Blog 6: Reaching back, looking forward

One thing that I took from this course is that writing is everywhere, in more ways than I thought. I learned about a new type of writing, rhetoric, and realize something as small as a poem could be dissected into 500 words of thought. I also learned how to "properly" do a research paper, which will help me through the rest of my studies without a doubt. Being now a biology major, knowing how to find scientific journals will become useful in future endeavors. I don't really wonder anything about writing, because my mind only can think of things I already know, but I'm sure theres much more out there for me to learn. Later in my field, I'm sure I will have to write research papers on certain things probably science related. I won't really get to free write in my field at all, unless it is my own research and I'm reflecting on it. Now knowing how to properly do a college research paper it should be a piece of cake for me!

Blog 5: Distribution, Circulation, Templates

My genres could be distributed using hashtags or tags, especially on my blog posts. Its easier to find what you're looking for with hashtags and tags, and blogs get a lot more views. I haven't had any hashtags or tags on my blogs, like the one I wrote for MA3 got 91 views within the four days I started posting, imagine if I did use hashtags. Say on twitter, if I made a post with a hashtag all users have to do is look up #smoking (example) and my tweet will pop up. I used one template for my genres and that was to write my obituary. I used a newspaper template and pasted my obituary on it. I really didn't like it very much because the usage was limited, and I couldn't figure out where the columns were so it was hard for me to continue my story to the other columns. Also, I couldn't move the picture to where I wanted and it wouldn't allow me to wrap the text around the picture. But I used the template to make my obituary different from everyone else's and to add a little flare to it instead of just sending in a word document. It enhances my agency as a composer because it makes me different from the rest, and I stand out more. The constraints would be not knowing how to use it but I'm sure with practice I would be able to.

Blog 4: Genre

A genre I deal with regularly is Country music. I don't usually listen to country but lately for some reason I've real been into Florida Georgia Line and Zac Brown Band, listening to it almost every morning on my way to class and on drives on my way home. I listen to a very wide variety of music, mostly consisting of Indie and Alternative Rock, like Fall Out Boy and the Black Keys just to name a few. Although, my favorite artist of all time happens to be Jack Johnson, which I guess can be classified as rock, but it's hard to give him that title because his music is so mellow and relaxing, and rock makes me think of loud bands like Kiss and The Rolling Stones. I would classify his music more as blues than anything, but I guess SOME of his music may have a rock n' roll edge to it. Jack Johnson changes my perspective on the rock genre, I no longer immediately thing of the hard rock bands, I think of hard and soft rock. If a new listener looked and saw Jack Johnson made rock music, I'm sure they would go into it expecting electric guitars and lots of drums, when to their surprise they hear acoustic guitars and ukeleles. You know, the type of relaxing music you would hear on a cruise ship. Growing up by the beach, basically paradise (when it isn't constantly raining) probably made me love Jack Johnson a lot more than someone from the country would that isn't anywhere near the beach. I even listen to him to help me get to sleep at night, who would've thought that I would be able to say "Sometimes I listen to rock music to help me sleep," people probably would look at me like I'm insane. HA!

Blog 3: Knowledge and Belief

Knowledge and belief are two completely different things, with some aspects relating to one another. Knowledge, is something acquired through research, facts and discovery and a belief doesn't have to have any of that, but you can support your beliefs with some facts and research. For example, some people believe there is no God, when in fact there is no proof there is or isn't one, its just what they believe. Knowledge is supported by facts and facts only, no personal opinions are attributed to them. Like in class, we read articles about the Sasquatch, arguing that they do exist, contrary to popular belief. Further researching the links Mr. Bedsole provided of journals and press release, some things didn't really add up. In my opinion, it was someone who believed the sasquatch existed and wanted so badly for it to be true that they went to great lengths for other people to believe it too by providing "knowledge" that wasn't actually knowledge. The organization researched ONE topic, which was the sasquatch, with all invalid research according to journals from other scientists. Plus, the website it was on wasn't very professional looking. Which made me realize that I shouldn't be so gullible as to what I see on the internet, and I need to research the topic more before believing it and spreading the news.

Blog 2: Deploying Writing

• Conduct a dissoi logoi about the practice of rhetorical analysis. In other words, spend half of your blog post critiquing the value of rhetorical analysis, and the other half defending it.

Rhetorical analysis, in my opinion, is important but I think it is limited. For example, I wrote part of my analysis on Westboro Baptist Church, and I'm very much against them and I had to try really hard not to be biased. Which isn't exactly my favorite thing to exclude from something I write because I believe without being able to express opinions people don't expand knowledge or their minds or think of things differently. Also, rhetorics are mainly on current events or issues, not something that happened in the past or could happen in the future, also making writing a rhetoric limited. 

Rhetorical analysis is important in cases where people want to get a point across, and support that point. For example again, my analysis was about people expressing opinions on gay rights, the purpose of mine was to show people that it's okay to be gay, because you can't help who you are. Others I noticed included information on Animal Abuse, all on current events happening in the world which are extremely important. Rhetorics help people "put the pieces together" and discover things that connect to one and other without even realizing. 

Therefor, I believe rhetorics are important for readers and to get a message across, but for writers, it makes them very limited as to what they can talk about in their articles. Which, are some writers strong suit but I prefer to write something where I can be somewhat biased to how I feel about an issue and not be limited to what I write about. 

Blog 1: What Is Writing?

Writing, in my opinion, is a form of art. People write to express themselves and how they feel about certain topics, like articles bashing current issues in the world or articles supporting those issues. Writers sometimes write about their own personal experiences, just using other names. For example, Lauren Conrad wrote a book series based off of her life as a reality TV show star, but the characters just had different names. Some writers, like myself, write to express how they feel at a certain moment in their lives in a way to relieve the anger or depression.

In school, I've written countless extensive research papers, but mostly I wrote articles for my high school newspaper or the newspaper website. I also was the "go-to" person when someone needed an idea for a caption for a yearbook picture. I loved writing for the newspaper because I mostly wrote about things that interest myself, and people at school. I wrote about sports, getting to go to all the games and taking pictures, and I did some movie reviews. Although, I was the website editor so I didn't get time to write too many articles, I just edited some and put them on our newspaper website. When it comes to writing I only really enjoy it if the topic interests me, which is what I try to do with most of my papers (as I did for major assignment 1).

The writing I see is usually only topics that will effect me, I used to read all the articles going on the school website because I had to. Reading for fun, though, is not a very common thing I do. I'll read a few novels here and there, but they're mostly romance and usually books that are turning into movies. For example, I recently read "The Fault In Our Stars" in three days before I saw the movie when I returned home from Europe, and as usual, the book is much better than the movie. I think it's usually like that because books provide more detail and in depth events. When making them into movies, directors have to leave some things out because it simply just doesn't fit. Although, for me I preferred the Harry Potter movies over reading the books, but that's probably only because I love Daniel Radcliffe.