The primary thesis of this series is that people do not just come up with outstanding ideas from thin air and become a mass hit. Writers, artists, inventors, and pretty much everyone comes up with “unique” ideas based off of something they’ve seen, heard, or done. Like it was said in the series, everything is a remix. It is transforming something old into something new, and requires three elements, copy, transform, and combine. No one starts out original, because “creation requires influence”. Even when we learn in school, we copy and write down and learn the ideas of others before us, emulate them, and this is how people like Quentin Tarantino, to Thomas Edison, to J.J. Abrams created their work. It is done with books, movies, songs, inventions, and pretty much anything you can think of, because we all get our ideas from somewhere. I find this very interesting because it’s not something I’ve ever thought about. Remixing happens everywhere, even with our favorite music. When I think of Led Zeppelin, I think of a classic heavy metal band that was known for their great original songs, but in reality many of their works are copied from others and many don’t know this or could ever give credit. Remixing can be compared to “Strong Writing and Writers Don’t Need Revision”, by Giovanelli. In Giovanelli’s piece, she talks about how even the best writers need to revise and edit their work, maybe even several times. At the same time, remixing is taking other people’s work, and editing, transforming, and revising it to make it their own. Just like remixing, revising is done all the time, by even the best, well known writers there are. Remixing requires careful work and thinking for legal reasons also, just like when revising, writers have to be careful not to copy other people’s work and if they do, they must give credit.

After thinking long and hard about what I want to do for project three, I think I have figured out a way to truly display my rhetorical purpose. I am not the most artsy person and am not the most creative, so I thought I would use typography as my main visual design. I think it would be cool and eye opening to use a selfie of me and write all over it, so that it looks busy and a little messy, but once you start to read the words you can really get a sense of who the person in the photo is. I want to use a photo of me and edit it to make it brighter and interesting to the eye, and then type all over it in order to explain who I am as a person, when it comes to my interests, hobbies, and personality. Through my text, I am going to highlight who exactly I am, what I love to do, and use key words to express my interests. For example, my education, sports I play, sports I played, my favorite music, my favorite shows, and apps. Many photo editing apps have some kind of text editing to work with, so I’m not too worried about finding the right software. Since I do not have Photoshop, after doing some research I found an app called PhotoScape X that should be good enough to create my self portrait. Really any photo editing app on the App Store could work but because I wanted to add text and work on my computer, I think Photoscape X will be the best software for me to work with.

After reading project 3, I think the idea of creating a self portrait reflecting our personality can be very interesting and fun. I think it can be fun being creative and thinking of ways to change an image of ourselves that depicts who we are as a person, and our rhetorical purpose, whether that means through our personality, interests, or our identity. This kind of self portrait can be taken in many different directions, to both the composer and the audience, which I find very interesting. In the text, “Introduction to Toward a Composition Made Whole“, Shipka explains the power of composition as communication through any media. She says composition can be seen through relationships, such as between visual and verbal, parts and a whole, and reader and a composer. Project 3 will certainly be a composition that reflects the relationship between the visual and verbal, as we are going to design our own visual of ourselves, and explain our Statement of Goals and choices afterwords. When Shipka says “a composition made whole”, I think she means composition can be made through ay medium of writing, not just text written on a page. It can me made through pictures, portraits, artifacts, words, drawings, and many more. It can be on a page, or on a screen. This self portrait assignment draws from her theory by proving that composition can be made whole through a portrait of oneself, that is edited with colors, images, or however the composer wants it to look like. There are many different representations and mediums that are “meaning making” and not just through plain linear text on a page. She also talks about how a composition has parts, and many parts go into making a whole. For our self portrait project, there will me multiple themes, ideas, and aspects to our visuals, which ultimately make our composition whole.

By doing project two, I learned many key ideas and tools in order to research properly, and exactly what a white paper is, along with its purpose. I learned that a white paper is usually created by a business organization or the government, and its purpose is to inform readers about a subject, propose a problem, and create their own solution to the problem that readers will hopefully support. I also learned about document design, and how each writing genre has its own design that distinguishes it from others. A white paper has a title, with headings and subheadings, it can have graphs, and charts, and it has at least three subheadings. These include an introduction, research section, and a solution/proposal section. I learned all of this through research online, lessons in class, and resources given to us by Dr. Wilgar. The other important aspect to this project is learning how to research a writing genre in a given academic discipline, which the library day was very helpful in showing us how to do that and what recourses are better than others, This means diving deep into databases and looking for a very specific topic of what writing is like in the professional field of accounting. This could be difficult because it can require reading between the lines because not a lot of databases are going to have the answer right there. I also conducted an in person interview with my accounting teacher, Dr. Massey, who was extremely helpful in informing me on all the different genres there is in accounting, because it is not all about the numbers. Accountants write about various topics in various genres all day long. This new knowledge is significant because in the future I plan to be a business major and its important to become familiar with all the different writing that’s required, because writing in the field is becoming more and more important. The new knowledge is also important because research is conducted all the time, and there is no doubt that I will need this knowledge in the future whether its for another in class project or in my future career. To prepare for project 3, I have to start thinking about what makes me, me. I have to think about my interest, goals, work, and personalty in order to make an online self portrait that presents my rhetorical version of myself.

A white paper is a document that supports a side or idea. It is commonly used as official government reports, but many corporations use it also. The main purpose is for the audience of the paper to understand and believe that a specific solution is the best way to go about a problem, by proposing future projects. The audience of white papers can be the public, and other companies that want to know more about how to solve a solution, usually people outside of the business. The format of a white paper starts off with an introduction and summary (abstract), explains the problem, propose a solution, and ends off with a conclusion. White papers can also include visuals and graphics to help the reader have a deeper understanding of the problem and appeal more to the reader. It is important to include accurate, non-bias, relevant information in a white paper. White papers range in size and can be anywhere from 3-50 pages long, but the key idea is to make it as long as you want to accomplish your objective.

For project two, I have selected sports marketing as my academic discipline. Students studying sports marketing learn about marketing strategies, consumer behavior, advertising, along with digital, social media, and sports marketing. The genres used in school are PowerPoints, excel workbooks, research papers, and advertisements. Students conduct research through sampling, data analysis, and communication of their results. Their main focus is on consumer needs and wants which is how companies can maximize their profits by producing and marketing products that the consumers demand. Professionals in the field of sports marketing mainly write about the company they work for/the products they are selling. They write in various genres just as students studying the discipline. They write in PowerPoints that summarize various topics such as future projections of the sales revenue of a product, ideas of future products, consumer needs and wants, and various statistics of the company/ industry. Sport Consumer behavior research is a big topic in the sports marketing industry by studying sports activities/events and how consumers benefit from the experiences. Most of the research in SM is found through qualitative data, but is then analyzed to create a marketing plan for the company. Sports Marketers write for both internal and external people. They write for the company to share the information they find with managers and peers. They also write for external consumers when creating advertisements and commercials. “Good writing” in this field include accurate research and analysis, but also the use of persuasion techniques such as logos, pathos, and ethos, as the goal of sports marketers is to pursued consumers to buy their products. The potential of poor writing/sloppy documentation means less interest in the company and a potential decrease in sales and revenue, which is what the company runs and depends on. This means good writing and professional documentation is crucial for sports marketers.

The speaker of this text is Jason Palmeri. He graduated from Ohio State University in 2003, and is a current doctoral student in English. He focuses on the history of composition, rhetoric and English composition, and digital humanities. The audience of this text is students in rhretoric along with Palmeri’s peers in the field of rhetoric so to share his ideas and thoughts about his research in discourse communities, conflict, power relations, and dialogical narratives. The text says that rhetoric is the means by which specific discourse communities interest with one another, which can be very different from one field to another. He talks about what writing is to a nurse, and what it is to an attorney, and how they use different rhetorical appeals to get their points across to their audiences. For example, a nurse will use logos to get her ideas out there by using scientific logical facts. Meanwhile an attorney will use any appeal, mostly pathos, to convince the judge to believe them even if that means exaggerating the situation. Palmeri also talks about document genres, which are the different sources and content of a text. For example he brings up firms training manuals for the writing of complaints, medical reviews, and demand letters, which are three very different texts for different purposes and each have their own genre boundaries. The main argument of this text is that people from different discourse communities will run into problems at some point based on their field of study and background, including discursive conflicts, epistemological conflicts, and bypassing. this conflict can lead to an increase in time to complete a document, and can create “muddled, incoherent documents”. At the same time, while two people might have very different stories to tell (a nurse compared to an attorney), they can also come together to produce something that targets and speaks to many different audiences.

Research is the process of exploring new information about a topic. It is asking question and finding out about it from all kinds of sources and perspectives. Wierszewski makes a clear statement on her belief that research is not meant to prove an already formed opinion. Research is a process of discovery. Often times students are taught that we must ask a question, form an opinion, or thesis, and prove that opinion immediately. However sometimes there’s not always just a simple answer. Wierszewski states “the messiness of research requires us to be flexible, often modifying our approaches along the way.” She believes that researchers must research an entire idea, rather than a thesis, and then come to a conclusion on the researchers true feelings towards a topic. For example, if someone knew nothing about politics, and wanted to vote in the next presidential election, they shouldn’t automatically choose a candidate and find research about that person in order to back up their opinion. Rather, they should find information from both candidates and afterwards, when they have a good understanding of them, they can choose who they want to vote for. People do research in order to find information about the world. Without realizing, people are always researching, because if they didn’t, they’d know nothing outside of what school has taught us. Research is imperative to have a better understanding of the world around us and make us aware of our surroundings. Researchers use different methods based on how they were taught and what they think is best for them. Different research methods includes experiments, surveys, interviews, case studies, and finding information from databases. I have done research using many of these methods through scientific research for science classes, but also general research papers for english classes. One thing that is confusing to me about research is that sometimes there’s not just one simple answer. People have different beliefs and values and that could base their opinions beforehand, so it can be hard to understand what exactly constitutes good research.

You Can Learn to Write in General (Wardle)

1. The author of this text is Elizabeth Wardle. She is a Howe Professor of English and Director of the Roger and Joyce Howe Center for Writing Excellence at the University of Miami, Ohio. She gives many talks about writing and writing effectively and has directed the writing program at the University of Central Florida and the University of Dayton.
2. The primary audience of this text is people just like me, students studying rhetoric and reading texts from rhetoric scholars.
3. The text imply that genre is any specific idea that writers write about. Wardle is very clear that there is no such thing as writing in general, because every piece of work has a purpose.
4. The main argument/message of this text is every work has differences in “context, audience, purpose, medium, history, and values of the community”. Writing a scientific research report is very different from writing a persuasive essay, as it is written for a totally different purpose. While we can use writing skills we have learned in the past, the constraints of every piece of writing is different and unlike any other. This is different from Bitzer because although we have the audience, author, purpose, and constraints, writing is way much more and includes history, experience, feelings, and every situation is different from the next.
5. The texts primary rhetorical purpose is to educate people that writing for one idea is very unique and different from the next.

Genre as a Social Action (Miller)

1. The author of this text is Carolyn R. Miller. She is now retired and worked as a Professor of Rhetoric and Technical Communication at North Carolina State University. She founded NC State’s PhD in communication, rhetoric, and digital media and graduated from Pennsylvania State University.
2. The primary audience of this text is other scholars in Millers field of rhetoric to learn about her take on what genre is and compare it with theirs.
3. The text lists 5 main definitions of what Miller says genre is. She says it is a conventional category of discourse bases in large scale typification of rhetorical action. It is interpretable by means of rules. It is distinct from form. It serves as the substance of forms at higher levels. It is a rhetorical means for mediating private intentions and social exigence.
4. The main argument/message of this text is that “genres change, evolve, and decay”. There is not one set definition and depends on the situation and context and there are many different genres depending on the “complexity and diversity of the society”. It is different from Bitzer and similar to Edbauer as genre changes and evolves and isn’t restricted to a certain set of constituents.
5. The texts primary rhetorical purpose is to educate people on what genre is and how it can be subjective depending on the situation.

From doing this assignment, I learned that simple yet careful steps are required to create a well made product. Some steps are easier than others, but once you get passed the first few, it gets easier from there. For example, the first draft of the mind map was very confusing. I felt like didn’t know what I was doing and I was surely not doing it right. It was really difficult to come up with ideas because I felt like I was doing everything wrong. That was the hardest step for me. Once we had peer reviews, I felt like I finally had an idea of what I was doing and started getting on the right track. Once we had the basic design principles lesson, I felt much more at ease because I was told a lot more information about the project but at the same time it was up to the students to create something of their own, as there were no specific instructions on what the project should look like, and everyones came out differently. I also learned that although peer review sessions usually have a bad reputation, and I’ve never been a big fan, they aren’t as bad as I thought because its a fresh pair of eyes looking at my work and I am able to get a whole new perspective on my work. I also know now that I am not a huge fan of Lucid Charts because it took me a while to figure out the controls work and isn’t clear on how to use it. This new knowledge is significant because it has taught me that good work comes with time and patience. Even though the process might seem difficult at first, it gets easier. I just have to trust the process and know as long as I am writing something down, even if it might be bad or it doesn’t sound right, I am making progress. I do not know what project 2 is specifically about, but I do know that it is researched based. I know that as long as I go step by step, and have a good understanding of what I am doing, I will do well.

My revision process for project one definitely benefitted from the peer workshop we did in class and the visual rhetoric and basic design principles lesson. Before these classes, I didn’t have a good understanding of what the project really was and what it was trying to accomplish, but then I realized its all subjective and we could make it however we wanted it to be. I started out by revisiting what my peers thought I did good on, and what they thought could be changed. I made these revisions first, the day after we did the workshop in class. Then after the visual design lesson, I realized I should change the whole look of the map based on the design principles we learned, and I could enjoy creating the map how I wanted it to look. Overall, I feel really good about the revision process, because while creating the first draft I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing, but going back and revising made me realize I had good ideas that just needed to be organized better, so it was a much easier process. I did the revision process over the weekend, a few days after the visual design class, so that I had a few days to think about what I wanted to do and how I wanted my map to look like. I worked by the Dunkin Donuts in the student center early in the morning because there are usually only a few people there and its quiet yet lively at the same time so I wouldn’t be too distracted. The whole process took about 2 hours to think about how I really wanted my map to look like and how to organize my ideas, actually create the map, and write out the memo explaining my choices. While I thought the revising process would be very annoying to do, I genuinely didn’t mind it because I knew the ideas I had, but just needed to organize them in a better way, so I don’t think I would change anything about the process.