Proposal Update

The deadline for my group proposal is approaching. We divided the proposal into sections and each group member has a section to be working on about the content we already discussed in class. We decided we are adding the whole new major relating to speech therapy instead of just a few classes on it. We think this is a better way to attract the audience we are hoping for.

My job was to complete the audience and purpose section of the proposal. I have finished my section and in it I discuss how this major will provide students with the opportunity to obtain a bachelor’s degree in Communication Science and the choice to stay at Pitt Johnstown. For a student attending the Johnstown campus, fulfillment of this major requires transferring to Pitt Oakland after the first two years. Considering tuition prices at Oakland, this will potentially alienate Johnstown’s students from achieving this major. Many students would have spent two years making friends and memories before being forcibly uprooted from Johnstown. Understandably, it would be very upsetting as many students start their collegiate experience friendless. We hope this will help the university gain the recognition it deserves and differentiate itself from neighboring competitors. This will then bring in more money to the university.

An increase in student attendance means more employment opportunities available at the university. Advertising this new, unique major to the area would attract a diverse interest among students and faculty, creating a more diverse, academic community. Students with undeclared majors already attending Johnstown may gain an appealing option, one they may not have considered. An undeclared student benefits from a variety of different options where as speech therapy is one unlike any others that Johnstown has to offer.

A major in Communication Science will appeal to numerous people affiliated with the any University of Pittsburgh campus. This list would include students, professors, administrators, and donors from all University of Pittsburgh locations. This addition would even involve the community members near Pitt Johnstown’s campus due to the lack of speech therapy classes offered near by. Prospective students will be involved with the advantage of the new major that other schools that they are considering may not offer to their students. This major will overall enhance the opportunities for those affiliated with the university.

As we put the final touches on our proposal, we are preparing to give a presentation to our class on Monday. In our presentation, we will touch on each section of our proposal and present it to our class as if they are the curriculum committee of our university.

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.

Press Release Assignment

For this blog post, I wanted to discuss my plans for the press release assignment, as the due date is approaching. For the press release, our professor asked us to imagine our dream career. Once we have our dream career in mind, we are supposed to use that organization in the creation of a press release aimed towards journalists. We have to come up with something that is news worthy, such as an organization about to do something, receiving an award, or changing a product line/service.  

The dream career I chose would be working in PR or communication for the NHL team, the Pittsburgh Penguins. I plan to write this press release about an event that already happened as a result of winning an award. Though I will pretend this event has not yet occurred. In 2015, Kraft Hockeyville held a competition for ice rinks to compete, and share their stories in hopes of being named Hockeyville USA. The winner of this award was granted $150,000 for arena upgrades and the chance to host an NHL preseason game at their rink. The winner was determined through fan votes sent in by phone or internet. The Cambria County War Memorial of Johnstown was named the first ever Kraft Hockeyville USA and scheduled to host a Pittsburgh Penguin preseason game.

The press release I plan to write, is going to pretend the hosting of the preseason game did not occur yet. I will convince a journalist that this story is worthy to write, in order to announce the game to not only the local community but also to hockey/sports around the world. The purpose of the writing would be to make the War Memorial arena look good and also Kraft Hockeyville for the donations to make this game possible. It is going to draw in a crowd to the event, spread the word about the upcoming game, and also raise awareness of Kraft's new competition to be held annually. This piece will interest hockey/sport fans, other teams that play in the War Memorial that will benefit from the rink upgrades, Pittsburgh Penguin fans, and the local residents of Johnstown.

This particular press release will have many new values that will appeal to the journalists is they were to read my press release. The news values it would contain would be impact, proximity, timeliness, novelty, and possibly celebrity. It contains impact because the event may result in some road closings which will relate to the audience. It has proximity because it is a local event for the people that live in Johnstown. It relates to timeliness because it is a current event that is about to happen. Novelty is involved because it is an event that is different considering it has never occurred before. The final news value it contains could be celebrity, being that the Pittsburgh Penguins are an NHL team which generate a variety of die-hard fans. I would hope these news values could encourage a journalist to publish a piece of writing about the upcoming event. 

Evaluation Assignment

The due date for my next assignment in professional writing has been quickly approaching. Unlike the last one where I knew exactly what I wanted to do for it, I have been struggling to come up with a topic regarding the new one.

The assignment is to write a review/evaluation that I could potentially have to write in my future communication career. The first thing that came to my mind was a literature review. I have written multiple literature reviews since I have been in college. I have written some for communication classes regarding communication theories and also one for a literature class I took. Since I have already written a few of these, I wanted to expand my knowledge by writing a different type of review. This is where I got stuck. I searched for some ideas using internet sources and also a professor and classmates opinion. I weaved through a series of potential options and came to the conclusion to write an evaluation memo to my professional writing professor regarding a specific form of social media's success.

I went through a process that we discussed in class regarding the success of the mobile app, Snapchat. I have designed my memo into sections with headings including, an overview, measuring success, quality, and lastly a final argument. Judging the success of social network is primarily done by measuring the growth over a large period of time. I answered a question in regards to social networking, as to what makes Snapchat a unique form, compared to Instagram, Twitter, and/or Facebook. I found that there were many positive attributes that weighed into the success behind Snapchat. I found that there are shockingly rising numbers regarding the amount of active users Snapchat has. According to AdWeek, as estimated in 2015, Snapchat has 200 million monthly active users and 100 million daily active users.

I believe the multiple, unique features is what draws consumers into the mobile app. One could argue against my accusations, in saying that compared to its competitors, Snapchat is very different and used for different functions thus should not be compared. One could say Snapchat is used for more of a private form of communication whereas, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook is public for the purpose of expressing oneself. This is true, but that privacy feature is exactly the one that makes Snapchat so appealing and interesting to a variety of age groups. The uniqueness of the app cannot be found on other social networking forms of communication.

"January 13"

One may be asking themselves why I would've entitled this post "January 13," when it is in fact February 5th. The answer relates back to my professional writing class, when I was assigned to read a piece of writing entitled "January 13." The author of the piece is Rick Bass.

The piece was very short in length, which I found very strange at first. My initial thought was that it couldn't possibly be as detailed as my professor made it out to be, when she announced we would be close reading for detailed descriptions. I was wrong.

"I've seen flakes as big as my fist, and monstrous, wet, stuck-together flakes as big as wadded-up sheets of newspaper, falling among the myriad other, smaller flakes plummeting madly down, tumbling like planes crashing, but landing silently, or nearly so."

Bass's very detailed description, allows for his readers to experience this blizzard as if they were along side him, seeing/hearing everything exactly as he did in that moment. The way he can describe the snow flakes is fascinating to me. I am sure everyone has experienced what wet, stuck-together newspaper pages are like, or even wet paper for that matter. I love how he relates the snowflakes to something that most people would have experienced at one point in their lives. That description is something I admire of his writing style that admittedly, I probably would not have thought of myself. The plane crash description makes me think back to last week, when we watched the pilot episode of the TV show, Lost. The plane definitely tumbled, yet there was nothing silent about the blades crashing into the island. Unlike, snowflakes, that have that ability to seem to come crashing down, yet at the same time, do it ever-so gently and silently.

Last semester, I took a creative nonfiction class. I enjoyed getting to go back to reading a creative nonfiction piece of writing, even though it was for my professional writing class. The very close details draw me in as a reader. I believe it was a nice change and also nice to get back to a well-known topic.