Class Lecture

For class on Wednesday, we discussed a piece of writing we read entitled "Notes from No Man's Land." In class we discussed this piece relating to how it would help us achieve unity within our groups to succeed while putting together our proposal.

The class talked together about how the different parts of this essay connected, and also where the author signaled these parts and why. We came up with race, conflict, fear, and place to be the similar ideas that were kept throughout the writing.

The author also used techniques to keep the ideas connected in the different sections. We discovered the main key to this was to a provide a variety of specific examples that all led back to the overall main idea. This ensured that the essay all appeared to be connected and not just a bunch of random ideas thrown into the same piece of writing. We also found that consistent thematic language was used, for example the idea of being afraid of something or afraid for their safety. These ideas were all introduced in each section but involving a different situation. The final technique we came up with was the author's use of ideas and themes. Since these ideas and themes sounded familiar throughout the piece, the reader's are able to gain a better understanding of the point the author was trying to get across.

After discussing this piece of writing, our professor had us get into our groups, that I previously wrote about, for our proposal assignment. In class, we used these newly learned techniques to relate it to our proposal assignment. We thought using key ideas and consistent language throughout our writing would be beneficial for us considering that we would be writing the different sections of our proposal separate from our other group members. Our sections include an abstract, problem/need, plan, personnel, budget, time-frame, and the evaluation/progress. We decided it would benefit this proposal to include consistent language about gaining opportunities for both students, staff, the university, and bringing in money. We also discussed incorporating points about diversity for the students and staff. We determined bringing people together with a common interest would be a common key idea throughout our proposal.We believe that our proposal will have better successful after our discussion of implementing these techniques and language consistently.

Upcoming Proposal

My professional writing class has another assignment that we have began the planning stage for. This assignment is a little different from the ones we have previously done. This assignment differs because it requires group work. In groups we will be designing a proposal in response to a need.

The proposal I chose with my partners will be a (pretend) proposal aimed towards our university. We plan to write to the university in hopes to add a speech therapy course to the curriculum. We decided that it would be beneficial for UPJ to provide a course for students who plan to major in speech therapy but do not wish to continue their education at Pitt main. This class would also discuss the brain and how speech disabilities come about from the very beginning.

This proposal is an unsolicited, internal type of proposal. I say unsolicited meaning the organization (UPJ) did not specifically put a request out for proposals to be written. We will provide reasons why there is a need for the course we want to have added. We will also provide a detailed plan as to how we will go about making this additional need successful. It will be internal meaning the authors are a part of a target organization. We are writing this proposal on behalf of the university because we consider ourselves to be a part of a team that helps make it a better place for everyone.

One of my group members is a speech therapy major who plans to continue her education at Pitt main campus. She shared a personal story with us as to why she decided to pursue this major. It is a personal story that we could share with our class during the presentation part of this assignment. This story helped our group members gain a better understanding of the major. It also made us want to pursue this proposal and we hope it would also to be able to convince others of its importance in the university if it would become real.

Brain Break Opinion

I believe everyone can relate to feeling as if they need a brain break every once in a while! With that being said, I am going to discuss a brain break strategy that occurred in my professional writing class. For our brain break we got a day in class to bring laptops and work on assignments for that particular class. While we worked we got a choice to listen to music or a video that related to the class. I was relieved to hear about this brain break because college can get overwhelming. I was just starting to feel that way with the 18 credits semester I have beginning the get the best of me.

We had a memo and a press release assignment we could have been working on during this hour. We could also sit near students with the same majors to discuss ideas and advice. I think this method is effective because we got to use class time to work on assignments that we would have normally had to take time outside of class to complete. This left me more time outside of class later that night for other school work. For example, it left me with more studying time later for the two exams I had to prepare for, for the following morning. I also liked that we had the option to converse with classmates that we normally would not have had the opportunity to do outside of class. It is always helpful to me to get peer advice regarding certain assignments.

Overall, I really like this idea every once in a while. These brain breaks are not necessary to be held every week or anything too time consuming like that. However when this tactic is used sparingly or during stressful times, for example midterms/finals, they can be very beneficial to a student and also act as stress relievers.