as how my papers would sound if I reversed my style completely. Like in one essay about analysis I ordered events chronologically by the chapters chronology as my style. So what if I threw that out the window and wrote strictly towards the writing prompt. Or instead chose to write with spontaneity where I would just analyze different sections at any order. Maybe talk about the conclusion in my introduction, something spontaneous like that.
2. What went well this week:
   -I know it sounds repetitive but again the brainstorming went well this week. I really find it important or pivotal for me or anyone else when they are able to truly brainstorm genuine ideas. What I mean is that I, personally, find a lot of value out of being able to plan my ideas out so that I could potentially put them onto paper. So the fact that I was able to do such a thing this week really lifts up my mood, because during that atrocious research project weeks I felt terrible not being able to organizing anything.
3. What was hard this week:
   -The hardest thing this week for me was probably thinking about how I could change my tone in my papers. After my analysis project I seemed to naturally include a lot of humor into my writing. It really eases my reader into my writing and is just my natural style now. So it’s hard to try and change that tone into something else without the voice in my writing to just collapse on itself. Meaning when I stray away from a comedic tone, it sometimes feels forced when I stray away. When it feels forced then my writing doesn’t seem genuine enough as I’d hope for out of a paper.
4. To-do list:
   -Well, for starters I should definitely try to experiment some more with some of the ideas I have on possible revision topics.
   -Secondly, I’d like to write down these ideas onto paper. Although, knowing my personality, if I don’t obtain a large enough amount of inspiration from some of the ideas I have in mind I will most likely give up halfway rather than finish writing an entire paper. Thus I’d like to write down my ideas and see if I could mix them up with other ideas.
5. Where I left off:
   -This week I’m leaving off at two essays, my revision papers, halfway-ish done. Well, at least two solid ideas about how to write each revision papers are on their way to completion in a sense.
6. This week I’m feeling a mix of emotions with my writing progress. Although, on the one hand I’m happy about the ideas I’ve been able to brainstorm and I’m waiting in anticipation at how these papers will turn out I am also slightly upset at my slow progress. I understand that I shouldn’t rush myself with my writing but I guess I’m really hopeful and impatient to see the outcome of my brainstorming this week. Especially because I want to see if it’s better to go for subtle revisions of my tone in our first writing project about English mistakes which seems fitting. Or if in our analysis project I could use the same topic of essay but instead of keeping the chronological order, I just disorganize everything and see if the chaos will make my writing better.

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Writing prompt:

1. If I’m being honest, when I define the occasion, exigency, and kairos, I genuinely do not know exactly what it is. I understand bits of these vocabulary words however I have never been one to truly be able to give a specific answer accordingly to their respective vocabulary words. For this prompt I choose my analysis writing project about the analysis on Michael Theune’s chapter about humor. The occasion in this essay is about the inclusion of humor in an essay. Whereas the exigency will pertain to the rhetorics used, or in this case the humor found in the essay to make fun of the absence of humor. Finally the Kairos will be the acute timing of things when giving out these jokes to the audience. In my case, my paper, I took to the approach of keeping the events of my analysis in the order in which the chapter I am analyzing had depicted. Thus I would tell the story accordingly keeping the Kairos consistent with the chapter from BIAW.
2. The main purpose of my project is to analyze a chapter from BIAW about using humor in an academic paper. To explain it’s utility briefly and lead into the reasons the author offers to accomplish his goal to persuade his readers to begin incorporating humor in their own writing.
3. The primary audience for my paper would somewhat lay in line with the original author of the chapter I was analyzing. The audience being the young first-year writers beginning to find their own styles of writing to use.
4. The relationship between the audience held throughout both mine and author of the chapter my paper was based one held consistent. Where they had remained this manner of appeasement of sorts. The author of their respective papers would crack jokes to maintain the attention as well as introduce and maintain their topics. I did the same where I would personally crack jokes up to keep in tune with the theme of my project as well as to maintain the retention of my reader.
5. When I had written this paper I found that my humor was effective in a sort of manner. Although, I’m not completely confident in this I feel that my essay will be a lot better if I am able to maintain this humor and try to add jokes along the way that will target multiple groups of people not just one single generation.

 

1. One of the main pieces of criteria that I had received was to fix the organization of my paper. It was very sloppy at the time, so when I was looking over ideas of my revision I had this risky idea to see if I could somehow use this disorganization to my advantage.
2. My revision papers will remain the same format as before where they will be written/typed as a paper format.
3. I personally don’t think my revision papers will have any new constraints or affordances mainly because the way that I plan to change my papers will be to reuse the information or explanations however change format itself. Meaning I will use a roughly similar paragraphs as before but in different orders to see how it will go. As well as in other papers I want to see if subtle additions of humor will change anything to my paper.
4. The new content that I will create won’t be much since in this analysis paper I felt like I had explained enough. Although I could continue writing I feel it would become boring long enough and that would betray the theme I hope for from my essay to be a comedic analysis paper. Although this paper is an analysis, I still hope for it to entertain my readers in some way so as not to get bored.
5. The revision will take more than a couple days of brainstorming which was what this week focused mostly on. After the brainstorming I hope to try and free write the many ideas I have in store so as to put my ideas out there. After free writing I want to compare these thoughts with each other to see if I can try to combine these ideas in one way or another. Of course before all this free writing I would re-read my analysis paper to use as a basis for my ideas. Even copy/pasting some paragraphs out to use as material if I want.