1. The profile: https://alaynarae.design.blog/2020/02/06/friday-post-2-7-20/
2. The Collaborative Photo caption article: https://alaynarae.design.blog/2020/02/24/friday-post-2-21-2020/
3. Midterm Reflection: https://alaynarae.design.blog/2020/03/02/midterm-check-in/
4. Journalistic Texts: https://alaynarae.design.blog/2020/04/02/week-11-friday-post/
5. Return to Readings: https://alaynarae.design.blog/2020/04/10/returning-to-our-readings/
6. Final Reflection: https://alaynarae.design.blog/2020/04/16/final-reflection/

As I said in my midterm reflection, going into this course I was not sure what to expect to learn from this class. I wasn’t sure why this class was a requirement and thought it would just be another silly general education requirement that wouldn’t actually help or prepare me for my future career at all. After completing this course, I have to say that this was one of the most helpful courses I have taken so far while at UC Blue Ash. Not only did I learn writing skills to help me in my career but for life in general. As you look throughout my ePortfolio, you can see a transformation in my work and my education. You will also see a growth in my confidence as a reader and a writer.

            My first blog post/project was our work on our profiles we created for the Activist. When we started this project, we had just gotten into learning about genre and discourse community. While I did not know what discourse community exactly meant, we had great resources provided to us that helped me learn. In the article “Discourse Community,” I like how the article not only defined it but gave examples. I as a college student found the example of a college setting very helpful and relatable. I also found it intriguing how it related it to genre as well. I liked how it describes why this is so important in writing literature. Having a clear definition of what discourse community is helps make it easy to understand and think about as well. The portfolio was a perfect introduction assignment for this course. It wasn’t asking for too much out of us since we didn’t know much yet, but it helped prepare us for what we had instore for the rest of the course. 

            The Collaborative Photo Caption article is what helped me learn how to write in groups or partners. Combining ideas can be difficult. Trying to compromise and make the work evenly is also very difficult. I think that it is very important to learn how to work as a team for everyone. It can be a challenge, but it is an appropriate skill for every type of career path one might go down. A photo caption project was something I was completely lost about and had no idea where to even start. I think that making it a group project made it a lot easier and we were able to learn off of each other. However, I still wasn’t exactly sure how to describe a genre at the time. The article “Genre in the Wild” really helped shaped my perception. After I read through this article, I came to a conclusion of how important the term genre is in the world. It is especially important in writing. I think that the image provided by “Social Media World,” shows how important it is in the social media world and gives great examples of genres in today’s society. I am more of a visual learner for sure and graphs and images really help me learn and understand subjects better. I found it very interesting when the writer says, “genre is an act of language.” That when you think about it is a perfect way to think about genre in the world and how it is used. This helped me apply genre to the work I did in the Photo Caption List project. 

            Halfway through the semester we did a midterm reflection assignment to display what we have learned from the course so far and what we are looking forward to the rest of the semester. The midterm reflection was a great assignment that made us think about how satisfied we are not just with the course but how our education became more developed. It pushed my thinking of what I have learned that will help me in my future career path. Like I said in my midterm reflection when I was talking about the beginning of the course, “I had no idea how to even create a blog post or what to even write about. I did not know what a genre was or even what a photo caption was besides a caption on Facebook or Instagram.” Looking at my midterm reflection I am very satisfied with the outcome of this course. 

            When it came to our journal entries and our green book, I can see a growth in my maturity in my writing. In the beginning, looking back I can see I did not think anything of this course and thought it was a silly requirement that would be easy to pass. As time went along, I became interesting in what we were learning and became determined to work hard and do good on all my assignments. I reflected a lot on my work and was very professional about my strengths and weaknesses in this course. What really made everything seem more relevant to me like genre for example was the article we read, “Genre Awareness for the Novice Academic Student: An Ongoing Quest.” Being a student who is studying genre I found this article very interesting. It shows the importance of educating ourselves about genre. Reading this made me aware of genre and what the goal is for students to understand about the term genre. It is also interesting hearing what they are doing to change our academic system to help students learn and be more aware. It also helps hearing the opinion as to why it is so important for us to learn about it.

            However, there was a sudden change in our learning about a month before the end of this course that threw all of us off track. The pandemic, covid-19, brought a big change in our learning. Instead of meeting in our normal classroom three times a week everything switched to fully online instructing. For some people it was easier while others it brought even more stress. I saw this challenge and was scared at first. I have taken a couple online courses before, but they were easier classes that were more independent work and learning. Outside of school many other changes were occurring due to the pandemic, restaurants, stores and salons all closed. I lost my job and have been completely stuck inside and distanced from others besides family. When this all happened, I had to come up with ways to stay productive in schoolwork and other priorities. I wanted to share those ways and advice with others.  

            Shortly after we switched to online, we were asked to write our own original journalistic texts. I immediately thought about genre and how this pandemic could be an interesting genre to talk about in my writing. I used this to my advantage and wrote something that actually was useful to me and I wanted it to be useful to other students as well. My text titled, “How to stay motivated while all classes are online due to Covid-19,” was inspired by the sudden change that happened in our academic learning. I came up with my own top ten useful tips I wanted to give out to my fellow UC classmates. I wanted to write something that wasn’t just interesting and relatable, I wanted it to be helpful and useful for the intended audience. 

            The course concepts, genre and discourse community, are two things that will be relevant for my future career path. I am studying psychology and my goal is to become a licensed clinical psychologist. There will be a lot of writing and journalistic texts that I will have to read and reflect on not only throughout college but when I start my career. I was able to relate genre and discourse community to the study of psychology. One article that I recently found was “Genre, Identity, and the Brain: Insights from Neuropsychology,” by Irene Clark. This article connected the term genre to every side of psychology and made it so intriguing to someone like me who is studying this.

            This course was overall one of the most helpful classes I have taken at UC. It is a course that focuses not on just reading literature but understanding it and writing it. I am extremely grateful that I had the opportunity to take this class and learn many skills that will help me professionally. As a writer I grew and flourished, I am able to understand the meaning behind every type of literature, and not just reading a book. I took aspects from every resource provided to us and made it relevant to my own life and career. 

Works Cited

Bickmore, Lisa. “Genre in the Wild.” Press Books , https://openenglishatslcc.pressbooks.com/chapter/genre-in-the-wild-understanding-genre-within-rhetorical-ecosystems/

CCCC, “Discourse Community” secure.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/CCC/0641-sep2012/CCC0641PosterDiscourse.pdf.

Johns, Ann. “Genre Awareness for the Novice Academic Student: An Ongoing Quest.”

Irene Clark, “Genre, Identity, and the Brain: Insights from Neuropsychology”

1. “No one could see the colour blue until modern times”
   1. Summary: This article is reflecting on the color blue and how the writers felt it was missing in the world. They talk about the making of other colors and where the words come from. They wondered if it was natural for us to see or not see blue. 
   1. Response: I personally found this article very interesting and unique. It is one that makes you think to yourself, “Wow, I haven’t thought about that before.” I liked how it described the making of other colors and how blue was the last one to have a name. It gave examples such as the sky that I found compelling. 
2. “Discourse Community”
   1. Summary: This article defines what discourse community is and provides an example for college students. It also describes the significance of discourse community as well. 
   1. Response: I like how the article not only defined it but gave examples. Me as a college student found the example of a college setting very helpful and relatable. I also found it intriguing how it related it to genre as well. I liked how it describes why this is so important in writing literature. Having a clear definition of what discourse community is helps make it easy to understand and think about as well.
3. “How Language Shapes our Perception of Reality”
   1. Summary: This article talks about how language means more than just words we speak but how it represents are world in different cultures. It gives examples like how in Russia there are multiple words for the shade of are blue. It also explains how learning a second language affects your brain.
   1. Response: This article pushes our brains to think deeply about what language really is and how it is different among cultures. I really enjoyed the examples provided to us of how different cultures use their languages. I found the section talking about gender markings very intriguing especially since I am currently studying Spanish where there are numerous gender markings on objects. Which is also a reason why I found the section titled, “The Brain with a Second Language,” very relatable.
4. “Genre Awareness for the Novice Academic Student: An Ongoing Quest”
   1. Summary: This article is a journal article written as a speech. It is all about a pedagogy for academic students. The focus for us is table 2 which is focused on the problem. They are wanting to find ways to apply the term genre to a student’s time in a classroom.
   1. Response: Being a student who is studying genre I found this article very interesting. It shows the importance of educating ourselves about genre. Reading this made me aware of genre and what the goal is for students to understand about the term genre. It is also interesting hearing what they are doing to change our academic system to help students learn and be more aware. It also helps hearing the opinion as to why it is so important for us to learn about it.  
5. “Genre in the Wild”
   1. Summary: Not only does this article define genre but it relates to different types of genre throughout the world. It talks a lot about genre in school or work setting. It also explains the importance of genre in the world. It also explains how one learns about genre in everyday life.
   1. Response: After I read through this article, I came to a conclusion of how important the term genre is in the world. It is especially important in writing. I think that the image provided by “Social Media World,” shows how important it is in the social media world and gives great examples of genres in today’s society. I am more of a visual learner for sure and graphs and images really help me learn and understand subjects better. I found it very interesting when the writer says, “genre is an act of language.” That when you think about it is a perfect way to think about genre in the world and how it is used.
6. “The Concept of Discourse Community”
   1. Summary: This article not only defines what discourse community is, but it also breaks it down into 6 sections. It also gives a clarification of the use of discourse community in terms or writing. Discourse community is compared also to speech community in this article. 
   1. Response: This article I found extremely helpful in determining what discourse community was. The formal definition to me is too broad and confusing but in the article, it was helpful that it was broken down into examples. I also found it very helpful when the writer related the term to genre which is also part of our studies and writing for this course. However, I felt that some examples provided were irrelevant to what the purpose was. For example, I felt that the part about death in discourse communities was very abundant. 
7. “Twelve Words”
   1. Summary: This article tells a story about the writer, Brian Trapp, and his twin brother growing up. His brother could only say twelve words throughout his life. Due to a grade four intraventricular hemorrhage the brother, Danny, had a lot of issues when he was born. They were shocked that Brian even made it. Due to having intellectual disabilities as an outcome, Danny could only say a few words. 
   1. Response: This article was different than others we have read so far. It is more of a story than other journalistic texts and has a strong emotional side to it. However, this story tells a message about speech. Not only is it inspiring but it is educational as well. You have to really think hard to find the intellectual purpose behind this article and what purpose it serves besides just telling a story. 
8. “Mother Tongue”
   1. Summary: This article was written by a young writer who loves language. She reflects on experiences she had. She states a lot of facts and opinions given by her mother that inspired her. She also talks about how her mother’s use of English limited her life possibilities as well. Her mother had a big impact on her life.
   1. Response: I feel that this article was very intriguing. Hearing about how big of an impact the writer’s mother had on her writing and her life really makes you think about what influences a writer. I have always thought that the way you are raised and the environment you grew up in has always had an impact on everyone’s lives. This article however shows how deeply someone can affect ones education and career.

Text 1: (Thinking about publishing)

How to stay motivated while all classes are online due to Covid-19

Many changes have happened in everyone’s everyday routine due the pandemic of covid-19. As a full-time college student, the biggest struggle lately has been staying motivated and trying to keep up with my schoolwork. However, I am not the only one dealing with this set back during the pandemic. I have been able to learn from other’s ideas and I have come up with the top 10 ways to help stay motivated and productive during this time. 

1. Keep a routine for every “school day.”
2. Make a to-do list every morning of what assignments need to be done for the day.
3. Try to maintain a sleep schedule. As in, as much as it sounds good, try not to sleep in late every day.
4. Maintain healthy eating habits, get a good breakfast in before you start your work.
5. Do not be afraid to email teachers for help or advice.
6. Have a “workspace” set up for you to sit and focus on your work.
7. Have a study playlist of calm relaxing songs.
8. Give yourself short frequent breaks when feeling stressed or overworked. 
9. Go for a morning walk or job to wake yourself up and get your day started.
10. Block out little distractions as much as possible. For example, turn your phone ringer on silent while working. 

Text 2: (not wanting to publish)

The Younger Generations reaction to “social distancing” during the Pandemic

There have been many guidelines put in place regarding social distancing to prevent the spread of covid-19. One of those include not being in groups of more than 10 people at a time and staying a minimum of 6 feet apart from one another. As we have seen throughout the media there are a lot of mixed feelings about these guidelines and people not following them, specifically younger people like college students. 

This however is not a surprise, with jobs being shut down and public places being closed there is not much to keep everyone occupied. Many people are running out of ideas on how to not be bored at home. So, for most teens and young adults, they turn to their friends for entertainment. While bars are closed down, alcohol is still available for purchase at stores and there still is a decent amount of social drinking going on. There have even been many news stories stating teenagers need to take this seriously. 

The biggest issue is going against traveling guidelines.  While a nice cheap vacation sounds nice, it is simply not worth the risk of the disease spreading. I personally feel that everyone needs to stay home as much as possible. This process would go by fairly quickly and easy if everyone would follow along with the guidelines and restrictions. 

Reflection:

            I wanted to write something that would be relevant and eye-catching to my intended audience. In this case my audience is the UC Blue Ash community. With all the talk in the world about the corona virus I felt that it was a genre that was appropriate for the activist. However, I wanted my genre guidelines to be specifically along the line of college students. 

            I was concerned about “provoking” anyone and their opinions which is why I felt my first text is what I would like published because it gives for advice to those struggling throughout this pandemic and offers help rather than arguing about what is right and wrong. 

Alayna Culbertson

Midterm Reflection 

English 2089

            Week one was overwhelming as I started to learn the basics of a blog and articles. Half-way through the semester and I can personally say I have learned a lot about writing as well as reading different types of articles and blogs.  In the beginning I had no idea what to expect to learn from this course, I went in having no clue what I had ahead of me. I can say that within these first 7-8 weeks I have learned many skills that will help me in my future career as a psychologist. 

            Our first main project in this class was our profiles for the Activist. I had a good idea of what a profile was, but I wasn’t sure how to make one about someone else. I was able to make an individual profile about myself fairly easily however I had trouble with writing about someone else. I wasn’t sure where to start or what to even write about. I found the readings about audience and the examples of profiles very helpful as it gave me a sense of what to expect my final piece to look like. I found it very helpful that we knew who our audience was which is what pushed me to do a subject that out audience often times overlooks and doesn’t know much about, which is why I chose my profile to be about the advising office, specifically my advisor Lindsey Koertiz. When I came up with my plan as to how I was going to put my profile together, I was lost as to what was I going to ask my advisor and what do the students want or need to know. That is when I looked back on previous profiles we looked over and got inspiration and ideas from them. I asked myself what the motive was I had that gave me the idea for advising, and that was to inform students and give sort of a spotlight to the advising office and help students know what they do. 

            After posting my profile we had a speaker come into class that helped me get a better understanding of what grabs an audience’s attention and what will make my blog posts interesting and stand out. I learned what gets the most attention in the media. This not only I felt was important for writers but business starters as well. Anyone that wants attention drawn to their work on the internet could find this useful, I know I did. 

            Now learning what a genre was, was the hardest to grasp on to out of everything so far. Going into that lesson, the only thing that I could think of was the term of a music genre such as pop or rock. I found the articles, especially “Genre in the Wild”, very helpful as to understanding what genre was. I learned an overall definition from this article that not only goes with music styles but anything in the world. The graphs and comics in the article helped me relate more to the term genre. I was able to connect those to what the speaker said about a reader’s attention span. This helped me apply what I learned to my work in the group photo caption genre project. 

Working as a team is important not only in school but in a job especially a career. The photo caption project taught me how to work effectively in a group and how to make work equally spread out amongst other coworkers.  While at times I found it difficult I feel that this was a good first step into working in groups and helped us learn. We were able to connect what the speaker had told us about audience to what we wanted to edit about our photo caption list. We were able to get ideas like ordering our pictures and topics as well as how to shorten captions. 

I also think it showed us what community was which also was shown in the article, “The Concept of Discourse Community.” I feel that this helped us think about what is important and relevant to the audience. When creating any kind of business post, you have to think of what the purpose is and who am I wanting to reach out to. What is the intended audience and what am I wanting them to take from my writing? 

As I said previously, week one of this semester I was completely lost, and I can confidently say that I am excited to see what the second half of this semester has in store for my education. I have learned a lot within the past two months that I find very helpful and any student could find helpful while in college. 

For the collaborative presentation as a group we are going to start by peer-reviewing our midterm reflections and finding connections between each of them. After we review them we will come together and discuss what we think as group and how we can fond similarities in our writings and ideas. My role as of now is to focus on my individual review and work on finishing and perfecting my paper.

https://piersozr.wordpress.com/2020/02/24/family/

I worked mainly on my portion which was the section titled “Bonding with Family.” I also worked with the group to come up with the ordering of the sections. We decided to do with what we felt was the most interesting to be on the top and list them.

I think that our group has great potential, we work hard when we are together and our ideas collaborate very smoothly. We are able to critic thing without offending anyone and making sure everyone plays an equal part. I feel that however while we tried making the project equal there were one or two people that put in more effort than the others. I do not think that this however was on purpose. Our topic was family and for some that is more emotional and they have more to talk about.

Individually I feel like I could’ve worked harder, I should’ve stepped into doing more of the work in this assignment. I feel that I just let everyone else decide. I do feel like my work on its own was very good and displayed my purpose of the assignment.

At UC Blue Ash we all could use a little guidance in our career paths and that’s where the awesome academic advising office comes in. I chose to observe this group of individuals because I feel many of us don’t realize how much work they put in to making our college life as easy as they are able to make it. There are different advisors for all the kinds of majors at UC Blue ash as well as a secretary to help things run easily and organized. I think we all can agree that without our individual academic advisor, we would all be lost and much more stressed out. They are available year-round and help us stay on track during our path through school and help us through tough everyday life situations that are hard to handle on our own. When they notice a student is struggling academically, they will often reach out to that student and schedule a meeting just to catch up and figure out what is going on. All they ask for is your time and effort to help them provide the best help they can. When talking to one of the Academic Advisors, Lindsey Koertiz, she stated “The number one focus is always the student. The student always comes first.”There are also options for group advising sessions as well so you can learn from other students and their lives as well. When a student is struggling there are many ways an advisor can tell just from observing them, they will notice if their grades seem to drop drastically or if they are the type of student to see their advisor often, if they stop scheduling appointments after a while, the advisor will notice and also reach out.They play a big role in the UC Blue Ash community and making it a good place for students to study at. Advisor Lindsey Koertiz also stated, “My goal is to see the student succeed as best as they can.”

At UC Blue Ash we all could use a little guidance in our career paths and that’s where the awesome academic advising office comes in. I chose to observe this group of individuals because I feel many of us don’t realize how much work they put in to making our college life as easy as they are able to make it. There are different advisors for all the kinds of majors at UC Blue ash as well as a secretary to help things run easily and organized. I think we all can agree that without our individual academic advisor, we would all be lost and much more stressed out. They are available year round and help us stay on track during our path through school and help us through tough everyday life situations that are hard to handle on our own. All they ask for is your time and effort to help them provide the best help they can. I soon will be meeting with one of the advisors to ask her some questions and learn more about the work that goes into helping students and guiding them in their career paths. There are also options for group advising sessions as well so you can learn from other students and their lives as well. They play a big role in the UC Blue Ash community and making it a good place for students to study at.

I chose to observe an individual that is often overlooked and a lot of students don’t realize she is there to help and that is the UC Blue Ash’s school therapist. Our therapist is a great resource provided free to use that can be very useful and helpful when going through hard times while being in college. Each student is different and has different life, home, personal, financial situations that they need help and counseling for. Many individuals are scared to actually ask and reach out for that help and our therapist is the person who wants us to reach out. She is prepared for whoever walks into her office door and what they need to talk about. I also have not had the chance to observe her and talk with her but I plan on doing that within the next few days to ask her questions about what she goes through on a daily basis. She does a lot of behind the scenes with individuals that due to confidentiality cannot be shared with others. However most students don’t realize she is there to help us out and can be a great resource.