Dear Past Self,


I am writing to inform you about many things that you are going to go through in high school that you should beware here. Some of these things you should do and some you should not. Basically, if you follow what i say then your entire high school career will go smoothly. First things first, academics. In your freshmen year you should take all of the general classes. Do not take AP or honors classes because they are going to mess your G.P.A up and you will not like it. During your freshmen year you should also try out for golf. You are almost guaranteed to make the team because you are very good at this sport but you do not know it yet. You are going to make Sterling Heights headlines all over school if you do so by this early stage in high school. Another sport that you have not played but will succeed in greatly is wrestling. You are also very good at this sport but you do not know it because you have never played it before. On to your sophomore year, which is going to be a great year for you. Do not take honors chemistry because that is not your strong suit. Also, when you take CP English you will not lome it but you will succeeded in this subject. By this time you should also be playing golf in the spring and wrestling in the winter. No on to junior year which is going to also be a great year for you. This is the year that you take your ACT and you should study hard for this text since it does determine you college acceptance. You are going to do alright on this test, but not as good as you expected. However, you will still make it somewhere with these scores and you will be satisfied. You are also going to break a record for the canned food drive that you ran in both 2011 and 2012. Now it is your senior year and you are going to have a blast! My advice to you is to go everywhere when the opportunity arrives. You are going to have a great time wherever you go because you are always going to be with your friends. One more thing thy has been on your mind ever since freshmen year is prom. You should ask "that girl" in a special way. Prom is going to be fun. All in a my advice to you is going to make your entire high school career run smoothly.


Sincerely,


Your Future Self.

Redesign of Advertisement Essay – Reflection

When this assignment was introduced to the class I was a little nervous. I was nervous was because I had trouble thinking about what advertisement I would pick and how I would plan to redesign it. Also, when it was stated that the essay had to be 5-7 pages long. I hate writing long essays. I have a bad habit of cutting to the chase whenever I write which seems to result in shorter essays. However, when I began to look over the guidelines I did not think that this assignment would be that difficult. On the other hand, I began to become comfortable with this assignment when I finally found the advertisement in a magazine.

         They way that I found my advertisement was very easy. I basically only own a handful of magazines, which are all weightlifting and Men’s Health issues. I started to flip through the magazines until I found an advertisement that I thought I could easily change and manipulate to fit an entirely new audience. I tried to turn away from supplements only intended for men or new diets/ workouts that were also only intended for men. This way I could easily change the intended audience into and entirely new audience. 

         Before I even had decided on which specific advertisement I was going to choose I knew that I was going to change the attended audience to women. The entire redesign of the essay was easy to me. I had made it easy for myself by planning out what I was going to do before hand in my head. I am somewhat skilled in using Photoshop and I believed that I could change any advertisement that I came across.

         Some challenges that I had cam across when writing my essay was lengthening it enough to fit the 5-7 page requirement. The way that I over came this was I began to list of specifics. I did not talk about what I wanted to change in the advertisement, I began to go in depth about how I would go about making these changes which I believe was the added fill-ins to fluff up my essay to meet the page requirement.

         Something that I really liked about this essay was the topic. Basically, the fact that we were able to choose whatever we wanted to write about. I also enjoyed editing the picture and explaining how I was to go about when redesigning the advertisement. I enjoy editing things a lot whether it is an image or movie. Plus, I used this to my advantage to get extra credit on my assignment.

         One of the most important things that I walked away with because of this assignment is how beneficial the writing center is. Besides this, I have realized how hard it is to come up with an advertisement. I got to picture the work from start to finish and it was a very hard task. I have a greater understanding of the way a variety of advertisements work.

         As of right now my essay is not graded. I would not change much to my essay. However, I do wish that I could have spent more time on my actual Photoshop redesign to make my advertisement look more professional. 

Process Memo

Thaier Shaeena

Rinke

WRT 150

12 October 2012

Literacy Timeline

            While beginning my literacy timeline I started to think about my furthest memory of either reading or writing. Then I instantly began to think about all of the books I have read and that branched out to my first essay which lead me to remembering one of my first writing assignments. It was not that hard to get everything on paper because they were my own memories and I had vividly remembered them. One thing that really stuck out to me was how much of an impact my mother had on my literacy journey. I had realized this when I constantly started to mention my mother over and over plus all of the different ways that she had helped me. Not only was I thinking about all of the times that she had helped me, but also the amount of projects and papers I had written that included my mother somehow. Of course I had often thought about my mother and knew that she was a big part of my life. However, never have I sat down to think about all of the ways she has helped me become who I am today which would ultimately be the theme to my literacy narrative. All in all I would have to say that the experience of writing my literacy timeline have taught me to think thoroughly about all of the things that I have accomplished along with all of the people who were there for me at my disposal.

Literacy Narrative

            The way I narrowed down my thoughts was to think about some of the most important things that had happened to me while becoming literate. I took all of the most impacting literacy events and made a story bank, which consisted of multiple notecards. The way that I had narrowed down all of my thoughts that I had written on separate notecards was to put them in chronological order. After I had all of my accomplishments in chronological order I began to weave my entire from the story bank into one big story that flowed from one accomplishment to another. The only hard thing about this was that I had to find a way to make each story relate to one another. After I had my story and it was time for the peer review. I received great feedback from my peers. I did not have a complete rough draft; I had just had my notecards and my timeline on a document file. The peer review session greatly benefited my story because my partners had helped me make all of my small stories flow into one big story. I was thinking abut how to make my text into a video when I was making my timeline. However, when I was writing my timeline the fact that I had to use pictures did alter my way of writing somewhat. I tried to come up with events that I knew I could tie a picture to. For example, one event that I was considering leaving out was when my mother taught me the alphabet. The only picture I could tie to this event would be a picture of some letters. On the other had, this event was way too crucial to leave out of my narrative so I decided to keep it and put a picture of some letters in my slideshow.

Animoto Slideshow

            My partners never had the chance to choose fifteen sentences because I did not have the rough draft done in time. My partners told me that I should just choose the sentences that I had written down on my notecards, which explained each event briefly. I had chosen all of the sentences that explained different events throughout my timeline. It was extremely hard to type everything I wanted to say into a specified character limit. I spent most of the time on my video changing and re-organized many of my sentences. The way I dealt with this was to try and change the amount of letters and words but to keep my story straight and get out what I wanted to say without taking anything away. Another strategy of mine was to replace words with symbols such ad & instead of the word and. The way I had imagined my slideshow with the pictures was to complement the previous slide. I frequently used the cover of books to explain previous books that I had read and included in my slideshow. Because of the text limitations I had to make a plethora of slides and include separate pictures into each following slide, which. I found to be very annoying. However, what this did for me was it ensured the regular flow in my slideshow to stay consistent. Most of my pictures were from the web, which made it easy to clearly depict what I was trying to say. On the other had I still had some personal pictures that I thought would be somewhat helpful in defining who I truly am. The song that I chose for my slide show was Flashing Lights by Kanye West. I believe that this song helped cement the theme in my slideshow of evolution and evolving as a writer. The beat alone starts off with a mellow violin and 808 with a dash of a high-pitched piano key. Then the 808 kicks in and then the beat drops to a kick with a clap. What this beat helps communicate about my literacy is that I am evolving, just like the beat. After reading the comments on my video I wish I would have lengthened my video and worked more on my works cited page. I believe that I could have added a bit more in my literacy journey to even further my story and could have possibly gotten a higher grade.  However, I do feel that I have successfully narrated my literacy over the years in a very easy way for an array of audiences to understand. 

Nissan LEAF

            In this ad I believe what Nissan is trying to say is that “Hey, buy our 100% electric car and save polar bears”. Basically what Nissan does in this ad is depict an unhealthy and warming earth. From the ice breaking off a glacier to a polar bear stick on a thin sheet of ice. After the Polar bear decides to swim out to shore and growl at gas-guzzling vehicles he finds a man who owns a Nissan LEAF and gives him a hug. Nissan is depicting that all of the people that drive gas-guzzling vehicles are bad people and that the only good people who deserve a hug would be the people who drive their 100% electric car. Personally, I would have to disagree with this ad. I highly doubt that if a handful of people say 10,000, actually do buy this car would impose enough of a fight to put up with the billions of cars, trucks, and factories that are doing harm to our planet.  I believe that the people who actually would buy this car would have to be people who would want to spend less on gas, and to only benefit themselves instead of the intention of “saving the polar bears” as Nissan depicts. 

Anderson #1

"Simply put, we can’t keep preparing students for a world that doesn’t exist. We can’t keep ignoring the formidable cognitive skills they’re developing on their own. And above all, we must stop disparaging digital prowess just because some of us over 40 don’t happen to possess it. An institutional grudge match with the young can sabotage an entire culture."


What I believe Anderson is trying to say here is that our world is ever evolving. There is basically no way we can keep up with the speed technology. Of course a school can buy ipads to replace textbooks but soon there will be a new ipad, with a new interface that will require new teaching. The students of today have the cognitive skills of using a computer. By “using a computer” I do not mean simply check ones e-mail or even doing homework assignments on. I mean working on a computer, editing video, pictures, making slide shows etc. The students of today have all of these abilities that are being ignored by teachers across the world because the teachers themselves do not have these cognitive skills that students do in this day and age. Just because teachers do not know that the possibilities are endless on a computer does not mean that we cannot teach it to our students. Pretty soon we will have to apply all of these new technologies that are introduced to us. Marketers will have to create graphs and charts on PowerPoint, photographers will have to use aperture and photo shop. Not only are we not preparing our students for their future in a career but we are not preparing them for their college future either. As a current college student I have have used a plethora programs that were not taught to me in grade school. If our students are not taught to use these helpful programs and operating systems there is not way that they are going to get to use the programs and operating systems to their full potential. Before we even get to teach the students we have to inform teachers about this rapidly expanding technology first. 

Literacy Timeline

·      Practicing my name. in the living room when I was n k, school and trying to fit the letters into the obnoxiously large lines.

·      My mother teaching me the alphabet. My mom recited the alphabet to me about 1 billion and 3 times when I got home because, being a foreigner, I guess she thought that once I had learned the alphabet I would be as literate as can be.

·      Green eggs and ham – k, school. After having a Dr. Sues book read to me for the first time it was so good that my k, schoolteacher dedicated a day to re-read the book and make green eggs and ham. I was amazed by how the eggs looked. I was sort of skeptical about trying them, but I couldn’t let Dr. Sues down!

·      Wrote mother a mother’s day piece. When the 2^nd grade came along in the middle of May we had to write a piece on our mother. I still have mine and wow, the mistakes I made were horrendous

·      Sunday school and prayer. Being forced to go to Sunday school gave me the knowledge of religion and picked my position on many topics that I would write about in the future.

·      Esperanza rising. Bud not buddy in 5^th grade battle of the books. One of the first books I read by myself, which was extremely long. (to a fourth grader)

·      Michigan chillers. Met the author, didn’t think books could be written to be fun.

·      Writing got really boring in middle school and I only wrote and read when I had to, did not like to write. Worked hard, it was just my mentality

·      CP and AP English recommended to me my teachers. Worst mistake I have ever had in my life. Way too much work for me to handle. Not lazy, just did not like to write. I was more of the hands on kind of guy.

·      Becoming a mechanical engineer, which does not have much to do with writing. 

Summary & Resopnse

In my words, I would say that the main ideas in Linda Berry’s “Two Questions” would have to be how to overcome the two questions asked. Basically, in this narrative Berry is troubled when she comes across a couple of questions that flabbergast her. The two questions being “is this good” and “does this suck?”.  Throughout the narrative Berry depicts her first experiences of writing. She sums up this technique by stating that her “lines made a picture and her picture made a story” (lines being sentences). When she is done writing, she usually asks herself these questions. Her childish ways of writing seem to clear things up with the audience in many ways. Her Picasso-like drawings made a huge impact on the entire piece by giving each character a meaning, which helped get her point across even further. Also, the use of symbols and ever changing print to cursive provide an astounding way of drawing the reader into the story by both providing humor and clarity. However, I would have to say that I learned way differently from Berry in my own experience becoming literate. I would only write to satisfy my elementary school teacher’s needs, not having the weightless feeling such as Berry. Although I do not totally disagree with that way that Berry was taught, I would not have learned that way because I can already tell hat I am not nearly as close of an artist as she is.