Starting off this blog post, I am going to start off with the definition of remix because this all is about remix! As seen in the videos, remix is defined as; to combine or exit existing materials to produce something new. I think this definition explains everything. All our lives we have grown up listening to you favorite songs of the year or even of your childhood mixed together to form the all time remix. At least that is what I did! The primary thesis of this series is to relate the theory of a remix to rhetorical purposes. I found it very interesting that 74/100 movies and books are sequels based on something that was already created. Fergueson’s concept of remixing relates to our learning of rhetoric in this course because in order to fell you understand the definition of rhetoric or what it is, we learned from many different sources. This is showing remixing in the learning of rhetoric because took a bunch if different ideas from different people and related it back to the same idea of rhetoric. Looking at the three parts of Fergueson’s concept of remixing and connecting it back to rhetoric is interesting. I never knew that you can look at rhetoric and the learning process of it as a remix. I also never knew that movies and shows can be considered a remix. I have only known remixes to be a bunch of songs put together. When we read “Bad Ideas About Writing” with Patricia Roberts-Miller, I now realize that she used the technique of remixing by bringing in the beliefs and writings of Plato, Aristole, and Socrates to get, what she thought, the definition of rhetoric was. Also, “From the Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies” Jenny Edbauer brings into account all different authors opinions in what they thought Rhetorical Ecologies meant.After watching these video on remix, I find this so fascinating that I did not even realize that this can be considered a remix. I really enjoyed those videos.

Looking at my options for Project 3. I liked the example in the video that Tiffany provided us with using a selfie and then making the changes she feels fits her rhetorical approach on the picture. I like that idea so I think that I am going to start out with a selfie of myself and add things that interest me. I think that I will use an app that allows me to change the background of the photo and lets me add other things like stickers and maybe even other photos. Some things about me that I may want to highlight is my dog because I am a very big dog person and my dog is my best bud! I think I will also highlight Fairfield because that is a big part of my life and under the word Fairfield it has many different meanings to me but I will gladly put that in my SOGC. I think I will add something about my future career in the medical field like some kind of symbol that symbolize a Physician Assistant. As I mentioned in my last blog post I am particularly exited about this project because I feel this assignment really has no boundaries and we can just have fun with it in a creative way! By using a background changing app, I will be able to change the background into something that interests me like a beach sunset or just the water. I feel doing that can blend it well with the selfie I choose. I think by adding the stickers and other pictures into that one picture will help explain exactly what I feel are interesting enough to me to put into this project. I am going to try and do this all on my phone because I do not think that I will be able to do it on the computer well enough for it to actually look okay. I am excited about this and seeing my other classmates’ version of their rhetorical portrait.

After watching the video and reading the guidelines on project 3, I am interested. I like the sound of this project because it sounds fun and open ended, meaning you can basically do whatever you want. I like this because it is easier to create something about yourself than to do a research project in my opinion. I think this assignment should be fun and and stress free. I am excited to see what I come up with in order to fulfill the requirements for project 3. I felt the examples that Tiffany provided us was very helpful, like showing us how she created her portrait to describe her and explain her. Project 2 was a little stressful for me in that research papers are intimidating for me, but it did help that it was on something I find interesting but I’m excited for project 3 because it allows you to be a little more creative. Shipka shows her true feelings about how she feels words are not used correctly in certain situations. She brings up how technology has had an impact on the way we use words and how we shorten them up. The line that really stood out to me in this reading was “The growth of technologies requires us to rethink what we mean by composition”. I think that line is a big argument of Shipka and how technology has changed the meaning of rhetoric. She explains that composition can be exposed through any kind of media whether it be the internet, online messaging, or the news, composition always finds its way of shining through. She stresses that all the little parts of composition is what makes up the whole. There are many different pieces to the puzzle that make up this heavy word of composition. I enjoyed reading Shipka’s views and I am looking forward to creating prject 3!

From completing project 2 I feel like a learned a lot. First I learned what a white paper even was. Which was interesting and challenging at the same time. I thought it was interesting because I had never seen a white paper before or I’ve seen one just did not know it was called that. I thought it was challenging because there were so many examples online of what they are so it was hard to base one of them as my outline and go from there. I also learned a lot about the medical field, which is the field I want to go in after college. I thought it was very helpful to learn that and do research on something so important like prescribing medicine. I learned all this by doing research on my topic from multiple sites and even interviewing my father, who is a dentist. So it was cool getting to hear from someone who experiences the field first-hand every single day. Learning this knowledge is significant to me because, as I said before, I want to be in the medical field as a Physician Assistant. And PAs are allowed to write prescriptions so learning about how prepared a student is when coming out of the school is very important in the fact that if I am not prepared enough I will not be able to do my job to the fullest. I typically do not like research papers because it usually is boring or I am researching a topic that I am not interested in at all but doing this kind of research was not boring because I am extremely interested in learning this topic. So overall, from project 2, I learned a lot about the writing aspect of my future career and I learned what a white paper is and what it entails.

The person that is talking in this article is the author Robert R. Johnson. Robert R. Johnson is a professor of rhetoric, composition, and technical communication at the Michigan Technological University. I feel the primary audience of this book is anyone who is into scientific books and interested in the atomic bomb and stories behind it. Therefore, I feel the audience would most likely be students of a college or even students in high school. This book is extremely easy to follow and understand, therefore it is not intended to be written for older people. The way rhetoric is shown is through language of this piece. Rhetoric is how language actually works in real life. This is all talking about how elements were extremely dangerous to people working in painting these watches and they use rhetoric to explain how it was harmful and how it turned into a whole case study. The genre for this text is considered to be American history and Science and Technology. I feel it is these genres because it is talking about our history at the beginning of the atomic bomb and this is all science and technology based because it is all science behind making the atomic bomb and the technological advancements are what allowed Americans to even proceed in making anything close to the atomic bomb. The main argument of this text is to show how the woman working in these conditions did not even know the materials they were working with for years was extremely harmful and caused them to live with some sort of illness the rest of their life. Because of these horrible working conditions and the deaths of these women, this forced laws in work industries to be changed drastically. This was to protect the health and safety of all the future employees. If it weren’t for these women who knows what kind of working conditions would still exist. The importance of rhetoric in science is all about the language. Language is the most important thing in rhetoric, without it it would be very hard to tell the differences between all the rhetorics that exist in this world.

While researching I discovered important things about a white paper and my topic that is important. The topics white papers usually discuss is business and politics. They someone discuss professions in the medical field. The people who usually write them are people looking for a specific topic and comparing two things. For example comparing the kind of writing that is done by an English Professor verses the kind of writing a Dentist does. People who read white papers are either those who are “grading” or analyzing them. Another common audience are people who maybe want to learn more about a specific topic or the comparison of both the topics presented. The rhetorical purpose of white papers is to possibly persuade readers about a certain topic or even simply inform. Some companies use white papers as a way to persuade someone to buy a certain product or to do something and it can inform someone by giving them information about a topic they are curious in. White papers are definitely not the typical essay kind of format. It is common for white papers to have graphs, pictures, or even like cool fun designs. Sometimes they include subtitles above sections and other things to make it unique. White papers are typically around 3-6 pages long. This all depends on how much you need to get your point across.

The discipline I chose to write about is the different types of writing that consist under the job description of a Physician Assistant and an M.D. Students of that topic do not necessarily write medical charts in either medical school or PA school, instead they take tests and write about what they learned. The topics they write about vary depending on what they are learning at the time. Students write lab reports and that can be a genre of a typical Biology student on the track to become either a PA or M.D. Students can explore in any kind of research they feel best suites them. The professions I am writing about typically write patient charts or M.D usually write prescription slips fro medication. Research methods that are common in this field are researching new diseases or maybe researching a type of medication that is unfamiliar to the doctor or PA. For PA usually doctors will read their writing if its medical charts and for doctors usually a pharmacist will read their writing when finding medicine. Consequences of this field can be extremely bad. If a doctor messes up a chart this can either result in death of a patient, suing of a doctor, or maybe being fired. I enjoyed researching this because this is something I am interested in learning about.

The author that wrote this piece was Jason Palmeri. Jason Palmeri is an associate professor of English at Miami University (Ohio). He researched and taught the histories of composition, rhetoric, english education and many more. He likes to revisit many older composition writings as shown in the reading with all the dates. I feel his main audience would be people of his field. Maybe a person doing a research paper on the topic between attorneys and nurses but mostly people who are educated enough and just want to learn more. I feel this way because I feel he went into great detail about all the differences between attorneys and nurses and how they do professional writings in the field they work in and in their everyday lives. This text refers to discourse communities quite often in that nurses and attorneys can have two very different views of the same topic because of their professions and what they do in them. For example I really understood the part where he talks about how a nurses sentences are very choppy and not complete sentences compared to the sentences of an attorney. They explained this by demonstrating that a nurse does not have time to write full sentences when a patient is talking, so in order to get all the information they need to write however they feel is best. However, for an attorney, they need to right in full sentences because their writing styles are a lot more professional in that these writings could be shown to a judge or decide the decision of a court case. I felt that shows a discourse community because they are both doing the same thing, which is writing information for their profession, but they both have a different style of portraying the work. The main argument of this text, as I already sort of showed, was to show how the same topic can be demonstrated completely different depending on the environment you are a part of. This text shows the importance of rhetoric because it shows how rhetoric is shown differently between two professions. I felt that reading was a lot less dense than past ones because it was easy to follow and read.

When I hear the word research, honestly I do not get a happy feeling. I dislike research paper strongly. I do not know if I am just not good at them or the thought of writing that much freaks me out but I am not a fan. But when people do research usually it is to get more information about a topic that is confusing or they just simply do not know much about. Research is usually for writing papers or even (out of the classroom) just to have the basic knowledge or details about something. At least the people I know research for a school assignment or for something they are interested in. According to Alison C. White in “Research Starts With Answers” she says research has a three-stage process. This includes “seeking information that is new to the researcher, interpreting, evaluating, and organizing that information, and reporting the information to others to affect some action”. I felt I needed to include that in this blog because my research process, when I need to do research, is very similar to this. I like to find out new things about the information presented, then I evaluate it to use, then I report it which usually consist of putting it into some kind of presentation or paper. Researchers use different methods because they use whatever is best for them when they are looking into something they want to learn. My research methods contradict the thoughts of White because I have really only used the library or the internet to look up what i needed to look up. The thing about research that is confusing to me if that I don’t know if I am looking up the right things or if I am gaining the right things for the paper I need to write. I think that is why In fear research papers so much because of the fact that I don’t know exactly what I need to be researching or if it is the right content for what is needed in the guidelines of what I am writing or presenting about.

From doing project 1 I learned many things not only about myself but about the rhetorical ecology I was studying. What I learned about myself was that I do not write well when I am not given a clear set of directions in the writing process. I also learned I love workshops in class because I am able to get the opinions of my peers to better my project so that it fits the standards for the project. What I learned about my rhetorical ecology was how rewarding it is to be a part of an organization like Best Buddies and to be able to share it with other people who may not be familiar with it. I learned this by doing my map and really “mapping” out all the elements that have to do with Best Buddies. Learning about rhetorical ecologies throughout project 1 was very interesting because now wherever I go I see that rhetorical ecologies exist in almost everything. Like this exist in a food store or even on a sports team. I think that is so cool! Learning that Best Buddies is a rhetorical ecology, opened my eyes to experience things from a different perspective. When I am participating, I am able to see what the club is all about through the elements. Now because of this project, if someone were to ever ask me what Best Buddies is all about I will be able to hit every element that makes up Best Buddies because of my map. Now shifting to the talk of project 2. For project 2 I need to research my biology major and what I want to be when I’m older. I want to be a Physician Assistant when I’m older, so I will need to research what kind of writing takes place during this job and what other things that connect back to other professions like an english professor. Things about project 2 are still a little unclear, but I feel like as things move forward in class I will have a better understanding about things.

I thought the first reading by Wardle “You Can Learn to Write In General” was easy in the sense that it was not dense. But the second reading by Miller, I felt was very dense and hard to follow. The person talking in the first reading was Elizabeth Wardle. Wardle is Howe Professor and a director of the Howe Center for Writing Excellence at Miami of Ohio. She works at Iowa State University. I feel the primary audience for her reading is college students either in a writing major or simply writing for a class they have to take. I feel this way because the reading was not dense and it was understandable. I think this implies that it is satire because satirical rhetoric is bringing attention to social criticism. The main argument of this text implies that no one (no matter how good of a writer you are) can just write in general. Whenever someone writes they are always writing for a purpose or a reason, no on can just write in general and without thinking. This differs from Bitzer, Edbauer, or Herndl and Brown because their main focus is speaking about rhetoric and rhetorical ecologies. But instead Wardle talking about writing in general. The primary purpose is to just show that people, no matter who, can no just write for no reason. The second reading we did was by Miller, called “Genre as Social Action”. The person talking in this was Carolyn R. Miller. Miller was the founding director of NC State’s Ph.D. in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media. She mainly concentrated in Writing and Editing. The primary audience for this text is colleagues, other rhetoricians or writers. I feel this was because this reading was very dense and often hard to follow. I feel someone with a bit more experience in this field would understand this reading a lot better than a college student, like me, would. In the title the text says this reading is genre as social action. This means it is based on conventionalized social motives which are found in recurrent situation-types. The main point in this writing is that she is trying to show that over time genres change, or disappear. This texts rhetorical purpose is to educate people in the field of writing.