QSR4: IPO

I don’t proclaim to know a lot about the stock market, but I think I have read and learned about it more than someone who is not a finance major. So I will try my best to explain an IPO to a 10-year-old.
Say you want to make money from selling shoes. You buy your materials, and combined with your extraordinary shoemaking skills, you produce some nice shoes.
Your shoes turn out to be very popular, all your friends are coming to your house looking to buy a pair of your awesome shoes. However, the time required to make shoes for your friends is so long that you can’t do it alone. So you hire some friends to join you.
Business is good, but you want more. You want to sell not only in New York, but in all 50 states. To do that, you need more money.
You then go to a bank and tell them you want to expand your business. The bank will estimate how much your shoe company is worth, say $1 million. After that, your company is divided into fractional pieces, let’s say 1 million pieces, each piece equal to $1. You can choose to own, say, half of your company, which is 500,000 pieces, or $500,000. The rest of your company will then be sold to other people interested in your company.
The money you got from those people, $500,000, can then be used to open shoe stores across the country. If you make more money, your company will worth more, and more people will want to buy a piece of your company. But now your company is worth more, so each piece is more expensive. Instead of $1, it can jump to $2, which means your company is now worth twice as much, or $2 million.

I agree with the saying that “writing is thinking.” Writing about the process of an IPO forced me to rethink about the IPO, because I realized that even though I have read so many articles about it and watched so many videos on it, I’m still unable to just come up with the whole process naturally. I noticed that I had to take pauses frequently to rewind the details.
Also, writing about this topic helped me discover the blanks in my knowledge regarding to an IPO. I know that a business owner needs to consult with a bank to start an IPO, but my knowledge of the whereabouts of this consultation is vague. It turns out that I have very little clue about what banks take into account when they calculate the worth of a company.
Also, I find myself often questioning the steps in my explanation. For example, “why should you trust the bank to make a fair estimation of the value of the company?” or “what kind of a person will have an interest in the company?” I imagine it is fair for a ten-year-old to ask these types of questions, but for the sake of condensing, I chose to leave commentaries on these questions out. I also left out volatility aspect of stocks. I didn’t mention how stocks can just go up or down randomly during the day because I wanted to keep it simple.
The fact that I had to condense what was at first, a 450 word explanation, to something around 250 words was a challenge for me. At the end, this practice helped me focus on the essential parts of my topic, while weeding out information that my explanation can have without.

Rhetorical Analysis

How Social Media Changes Us

We all know that the rise of social media has completely changed the way in which we view the world and other people. Whether it be through pictures of a family trip or a review on our favorite restaurant, we all have an impact when we use social media. This empowerment that social media is able to provide, allows us to feel wanted and to have a presence in platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. There are many issues with how dependent our generation is becoming with social media as many mental illnesses are also on the rise such as depression and anxiety. I have chosen to do an analysis of an episode of one of my favorite shows Black Mirror, focusing on the season three episode “Nosedive”. If you are someone who has never seen Black Mirror before, the main idea of the show is to show the impact of technology on society and to tell a story showing how the “Black Mirror” which in this case would be a device with a screen that is a mirror and we tend to look through it. All of us have definitely fallen into the black mirror, and this is all by design from the engineers who are paid to make sure we the consumer is always connected.  I will also be divulging into how the episode tends to use Pathos and Logos to connect with the audience. Technology has been able to provide the world with many benefits, but there are so many more negative effects that we may not yet fully understand. 

I will begin by fully explaining the society that we follow during the episode “Nosedive”. The episode begins in a beautiful town that is seen as more dystopian in nature. The main character of the episode is Lacie Pound, who is rated at 4.2 at the beginning of the episode. The ratings in this society are out of 5, the higher you are to 5, the more that you can get out of your daily life in the town and the influence you have on others. When comparing this to our society today, it may seem that we are heading towards this kind of society, some tend to believe that the amount of likes they get is symbolic of their popularity and status. “Nosedive” 

The writer of the episode is able to use pathos to allow us as the audience to relate to the characters, as we see many times that Lacie tends to put a facade on while she is in public with others, and tends to act much differently than with her own brother who has a low score of 3.1. Influence is so important in this society, that when people with lower scores review someone, their scores are barely affected, but when much more influential people review them, the effect on the overall score dramatically goes up. As a viewer, when we see Lacie at first, at least I tend to think she is a shallow person who only relies on the approval of others, but the only reason she is doing all of this is to get through her life. Everyone wants to be approved by others, and Lacie is just conforming to the standards that society has put her under. 

We only begin to see more of Lacie when she decides to upload a picture of one of her childhood toys, Mr. Rags, which she and her childhood friend Naomi, who is a 4.8 and highly known in the community, made together when they were young. We begin to see the connection that these two vastly different characters have and Lacie is given the task to be her Maid of Honor, which would greatly improve her overall score and influence and allow her to purchase a new home that is only for those with higher scores. This is when it all goes downhill for Lacie, whether it be an outburst at the airport due to a canceled flight, which dropped her rating to a 3.3, and with many other things, her rating dropped to almost 2.9 before the wedding of her “lifelong” friend. The result of these events almost caused her to be blacklisted from society, and in these outbursts in public, we began to see the true Lacie and she showed her emotional side which had been repressed for way too long in her “perfect world”. 

The wedding turned out to be an emotional rollercoaster for Lacie, once she arrived, she had already been told to not come for the reason that her score was so low, and this sent her off the deep end and she just wanted to be there for her childhood friend. Lacie followed on her journey and she decided to crash the wedding and she was emotional with the aid of alcohol, she delivered her speech, albeit, without the childhood memories, she began to tell Naomi off and how she was treated as a child and how Naomi only kept her around because she was better than Lacie. Lacie was fully expressing herself as she had never been able to do so before and this completely derailed her rating and eventually, she was arrested for pulling a knife on the groom in her emotional tirade. In the end, we were able to see Lacie express herself, and she broke the facade that had plagued her life for too long.

The writer for the episode was also able to incorporate Logos into the episode by showing how vastly society will treat an individual with a higher score and treat another one with a much lower score. The first example is when we are shown the houses on Pelican Cove, which is a town with nice houses. One of the payment options for these homes relies on how high someone is rated. A 4.5 rating will receive a twenty percent discount compared to someone who is not at this range. We also see how logically, it is practically necessary to have a good score in this society because once Lacie was at around a 2.5, her options at a rent a car location were so limited it ended up in her being deserted to a dead battery. She had lived her whole life trying to keep her image and in the end, she was failed by a missed flight and multiple outbursts which derailed her ratings. When Lacie needed help, the only person who helped her was this woman named Susan, who was rated a mere 1.4 out of 5. Typically, Lacie would never approach an individual with this rating due to her image possibly being ruined. Lacie was practically saved and Susan explained how her rating never got her anywhere even when she was a high four rating individual.

Susan had to deal with pain when she lost her husband to cancer and the rating was the least of her worries. She finally had been able to freely express herself and she always wanted and people in this society did not think the same way at all. She went from a life of luxury to becoming a truck driver and she did not regret anything because her rating was only superficial in her happiness. Lacie in the end was able to freely express herself when she was in her cell and she followed by saying what she felt to her cellmate without fear of repercussions as she always watched in the past. 

This episode was able to use these two lenses in ways that we as the audience could clearly understand and apply it to our lives today. Social media is becoming more and more attached to our personal happiness and “Nosedive” could be a preview of what the future can hold. The more importance that social media is given, the newer generations will have a tougher time breaking from this addiction which never fully satisfies the user. Most social media is temporary gratification and never allows for a full human connection. Each decade, technology finds more ways to become a part of our lives, such as Amazon Alexa which has proved to be a monumental invention and even used by someone like myself, I feel that it has been able to make tasks easier. Over time, technology will fully automate our lives and there will be both positives and negative aspects from it. The idea of having a rating system seems more of like a science fiction movie, but each day the possibility becomes greater.

QSR4: Research, Making Knowledge, and Writing

We will be wrapping up our unit on rhetoric pretty soon and start our unit on research-driven writing.

From the syllabus, here are the goals for the research unit:

Unit 3 – Research: Knowledge and Writing
The focus for this unit is on research. Now, all writing requires research; research is an investigation into various kinds of information. We can’t really write without doing that. However, generally speaking, and in academic contexts particularly, research usually has a very systematic connotation. In other words, it means close analysis of primary and secondary materials to make some kind of argument about something in a specific disciplinary domain. In this unit, we will consider how research and writing intersect in terms of how writing makes knowledge, how developing information literacy can assist us in making that knowledge, and how there are both general and context-dependent conventions for research writing that help us communicate our research in impactful ways. This unit primarily addresses the fourth Learning Goal (i.e., Identify and engage with credible sources and multiple perspectives in your writing) but it also touches on the fifth (i.e., Use conventions appropriate to audience, genre, and purpose). Below are some sub-goals:

 

·      Write to learn (e.g., writing out processes and aspects of a topic to see what you know, moving from analysis to synthesis, moving from summary to analysis, coordinating multiple voices to reveal something new)

·      Develop information literacy (e.g., finding information via search engines/library databases/stacks, evaluating source credibility and relevance, analyzing primary vs. secondary sources, using citation tools)

·      Learn differences in research genres and disciplinary knowledge (e.g., using documentation style, IMRaD vs. thesis-driven paper)

·      Write with other voices (e.g., paraphrasing, direct quotes, summary, footnotes, endnotes, managing claims and evidence with other voices, qualifying claims, counterarguments)

·      Organize and making an argument (e.g., stasis theory, Toulmin’s model, organizing sources and mapping their use, making an annotated bibliography, supplementing research process onto writing process)

 

Research, ultimately, is a way to make knowledge. To do things and think as a way to produce something even slightly new in terms of knowledge. This is what college is for, this is what your professors do professionally.

Writing aids this process, and that is where we are starting are unit on research.

For our fourth Question for Second Reading Response, I want you to get some practice in explicitly writing in a way that can help someone know something as a way for you to think about how writing does that.

Go to Blackboard>Course Documents>Assignment Prompts>Questions for Second Reading Response. Download the prompt for QSR4 and read it.

Comment below if you have any questions about this prompt. If you have no questions, just type “I have no questions” below.

After commenting below, click on the button below to continue.

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Reflecting at Midterm: Learning Narrative and Midterm Meeting

These past few pages are essentially engaging in the act of reflection (as was the Learning Module last week when it asked you to think about how your revision went). There is a lot of research in composition and rhetoric that suggests that taking moments to reflect about your writing can greatly improve it.

This makes intuitive sense–if you never stop to think about how things are going, and what you want to improve, how could you ever make necessary changes to improve?

With that in mind, we will be doing two things at midterm that build off of what we have done so far in the Learning Module (and in Learning Module 4 when you were asked to reflect on the Literacy Narrative revision):

  • The completion of a Midterm Learning Module by 3pm on Tuesday, October 20th.
  • A brief 10 minute meeting with me on October 20th, 21st, or 22nd.

To star to think about this and to get this all coordinated, you have two tasks to complete for this page:

  1. Review the prompt for the Midterm Learning Narrative, and let me know if you have any questions in a comment below. (go to Blackboard>Course Documents>Assignment Prompts>Major Writing Projects)
  2. Claim a spot on my schedule to meet with me for 10 minutes. We will meet briefly to talk about how things are going and go through any questions you might have.

At the end of the semester, you will do a more robust version of the Midterm Learning Narrative called the Experiential-Learning Document. The goal is to get you comfortable reading your own writing closely as a way to think about how you want to keep working and growing as a writer.

When you are done reviewing the prompt and scheduling a meeting with me, comment below with the following:

  1. Write a question you have about the Midterm Learning Narrative. If you have no questions, write “I don’t have a question.”
  2. Write “I have scheduled an appointment.” for the Midterm Meeting on October 20th, 21st, or 22nd.

After commenting below, click on the button below to continue.

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Style Review: Practice

Now that we got some style fresh on our mind, I want you to choose one paragraph that you have written in this class and revise it with at least two of the elements of style from the previous page in mind.

In a comment below, do the following:

  1. Paste the original paragraph
  2. Paste the revised paragraph with at least two of the elements of style from the previous page in mind incorporated into your revision
  3. Explain what you revised and why.

After commenting, click on the button below to continue.

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Style: Review

Throughout both Units 1 and 2, we have been working on style. We will continue doing some things with style throughout the term, but in the spirit of taking a break, I thought we would pause to do some review.

Please review these pages on style to refresh your memory:

  1. Style: Introduction
  2. Style and Translingualism
  3. Style: Words
  4. Style: Words and Register
  5. Style: Sentence Length
  6. Style: Sentence Type
  7. Style: Punctuation
  8. Style: Punctuation Practice
  9. Style: Coherence

Comment below, on one element of your style as a writer that you would like to keep working on this semester and why. Take about 100 words to explain.

After commenting, click on the button below to continue.

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Unit 2 Review

In Unit 1, we focused on rhetoric in terms of having terms to name aspects of what we do in our writing to help build awareness:

  1. Rhetoric and its associated terms: genre, audience, rhetorical situation, purpose
  2. Rhetorical analysis: analysis vs. summary, claims, evidence, linking claims to evidence, thesis, lenses

Below is from the syllabus:

Unit 2 – Rhetoric: Awareness and Writing
In this unit, we will explore rhetoric in greater detail. We will start with the importance of audience and the relationship between audiences and genre conventions (and the slipperiness of what we can ever actually fully know about either). We will then consider the full nature of the rhetorical situation (i.e., exigence, constraints, and audience), the impact of ideology on how everyone reads and writes, and consider the value of a rhetorical outlook on the world around us. To realize these ends, we will develop our abilities as rhetorical analysts. This unit will mostly address the third and fifth Learning Goals of the course (i.e., Read and analyze texts critically; Use conventions appropriate to audience, genre, and purpose). Some of the sub-goals for this unit include:

 

·      Learn the functions of rhetoric: make knowledge, coordinate human and nonhuman activity, and impact others.

·      Learn the differences between genres at the level of words, sentences, paragraphing, document design, mode, etc.

·      Change stylistic features of your writing to accommodate your audience

·      Recognize the full rhetorical situation to understand the context for writing

·      Consider the important material concerns for writing, to include different modes, circulation, and other infrastructural concerns for writing

·      Learn how to analyze vs. summarize

·      Find, evaluate, and synthesize evidence in texts we analyze

·      Establish links between claims and evidence

·      Apply theoretical lenses to what we analyze in ways that both expand and limit what we can know

·      Integrate textual analysis into a larger argument or narrative

 

Comment below to talk about which subgoal best represents the area of your writing you’d most like to work on and why. Take about 100 words to respond. We are still in the middle of this unit, so much of this is in-progress still.

After commenting, click on the button below to continue.

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Unit 1 Review

In Unit 1, we focused on writing in terms of emotion in two ways:

  1. our relationship to language and literacy, and
  2. setting good habits of writing practices and processes to help mitigate issues of anxiety around getting writing done.

Below is from the syllabus:

 

Unit 1 – Identity, Language, and Process: Emotion and Writing
The focus on this unit is primarily grounded in the first two Learning Goals of the course (i.e., Composing as a process; Compose with an awareness of how intersectional identity, social conventions, and rhetorical situations shape writing). We will explore together the emotional foundation of writing, language, and rhetoric—that our feeling is integral to how we know our worlds and communicate about them. Sometimes, for sure, the feelings associated with language can make writing difficult, even lonely. Thus, we will focus on thinking strategically about the entire process of writing. The sub-goals we explore will include:

 

·      Understand language as social and as part of who you are

·      Experiment with the rhetorical power of tapping into the full range of your rhetorical expertise (i.e., your rhetorical practices in all of the contexts in which you use rhetoric)

·      Understand the role of reading in writing (e.g., procedures of annotating, reading to revise)

·      Set goals and a process for checking in on your progress on an ongoing basis. Re-evaluate goals, periodically.

·      Develop a writing practice (e.g., creating the best environment for productive writing sessions as possible, managing distractions, time management)

·      Develop your writing process (e.g., planning, outlining, drafting, reflecting, revising, editing)

·      Receive feedback, apply it, and give constructive feedback (e.g., in peer response, workshopping writing, interpreting comments, integrating feedback in a global sense rather than only locally, managing the embodied nature of having an audience for your writing)

·      Using examples effectively in your writing to help illustrate things you are trying to explain or argue

You have 2 tasks to complete for this page before moving on.

First, post to our Slack workspace to update us on how your writing process (i.e., the order in which you go from ideas to a finished piece of writing) and practice (i.e., the habits and environment you have set for getting writing done) have been going.

On our Slack channel for writing process and practice, give a brief update on what you have been doing that has been going well and what maybe has been a recent challenge in terms of your process and practice. Take about 100-200 words to do this. Feel free to post in response to others rather than have your own separate post if that can happen!

Second, comment below to talk about which subgoal best represents the area of your writing you’d most like to work on and why. Take about 100 words to respond.

After posting to our Slack workspace and commenting below, click on the button below to continue.

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Revisiting Course Goals

Here are the course goals. Take a moment to read them over.

Learning Goals (LGs)

 

  1. Compose as a process: Experience writing as a creative way of thinking and generating knowledge and as a process involving multiple drafts, review of your work by members of your discourse community (e.g., instructor and peers), revision and editing, reinforced by reflecting on your writing process in metacognitive ways.

 

  1. Compose with an awareness of how intersectional identity, social conventions, and rhetorical situations shape writing: Demonstrate in your writing an awareness of how personal experience, our discourse communities, social conventions, and rhetorical considerations of audience, purpose, genre, and medium shape how and what we write.

 

  1. Read and analyze texts critically: Analyze and interpret key ideas in various discursive genres (e.g., essays, news articles, speeches, documentaries, plays, poems, short stories), with careful attention to the role of rhetorical conventions such as style, tropes, genre, audience, and purpose.

 

  1. Identify and engage with credible sources and multiple perspectives in your writing: Identify sources of information and evidence credible to your audience; incorporate multiple perspectives in your writing by summarizing, interpreting, critiquing, and synthesizing arguments of others; and avoid plagiarism by ethically acknowledging the work of others when used in your own writing, using a citation style appropriate to your audience and purpose.

 

  1. Use conventions appropriate to audience, genre, and purpose: Adapt writing and composing conventions (including your style, content, organization, document design, word choice, syntax, citation style, sentence structure, and grammar) to your rhetorical context.

 

Comment below with which goal best represents the area of your writing you’d most like to work on and why. Take about 100 words to respond.

After commenting, click on the button below to continue.

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Learning Module 5 Recap and Next Time

This was a review and a time to reflect on where you are at! Hopefully you got some quality time to think about where you’ve been and where you are going across:

  • Unit 1: language, identity, writing process, writing practice
  • Unit 2: rhetoric and rhetorical analysis
  • Style: using words and sentences in ways to make texts readable, persuasive, and educational

We also talked a tiny bit about the logistics for our Midterm Learning Narrative and Midterm Meeting, as well as setting up Unit 3 on research along with QSR4.

Next Time

  • Finish up your Rhetorical Analysis draft due 11:59pm on Tuesday, October 13th.
  • Group Historians: let me know about the peer review process went this time around! Let me know by 11:59pm on Tuesday, October 13th.
  • QSR4 posted to the website by 3pm on Thursday, October 15.
  • Get to work on Midterm Learning Narrative due by 3pm on Tuesday, October 20.