Our Final Portfolios

So over break I was working on my final portfolio and thinking about what I want to put into it and what I need to change/add for it. Thinking about the project kind of got me excited for it, because it is an opportunity to really clean everything up (all of the different assignments which I want to include at least) and make sure that they are even better and that I listened to Grete's feedback in each case and changed the assignments with the new information which I've learned and such. I also thought that it was interesting looking back through this blog of mine and picking which posts to include. Doing this almost helped me to put the entire semester of english into perspective a little because we wrote on many of the different things we learned and the different topics discussed in class. Overall, I have enjoyed working on the portfolio so far and I'm sure that I will continue to until it's due.

My Genre

My genre is basically creative writing with advertising.

When researching the two genres, I found out that they are very broad and that can lead to a profession doing a multitude of different things.

Creative writers can do anything from becoming authors to designing enticing stuff which will draw someone's attention, which is what I hope to do in my project.

Advertisers can do anything from work on magazine, tv, or newspaper adds to the more financial and business side of advertising. In my project I am going to be mocking an advertiser in the artistic sense again, since I am trying to appeal to the Jewish students on Virginia Tech's campus and I need to grab their attention.

The Concept of Audience

I enjoyed the reading more than I thought that I would because it made a lot of sense. However, when I thought that I knew everything that they were going to be able to say about audiences, they kind of switch it up. The specific part I'm talking about is where they start explaining how you can have a specific audience and without even realizing it that audience switches to a much more general audience, and it is as if you are no longer arguing with/writing/speaking to that one person but rather trying to convince a whole group.

Also, I liked the part in the beginning where they explain that you do not need to know the exact techniques or arguing in order to be able to argue well, and that there is a good chance that knowing them would not even help you. This is the part where they compared everything to professional football players and also olympic swimmers - if you are good at something naturally then you don't need to think about what you are doing, you just do it.

My Proposal

For my problem, I chose to address the fact that there are still Jewish kids on Virginia Tech's campus who are unaware of Hillel or even the fact that there is a Jewish organization associated with the school. So, in order to get the word out I decided to follow the protocol of what I see many other organizations do. It is basically going to be a multi-step advertising kids in all of the locations/ways which students look.

1. I am going to design the little cards which advertise organizations and events in all of the dining halls on campus (they are always where the salt/pepper and napkins are on the table).
2. I want to put up posters in all of the dorms. In every dorm I have been in there is a specific area for posters for current evcnts, general information, and also organizations.
3. In Squires, there are some bulletin board displays throughout the building which people decorate and use to advertise their organizations. I want to make one for Hillel, and even though it will only be up for maybe a month (I have no idea the actual time length) it is still a chance for kids to read about the organization. Ideally this would be done towards the beginning of the year.
4. In the beginning of the year there are always fairs for the new students, and I guess the returning ones also, in order for them to get involved with the multiple groups and organizations on campus. I could be wrong, but I do not remember Hillel specifically having a booth at any of these fairs. So, I want to make them have a booth for next year.
5. Finally, I want Hillel to get onto 'The Roomer' which is a poster which lists major events happening on campus and also interviews some people who work at the school and such. I don't know all of the places which the posters are, all I know is that they are on the back of the bathroom doors in my dorm as well as in the halls, so I am sure that they are at least in the halls of other residential halls.

These are my ideas for getting the word of Hillel out to campus more. And, I can not wait to produce some of them for class.

Let me know what you think and if you have any other ideas/suggestions!

My Examples of Assignment Three

For my examples of the assignment, I chose two seperate topics. The first one was getting people out there to vote. I originally was looking for stuff specifically encouraging minorities to vote, but what I found was posters which encouraged everyone to vote instead. I liked this because it is a problem that everyone in our country does not vote when we have the opportunities to.

This is the first poster, where it is basically just letting people know where to register so that they will be able to vote in the election.My second poster shows how much humans have evolved and it carries that thought to the point where humans are so evolved that we need to vote now because that is what the current generation/era does.

So, that was my first idea for a representation of the assignment. For my second example, I thought more of the medical world and how it is trying to get people to become healthier and get newly-created immunities for multiple diseases. The specific example I chose was Gardasil, the relatively new shot for girls which is supposed to prevent HPV. My example was Gardasil's actual website, http://www.gardasil.com/, however they also have multiple posters and commercials on TV which I could have chose from. I liked this campaign because not only does it call out to the younger girls who are actually getting the shots, it also calls out to the mothers of the girls, encouraging them to have their daughters get the shots.

But anyway, these were the two things which I came up with for examples. Let me know what you think of them or if you thought of anything similar.

Editing My Essay

I like the suggestions which Rebecca made about my essay. I think that they make sense and I can see why she thought that they needed changed. It is important that my audience and purpose are clear from the beginning of the paper and not only after they are clarified half way through. So, now I have a clear idea of what major ideas to change for the paper.

What is Needed in an Essay?

I agreed with both of the articles which we read for homework in a lot of ways and liked what they were saying. 'Essayists on the Essay' was interesting because it showed how different authors viewed the essay themselves. Even essayists are not truly able to define what an essay is. I liked 'Encountering the Essay' even more because it kept my interest more. The paper was written with longer sections so I could read more about the different topics than when reading 'Essayists on the Essay' which was just short excerpts from longer writings. I liked how 'Encountering the Essay' gave a lot of background information and then compared how people used to write to how people write today. I agree that many authors feel important when they write memoirs and believe that it means that they are something special, when in todays world that is not the case at all because everyone writes them now.

As far as what I think is necessary in an essay, here are a couple of things:

1. It must be pretty clearly written, it should not be too confusing to read. That does not mean that the subject should not make you think or anything, but just that the writing itself should be easy to understand and follow.
2. There should be a strong central idea.
3. The author should know what they are writing about and what they are trying to convey to the reader.
4. It should be at least a little interesting to read most of the time, especially if it is a narative type essay.

Many of my ideas are similar to the ones which I already wrote about, and if I think of any other/different ones, then I will post them on here also.

Have a good day everyone!!