Letter to Myself

Dear Jake,

           

            While you are hunting with your dad you will have a shot at a doe in the open and you will miss unless you follow theses steps accordingly. First the deer will be located on you write after you come out of the old logging area where your tree stand is. Second you must be very quite when getting your bow out of its case or you will scare the deer. Third why you are ready to take the shot take your time because the deer didn’t seem to want to move. Fourth aim really high because the deer is going to be at least 40 yard away and if you don’t you will shoot right under it like I did. Lastly after you take your shot make sure that you go to look for blood just in case you hit and if you do good luck tracking it because they can run very far even with a arrow stuck in them.

            If you miss don’t worry because you will have another chance to get a deer the same weekend which I also screwed up. It will be on Saturday evening right at dusk and you will barely be able to see. First, keep you eyes open because there is a spike that is about to come in to your bait pile looking for a doe. Second, stay really quite and wait to it is in a good range and you know that you can hit it. Third it will walk all the way around you very slowly so make sure that you keep watching it. Also be very still because this deer is pretty smart and might catch you in the tree stand like it did me. Fourth after about ten minutes the deer will stop about 30 yards away from you but don’t try to shoot just yet or you will scare it pulling back like I did. Fifth after it stops it will look up at you for a long time. Don’t make a move or sound. Wait for it to keep walking and looks away for you to take a shot. It should be a lot easier of a shot then the one you took before because now your up in the air and your arrow wont drop as fast as before.

            If you follow these steps you are almost guaranteed to get a deer that weekend and impressing all your family and friends.

Sincerely,

Jake

Redesign Reflection

Going into this assignment I thought that it would be very difficult because I am not very good at analytical writing. I decided on the NyQuil ad because i knew that it would be really easy to change to fit a different audience. My redesign just came off the top of my head and I kept adding things until it was sufficient for the new audience. I had a lot of trouble trying to make my essay longer but after i broke up the rhetorical appeals and described the original ad in greater detail it all worked out. I liked the freedom that this assignment gave us. It let us choose any ad and change that ad to fit any audience that you want. I ended up walking away with better analytical writing skills and also a better understanding of the rhetorical appeals. If I could go back and do something differently I probably would have made the essay just a little bit longer with more detail.

Literacy memo

Creating a literacy narrative then turning it into an Animoto slide show is unlike anything I have ever done. It included many steps like making a timeline, then writing the essay itself and finally putting it all together for a slide show presentation.

            The first step which was the easiest for me was remembering important events from the past and turning them into a timeline. When making my timeline I noticed a lot of important things. Like without help from my family I wouldn’t be the literate person I am today. Another thing that I noticed is I like stories that have more excitement with a set story that is easy to understand. The theme that I though I would try to go for was based around different books that I read over the years. I chose this because I had a pretty good memory of these events and I think it helps readers visualize the level I was at. It took me awhile to come up with this common theme but once I did it made writing the paper a little bit easier.

            The second step which it thought was the hardest was the actual essay. It was hard because putting a bunch of different events together to make a story that makes sense is hard to do for me. Eventually I just decided to go in order by grade so it was easy to put in chronological order. My partner helped me make the essay more clear and helped me with a lot of other errors. I didn’t think anything about the slideshow until I started to do it. But when I did I had to figure out how to compress a 3 page essay into a 2 minute slideshow presentation.

            Lastly was creating the slideshow. This part wasn’t too hard, all I had to was get pictures and shorten some of the most important text in my essay. My partner did pick a lot of good sentences but I only used about half of what he said to try and stay within a certain theme throughout. My strategy for the 52 character limit was simple. First put the time period or grade in for the title then under that put the shortened sentence down only using the most important words. The hardest part of this was it still had to make sense. I used pictures for more detail because the text limitations made it hard to get my full point across. The pictures that I chose were all from the web and I chose them because they directly line up with the text slide before it. If I was to do something differently I probably would have tried to find my own pictures instead of pictures off the web. The song that I chose was “Kryptonite” by 3 Doors Down. I chose this song because it is one of my all time favorite songs even though it has no correlation with the theme.

            During this process I learned lots of different methods of composing and compressing my thoughts. I never thought I would ever take a essay and turn it into a slide show in a writing class. Overall this experience will help me become a better writer in a lot of different ways.

Visual Arguement

The commercial that I chose was the one for the F-150. The beliefs that are enforced hear is that everyone that has a truck needs it and is going to use it for hard work. This is proved when they show the truck at many construct sites and also when they show it pulling the trailer. The main audience that this applies to is men that use trucks in ways that other people might not. Like towing heavy loads or using it to carry all your tools. The rhetoric that is used in this commercial was all the features and how it was better than any other truck. I agree with this commercial. It is an effective way to appeal to a vast majority of workers in the U.S. They show this because Ford is confident in the trucks capabilities and knows that people will remember this commercial.

Literacy and Sherman Alexi

Literacy to me is just as important to me as it is to Sherman Alexi in his article. In Alexi’s article he says that reading became important to him by the age of 3. He also said that his father was his biggest inspiration because that is where all the books came from in his house. I was more drawn to this story was because of the detail. Like when he described how he learned to read using the superman comic. The main thing that caught my eye was that he was surprised that he became a writer even after his love of books as a child. Sherman Alexi though literacy to be very important and so do I because with out it we wouldn’t be where we are today.

Why Writing is Important

            I think that writing is important for a couple of reasons in my major. My major is mechanical engineering. It’s important because sometimes you have to convey information to people that is not in the room with you or were gone for the day. Also you might have to leave directions for a team member or members if you are going to be gone for the day. The kind of writing that would be useful in this job would be mostly persuasive. There will be a lot of times where I will have to convince others that my idea is better than every one else’s. Also you have to write a research paper to back up your idea.

            Both my writing and communication skills will need to improve to get where I need to be. First my writing would have to become more formal and make more sense. My communication skills would also have to get better because I am not very good at making informative and confident speeches to large groups of people.

            Without writing many people would have no way of talking to each other. Overall without writing I don’t think that most people will succeed in their careers.