Webmaster

As a designer, when someone asks you to create something within boundaries, you do so.  To go above and beyond you make an additional design as to what you may have in my mind in order to pursuade others to see things in a new eye, at least that is what I have always seen from good web designers.

Looking around at a variety of English department websites around the country, we seem to fall far behind those that stand out.  I guess  you have many pages to overlook and design, simple and somewhat efective may be the way to go.  The idea with focusing on a good design is the potential to be asked to work on fewer pages in greater detail due to the fact that you are now in high demand for your creativeness and pushing of the envelope.  

Learning to Love to Learn

Im 25-years old and still have another year of school to complete.  Many of my friends are off in their careers, or have a degree to use while seeking their desired professions.  Until I was diagnosed with cancer in 2006, I was consistently attending school, but never passionately working towards the completion of my education.  I continued to study journalism and practice writing until I absolutely could not face it anymore.  

I was taking a one last class at Clark, working as editor-in-chief on the school newspaper.  I was enduring chemo and could not afford to pay for class so I just kept showing up in an attempt to stay busy and try to stay 'normal.'  My teacher was unhappy, the class was unhappy, I was exhausted, and truthfully, had no idea why I was spending my time in the newsroom.  I was not getting paid, and I was not gaining any school credit.  I left that quarter certain that I would be done with writing and leave it behind along with my chemo treatments.

I deferred my admission to Columbia College in Chicago and took the advice of a friend to finish at WSU and focus on earning a general degree and striving towards an MBA.  That is what I did.  I had a few general classes to get out of the way on my path towards suits and ties, but my major was still English since WSU lacked a journalism program, as you can clearly see in the Vancougar.  

What have I taken away from English 402?  I love writing.

Kat answered all the questions I never asked about journalism and professional writing.  I could go into details of what I retained from each chapter, but what I learned most from this semester is that there are great teachers out there, you just have to find them.  This isnt a kiss-ass approach to praise Kat and her class, but rather a sense of gratitude and appreciation for a medium that I was sure I had put behind me.  I usually stick to my commitments and follow through with my decisions.  For the first time I am happy to say I have failed at following through with what may have been the worst decision of my years in school.

Peer Response

It seems that many of us have the fear of public speaking.  Whether it be addressing a large crowd or simply presenting in front of your classmates, not too many of us have that much experience.  I think a lot of it has to do with your classmates and how comfortable you are around them.  Although many of us in class do not converse with one another, there seems to be a good energy, understanding, and respect for one another (Unless you mention how a 3.2 on a resume for a chemical engineer is a poor choice in front of a class that has a handful of engineering students, haha, that was fun, just giving you a hard time Rich).

I feel more comfortable in 402 than I do in some of my other classes.  I think a lot of us getting involved in class discussions helps and it should help when giving our presentations.  I would like to predict that many of us do just fine and find it easier than expected...again, because we have a strong solid class.

A great thing that Kat does is expose a lot of our work to be criticized and/or praised by classmates.  She does this every class and it allows us to step up and have our voice be heard.  In much of my college experience I have been a statistic amongst many other students.  Kat does an amazing job of making us all feel comfortable, allowing us to take away a lot more from the course.

| Chapter 17 & 18 |

CHAPTER 17

Reading chapter 17 has really given me an idea as to how I will give a presentation. This is important because I have a god damn group presentation in EVERY one of my classes this semester. It has taught me to learn better with groups, when I am typically reserved and enjoy working on my own. I have been forced to adapt to a variety of personalities, writing styles, studying habits, and schedules.

The chapter shows the pros and cons of different mediums. I think for the size of our class and the materials we intend to use, our project will be very well organized and the reader/listener will take away a great deal of information. Our group has different levels of experience in writing. This will give us the opportunity for both an outlined talk, as well as an impromptu one.

Part of presenting to a group is really focusing on a few main points, as guideline 3 suggest, and communicating your message effectively and clearly to the reader...in this case our classmates. It will be interesting to see how the groups take all that they have learned during their group projects and watch them transform them into group presentations.

CHAPTER 18

When it comes to creating reader centered web pages and websites, I stand back. There are so many websites that allow you to plug in bits and pieces and turn what you are trying to get across into code on a certain template.

This is something that I always struggled with. I took a computer science course at Hofstra University and could never quite grasp all the code and specifics of layout. I would work for hours and hours and then go to open a webpage and one little mistake that I would not be able to detect would cause an error. I have a great deal of respect for web designers.

When it comes to the idea of design and content, I feel that I will one day use my creative mind to communicate with a designer what I want to see. I f I could be some sort of creative director and learn along the way, I think I would have much more fun.

I can come up with the information and graphics that readers want to read, make a sound decision on what may or may not be attractive visually, and expose my ideas to be constructed into elaborate, easy to navigate websites. It is just frustrating that I am limited to blogs and basic code to get my writing and ideas across. Definitely something I wish I would have learned at a much younger age. But then again, I did not have all the resources of the internet that are available to todays youth.

The Persuaders

I find it rather amusing the sense of fear, disbelief, disgust, and shock that some of the class has taken to the movie The Persuaders. It would be interesting to see how long these feelings last before most begin to reabsorb 'subliminal messaging' and advertising. As a society we tend to focus on an issue until another one presents itself.

As all of you type up your blogs you are working under a google. For those of you who do not know much about google they arent just an internet search engine.

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

This includes your information. Have any of you tried typing WSU 402 Blogger into google? Try it. So many of you seem upset as if you are trying to 're non conform' after watching the movie, but the fact is this is the society we live in and a society we have built whether we like it or not.

It would be interesting to see someone try to get themselves out of the Acxiom database.



We're all part of a code!

| Chapters 2, 9, 10 |

CHAPTER 2

I took a look at these chapters immediately after purchasing this book. I was laid off on August 20th and had not worked on my resume for nearly two years. My first question question was, "How the fuck am I going to find a job to fit around my school schedule?"

It was easy, I had to drop a class so I was available to work most of the day. Next I had to decide what I wanted to do. That lasted all about 20 minutes before realizing the job market is awful and I will take any work given to me. I applied for any job I could find and was continually getting responses saying the position was already filled or I was overqualified for a position. This was very frustrating. I finally came to accept that I need to start building a resume for a career and I am currently working on this. School comes first, career will follow. Now, what do I want to do with my life?



CHAPTER 9

The most important part of this chapter is giving your reader a reason to pay attention. If you can get your reader to pay attention you have done the hardest part. Now it is all about following a set of guidelines and form to convey your information. Most importantly, encourage openness, allowing the reader a sense of comfort for suggestion and constructive criticism.

CHAPTER 10

Ending a communication is a problem I have seen in many pieces I have read or written myself. I am continually working on stopping when Im finished rather than continuing on with unnecessary jargon.

"After you've made your last point, stop." Sounds simple but I think as a practicing writer, it is one of the most difficult things I come across everyday.

When writing papers I tend to over analyze a situation, topic, or theme and get carried away talking about something that may irrelevant to the original point I was making. What I commonly come across is not answering the question. Had I stopped when I had made my last point and answered the question, I wouldnt have rambled away from what I was trying to say and delivered a better piece. Im stopping now.

VOTE - NOVEMBER 4

Please go out and vote tomorrow if you have not done so already.  I am not going to try and direct your vote towards one candidate or another.  If you have not made your choice already, then there is not much I can do but to encourage you to go to your local polling location and vote.  This link can guide you to where you need to go to drop your ballots off.

http://www.co.clark.wa.us/elections/documents/2007/Despites.pdf

Best,

PO