Assignment 6: Looking Back on the Journey Thus Far.

What to do…what to do…I had to really think about what interested me and what wasn’t known well enough at the same time. This wasn’t too easy for me since I like a lot of things that are pretty popular. Sure there’s an obscure band here, a different opinion there, but I wanted to write about something that has had a significant impact on my life. I tried to think of things locally here in Athens because I love this town and I look forward to coming back every year. So I looked into Ohio University on Wikipedia. To my amazement, they didn’t have an included article on our beloved mascot, Rufus. I gravitated towards making an article for, well the mascot, of this school and how Rufus has become Rufus.

            Getting started was definitely a hard place to be. I wasn’t sure how I was going to start the article, so I decided to just check out some websites and see what they had written on the mascot. After seeing the history behind this fuzz-ball I saw how important he was to the community of Athens and Ohio University. I knew where I had to start. I had to start from the beginning. It was so cool reading about how the community voted and picked a mascot and a name. It showed that everyone cared about this ordeal a lot, and that help make this article even more fun to learn/write about.

            Unfortunately, I couldn’t write the article like I’m writing this blog. I usually go for a more casual tone when writing papers, almost like I’m straight up talking to you. But for the article I had to stay a cold neutral party who just showed the facts to the reader. This was kind of difficult since it was my mascot I was writing about so I wanted to throw some school spirit into the mix of information but it would not have been the proper article etiquette.

I did have to go back in and make sure I was citing things correctly to show I wasn’t just copying and pasting. And when I used a quote I used the quotation marks and had the sources listed at the bottom of the page. I was happy I didn’t have to change too much about the article. I mostly changed around the pictures I was using and the names of the subtitles in the article.

Looking at the article when it was reviewed and shut down, made me feel like I hadn’t taken the time or given the amount of energy needed to make a good article, but when I heard that everyone else was having the same problem with their pages, I took it as a Wikipedia way of saying, it’s good but we don’t like the sources. I believe I had the right sources for the article however so I went ahead and published it anyway. I threw caution to the wind because I felt I had created a strong article and it was worth publishing.

Assignment 5: I'd Say This Title is Original, but I'd be Lying.

To say that all things are borrowed is such a common theme these days; I don’t know if this guy, James Porter has any originality in his body. I’m not sure I buy into all that stuff about how “nothing is original anymore”. Are things being borrowed from other people to create new ideas? Yes. Do those ideas help other thoughts become alive and animated? Yes. So while saying nothing is ‘created out of thin air original’, seems a little cynical to me. You need ideas to fuel dreams and theories. The way you create new things out of old ideas is what makes the creation so special to you. By incorporating thoughts from other things just gives your work a better foundation to stand on. I think Don Murray got it right. Just because something has been made, doesn’t mean it can’t be original to you. The way you present the information and what is added due to your influence makes it unique and autobiographical.

Assignment 4: The Voice Inside Your Head. Don't Worry, It's Not Just You.

This is an autobiography. These are my thoughts; therefore it’s a snippet of my thoughts that I am sharing with you. You get a small look inside my head. While this is not mentioning my hopes, my dreams, my past, or anything else to that nature, it is showing you, the reader, some of my thought process. This is my response. I really enjoyed this article and how it challenged what most people think of when they think of an autobiography. The fact that EVERYTHING we write is never going to be the same as someone else’s writing. The fact that even though we may just be writing a research paper, we do small things to twist the wording so that it’s not just a dry source but it’s got personality to go along with the information. And when writing poems or “pieces of fiction” not all of the information may be true…but because I thought of them, they were my ideas. That makes them mine. That enforces the idea behind everything you write is an autobiography. It’s something you can’t escape. It’s the voice inside your head helping you write down something that will set you apart from everyone else.

Assignment 3: To Read or Not to Read? Rhetorical Question.

Well, I’d have to say that this article was certainly a piece to work through. I tried to view it as a challenge more than a dry writing, but I couldn’t quite grasp the whole challenge part aside from it being a challenge to read. That being said, I thought the reading was very educational pointing out specific things that would help us the readers find and break down the rhetorical situations in everyday life and in advertisements. I found it interesting how rhetorical situations weren’t just found in advertisements and writing but that it’s in our everyday life. I liked the example Keith Grant-Davie gave with the friend who said that he was cold instead of just asking if the heat could be turned up. He continues to tell us in the main article about the questions we should ask before and during our time with the readings. The example at the end of the reading with the sign of Sherwood Hills and how it created constraints with the placing of the sign, whether it should change according to whoever owns it to try and make the business more successful or whether it should be left alone. People took the situation and asked the questions that we were told to ask and answered them to get their solution. The concept to consciously ask questions while reading is a good way to keep ones self engaged in the reading instead of just struggling through the pages trying to come away with some sort of message.

Assignment 2: The Error of Our Ways

I think that what he means by having the errors be viewed as “social constructs “ is that they help us view the information as something that other people have spent time researching and discovering for themselves first. They then see the information as a productive source of knowledge and they feel that it should be shared with other people. The researchers may paraphrase the information so that it will be easier for the next reader to grasp; and in that time of rephrasing, some errors may occur. These kinds of errors shouldn’t be scolded to the point of condemnation that most articles on Wikipedia receive. The information is viewed as faulty and erred. They should view the information as a rough outline that can be used as a community builder. This way it shows whether or not the community actually cares about having everything all polished up for it’s big debut. If an article is made with some grammatical errors and no one changes them, it shows that the community isn’t interested in, one, the topic most likely, and two helping the article be the best it can be. If the article does have had the small changes made to it that shows the community is growing and it wants the information to be correct and as up to date as possible. I think people freak out about Wikipedia and it’s errors for the same reason it’s so great about having the errors fixed. It’s an open book to a community. And the people who view it as a problem only think of the negative connotations that go with it. They trust Britannica more because it’s set in stone and no one can mess with the information until a new book is printed. They trust that the encyclopedia has picked out the “experts” on each topic and that because of this reason; the errors are more typos than people “messing with the facts”. I think Williams has helped answer the question as to why Wikipedia is criticized so much. People aren’t trusting to things that move quickly and have fluidity to them. They want the facts and not have them change anytime soon. 

Assignment 1: The Introduction.

 This is my first blog! It's for my Junior Comp class 308J. MY teacher is Matt Vetter and he's one cool dude. My name is Rob Wallover and I’m a graphic design major, my hometown is Medina, Ohio. I plan on taking the skills I have picked up throughout the years of practicing art to Pixar-Disney. The most rewarding thing about English 151 was the amount of research we had to do because with the research came an amount of freedom for really exploring our topic. The least rewarding thing was it didn’t seem to teach me anything new about writing. It was very much a core class that just needed to be taken. The way if could have been more effective is that if I had done more of the readings, but we never checked them to make sure they were being read. It wasn’t a lot of incentive to do the reading assignments. I don’t think there’s any way I would’ve made the class more interesting. We were given a lot of freedom when it came to the topics for each prompt. A challenging part of the class was the research. While it was the most rewarding part of the class, it was definitely a reward for the work that had to be put into the research. It was a long process finding the amount of sources that we needed for each paper, about 8 for each, and finding new information that we could use in each source. Another challenging part of the research was using the information found. It was not a huge challenge but it was a basic challenge to put the information into the paper without just copying and pasting the information. My hopes for this class are that I’m able to expand my knowledge in writing and how I would be able to expand my knowledge of how to take sources and turn the information into my own words successfully.