Essay

After completely writing my essay, and then writing the cover letter in class yesterday, it was much harder than I anticipated to decide what my audience and purpose of the essay were to be. Especially since she said if you had more time to add to the essay, I was thinking how purpose and audience could change. Although my audience and purpose remained the same throughout the process I think that it is subject to change if more time were put into the essay -- specificity would increase and audience would decrease.

First Flurry and Essay

As the freezing weather is lurking on Virginia Tech like a storm cloud, we are all sitting here in the cold figuring out what to do with our essays. As I sit in front of the computer screen and read over my essay again and again, I seem lost about what to do next. I know I want to add something and not just edit what I have right now. What helped me get past this huge slump today was Skye's comments on my essay. These personalized letters really help you understand what the bigger picture is in your essay and what needs to be fixed so that the reader will have a better perception of what you are writing about. It was flurrying out this morning so I think that has to be a good sign of things to come for the winter season. Essay writing really wasn't all that bad. The splitting of the process into steps such as introduction, shitty essay, edits, and final really help put the writing process into perspective.

Groups

I like the fact that we split up into new groups for this assignment. I think it would be productive and more efficient in editing and proofreading of the essays if we stayed in these groups for the essay assignment because then people that have the same style of writing may read each others' papers without having to focus too much on design of the essay. With the new groups we can create criteria for editing which will help the final copy be much more like the 'essay' we defined in class today.

Encountering MY Essay

Although it may seem as if my essay needed a major amount of work, in the eyes of the authors of these two pieces, it seems like it went right along with what they were trying to convey. My essay is more of a nonfictional piece describing an experience. They said specifically that it is very hard to define what constricts essays to the english language. Actually, I think it fits more along the imaginative modern American essays. My voice really pops through the page and thats what I was aiming for. What I can improve upon in the essay though is again what I went over in my last posts and fixing up the structure so that it fits among these forms of writing.

Music

If anyone wants some good music, check these guys out...they're my friends and I've been trying to figure out how to 'favorite' them but I can't.

http://armazdjs.blogspot.com/

Shy Class

What am I doing well:
-Storytelling – really puts the reader into the story and makes them feel involved in the happenings
-Use of adjectives – allows the reader to be part of the situation by imagining it as close to its actuality
-Describing the people by way of showing the reader how they act – they do not need to come to the dental office for me to tell them exactly how everyone is

What doesn’t work and why:
-Paragraph structure and length – I think it is going to end up being too long, an essay that is short enough to read within five minutes is one that will captivate your audience more than one that is lengthy.
-Sentence structure – everything is simple and compound sentences as of now, I need to put some of those together to create more complex forms of sentences.
-Direction – I do not know where to go with the story after everyone is described, I don’t know what the final point is going to be.
-Thesis – do we need a thesis? How would I implement a thesis into the story?

Audience and Purpose:
After having written this draft has the purpose or audience changed from last week to now? Articulate who or what your audience has become and if your purpose has changed please describe.
Yes, my audience seems to have changed. Rather than using middle-class society as my audience I am directing this story right at our class. This essay is not meant to be published in some journal or online in a blog that over a million people visit a day, this essay was meant to be read by my classmates and Professor Scott. It would be much easier to revise it with those people in mind rather than middle-class America. Although the audience has changed, the purpose has not. I still believe that the purpose of my essay is to describe to you all what happens in a dental office behind the scenes.

Up-draftability:
What needs to be changed in order for me to fix this essay up is what else I need to write into it needs to be added, then as I start revising I need to fix paragraph and sentence structure to make it look and feel like a final draft. After doing so I may start my edits.

Follow

Hey, I think I missed the part on how to follow blogs, how do you do that again? I know we have Google Reader but how do you follow people on this website?

Comments on Research Proposal

After reading Mrs. Scott's comments on the research proposal I have realized how real these proposals actually need to be. All those details that I thought I could pass by like not writing my email and number on the cover sheet were covered by her. The comments provide the specificity in the guidelines that were not as clear when we started the assignment. Such things as capitalization of certain words such as dentist and being more specific in the methods section will really help me edit this and make it become more complete when the final portfolio is due. This type of one on one feedback really helps me understand what I did wrong and how to fix it, I certainly like it and when I am editing my whole proposal for submission in the final portfolio, I will understand what to fix as it is clearly stated right in front of me.

No Homework

No homework? Wow this is a sudden surprise...but it comes as no wonder looking at the next three weeks and seeing as how much work we have to do in such a little time. These essays are no joke, and to include research and our community in them is just going to make the task harder, but a few research ideas for everyone:

The library's search databases are Godlike...use them.
Google is okay, but the library databases are better.
Use the library databases...we didn't spend 2 classes there for nothing. The university spends thousands upon thousands of dollars a month just to keep the subscriptions going, so we should definitely take advantage.

So are they?

Even my first impressions of "Stunt Pilot" were proved correct. The title gave it away -- I do not think the Stunt Pilot is an essay, it seems more like a literary narrative rather than an author's work trying to prove something. Annie Dillard goes through her story and uses adjectives often and her story basically describes her experience as if she is a journalist. Ali in Havana IS written by a journalist. It is in the same tone of writing and it follows the same pattern. Although it is not as story-like as Stunt Pilot, it still is given in a sense of story-telling. Journalistic writing is very similar to narrative in that journalists try to tell a story without being involved in it, they try making it seem as if you are there. I do not know whether there is a point trying to be made by this assignment but to my current views and standards, none of these works so far seem to be an actual essay. Although essays do not always have to be analytical, I still am critical of these pieces being essays.

What Makes Them Essays

What makes these three 'works' essays? To do that, what we must first do is define an essay. An essay is, as the dictionary states, an analytic or interpretive literary composition; a short literary composition dealing with a single subject usually written from the personal point of view of its author. Now that we have the definition of what the dictionary thinks an essay is, I am going to analyze it myself. I write essays, I write long, exhausting, works on pieces of literary merit. An essay begins with an introduction with a thesis that routes where the rest of the work is leading. Last year in AP Lit, I wrote probably 10 deeply analytic essays -- I despised every single one, most likely because my teacher was very specific with her guidelines and left no room for freedom other than writing topic. But anyway, now that the definition of an essay is given to the reader, we can now analyze The Stunt Pilot, Ali in Havana, and Silent Dancing.

Last Question

The last question on the cover letter that was due to Professor Scott herself was very inspiring. If we had more time to do our research proposals, what would we improve upon as a whole in the report? I said that if we had more time to do this that I would go into detail financially and figure out what exactly I do need to test whether flossing adds years to one's life, calculate the total, then ask the ADA and Delta Dental for a specific amount of money. That would be the best idea I would have other than expanding the methodology section and making it a little longer.

Essay Writing

I'm now thinking about what we are going to do after these research proposals. I remember Mrs. Scott saying something about essay writing...seems fun...

Final Touches

I'm putting the final touches on this research proposal and it seems as if I could actually submit this to ADA or Delta Dental and get some $$$$....