Unit 3 Proposal

The issue that we have chosen for this project is publishing unnecessary and inappropriate details about one’s personal life through facebook. Overuse of facebook has many negative effects on incoming college freshman which include being a distraction to academics among other things. Regarding this topic, we think that incoming freshman to TCU should be advised to limit what they share publicly on their facebook. Additionally, they need to be made aware that information they believed to be private can be seen by anyone, including their future professors and employers.

Our target audience for this particular issue is incoming TCU freshman, with facebook accounts, that have just graduated from high school. Our audience will be made up of both males and females ranging in age from seventeen to eighteen. Focusing in on TCU freshman, most of the audience members will be from middle to upper class families.

Our first medium will be an article in the Skiff discussing the dangers of facebook to incoming freshman and advice from more experienced, older students. Second, we are going to create a flier which would be handed out during new student orientation. The flier will include a general example of what an inappropriate facebook page looks like for incoming freshman. For our final medium for this argument, we decided to have a short video that could be shown to incoming freshmen during orientation as a warning about overusing Facebook.

In Class: Reading

From last nights reading, I learned about the importance of visual arguments. The book talked about how visual arguments are a reflection on our character. Additionally, in regards to our presentation, the book talked about making a purposeful visual argument rather than an accidental one. We need to remember this when constructing our visual arguments so that we have a purposeful visual presentation that makes sense and impacts our specific audience. It discussed how to make the visual argument warm and appealing with little things such as font size, color, and style. Another important piece of information the book talked about was how to make visual arguments using statistics. The book gave examples using graphs and pie charts to point out important statistical pieces of information. The book also talked about how visual arguments can appeal to emotion, like pictures of Hurrican Katrina victims leading to relief groups. Lastly, the book discussed how to organize the information on in the visual argument in a way that is meaningful and not just haphazard, like utilizing text boxes for pieces of information that we want to highlight. All of these things will be important to incorporate in our visual presentations in order to make an effective visual argument.

In Class blog: Reading Assignment

From the reading last night I learned that visual arguments are important in making an argument to a public group and that identifying strengths and weaknesses of the argument are important to making an effective argument and that various genres require various strategies to make arguing something through these methods effective. Additionally, I learned that through targeting arguments to various audiences will help make a public argument more effective.

Unit 3

For this unit, we have been divided into groups. Mine consists of Ashley, David B., and Alan. In the last class, I was assigned the recorder. So I am in charge of writing the notes and important things from each class and keeping track of things. I am not sure what else my role really entails. We, as a group, discussed how the roles may blend and be intertwined down the road and that they may shift depending on what topic we decide to do. 

I think my role as a recorder will help keep us organized and know what we still need to do. I am still finding out all of the responsibilities specific to my role since we did not really know which responsibilities to assign to each specific job since its a new project. I think over time maybe each role will define itself and we will be able to allocate specific responsibilities as we come across them. I also talked about possibly being an editor for the written part of this assignment. I think it is a learning experience to see what roles we will all have and it was difficult to try and assign them before we started the project although it will hopefully help us get organized and help each group memember to participate fully and put in equal effort. 

In Class Blog: Group Situation

Group work is not something that I usually like. For the ideal situation, I would have a group that had members that were all willing to put in some effort to the assignment, whether we wanted to be there and working on it or not. Additionally, I would have all the members be willing to take some responsibility for their part and initiate responsibility over some part of the project. Also I would want all the group members to get along and not quarrel over an assignment they do not feel that strongly about. I'd want all the members to recgonize that it is a group project and not an individual project and that that changes the work ethic and how we go about completing the assignment It would also be ideal if the group could agree on the subject of the project and who was going to do what and that everyone would follow through and if they thought they could not than maybe say so before hand instead of waiting until right before the assignment is due.

In Class Blog: Primary Source Analysis

This assignment was somewhat challenging. For my particular topic it was not so difficult to find primary sources as it was to analyze them. I found it somewhat difficult to decide who the "author" even was in some cases and it was also difficult to analyze what they were trying to argue in addition to analyzing whether the argument was good or not. I found it hard to keep myself from summarizing my sources and I had to keep refocusing in on the nature of the argument itself as opposed to just analyzing what was being argued. I think I got better at doing these with each subsequent source but it was difficult.
Another difficulty I had was making my own central, controlling claim in the beginning of each analysis. I sometimes forgot to have a central claim to guide my analysis. I think I got better at doing this also with each successive source but I do not think that I have fully overcome it and it is something I feel I need to go back and fix in my sources.

Unit 2 Proposal

For my topic, I chose an event that happened in December of 2008 in my hometown of Bellaire, Texas. It is the controversial shooting of young Bellaire resident named Robbie Tolan, son of former baseball player Bobby Tolan. I chose this because there is a lot of controversy surrounding why this young man was shot in his own driveway by a Bellaire police officer. It created a huge buzz around the neighborhood and further more was seen as a terrible incidence of racial profiling in the community. This a general description of this event but there are more details and many different arguments surrounding the outcome of the case which was taken to court. There was and still remains a lot of controversy over the ruling made about the case in court which resulted in the police officer being charged not guilty for aggrevated assault by a public servant. Additionally, Tolan has filed a federal civil lawsuit against the city, claiming his civil rights were violated and no longer wants to live in the city of bellaire. 

This incident brought up a lot of underlying issues in my small home town community. It raised the importance of awareness of apparent racial profiling that many people were not aware of. The argument and controversy surrounding this issue is still being talked about in the community today. I chose it because it particularly surprises me as an issue that would come up in my home town and I think it was a surprise to many other residents. Thus, it is an issue that has been looked into a good deal since the incident and there continues to be research and discussion regarding racial profiling in my small hometown of Bellaire. As a result, there have been and continue to be many opinions, blogs, articles, and other sources written about this particular shooting. So, for my primary sources, I plan to use some of these first hand news articles from local papers in my hometown as well as other blogs, editorials, and position pieces regarding this shooting. I plan to get these sources from local places around my hometown that carry them as well as over the internet. 

In Class: First Paragraph

Though there are many people shuffling around, the lobby of Harris Hospital Downtown is very cold. I was immediatley drawn to this space since I am a nursing student and it is the location of one of my clinicals. I had never noticed how large and somewhat dark the lobby seemed. The popcorn vendors and starbucks present in the lobby have been shown to me in a new light as I walk through as an observer rather than a worker. Hospitals are an ominous place for most, yet there are many things in the lobby (gift shop, popcorn venders, starbucks) that would make one think otherwise. In the public areas it does not seem as if this is a place where people are struggling to breathe every breath. It has more of a warm feel but it is easy to sense that these distractions, like the smell of the coffee brewing behind the starbucks counter, are just covering up what is happening only floors above.
People in this almost everyone. Kids, infants, teens, parents, and grandparents can be seen in just one quick scan of the room. There is a blend of all different types of ethnicities and everyone seems in somewhat of a calm panic. In the corner there resides a fireplace, unused, in the midst of the crowds of people walking through the lobby.

In Class blog: peer reviews

In my past experience, peer reviewing of essays has not be the most productive thing. In high school when we did this we did actually look at each others essays and review them but it was mostly for grammar and other things. It seems that in my experience the peer review process is never what the teacher intends for it to be and students do not typically recieve any input that can actually help them to better format their essay for the purpose of the specific assignment. Additionally, being put into random groups with people and reading their essays seems to make some people uncomfortable. It doesn't make me uncomfortable it just feels like somewhat of a waste of time and has never been something I have looked forward to.  I am not opposed to the idea of peer reviewing essays but it just has not been the best exercise in my past experience.

In Class blog: Peer Observations

After reading over the comments my peers made, there are a lot of new ideas I have gotten. I think I had been trying to be so objective that I neglected to include more of a personal view on what I was obersving. I think adding this will help me discover more clearly the appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos that my space is making.
Additionally, the peer reviews have helped me to see that I need to incorporate the visual aspects I have found in my space and connect them to various appeals they could be making. I need to look at why things are the way they are in this certain setting and what effect it has on the people in the setting. Also their comments put some ideas in my head that I had never thought about like how the staff responses might make an appeal to either logos or pathos.
Their reviews kind of helped me tie together the loose ends of certain observations that I wasn't sure fit with my public space. Now I see that they might not necessarily fit with the typical description of a hospital but that they are there and have some connection to the larger cultural framework that inhabits the hospital, not only in the lobby of hospitals but also in the patient rooms. I need to work on finding out how the rhetorical appeals of the hospital make sense in context with this paper and in regards to the people in the hospitals.

In Class Blog: Observation Process

I though the observation process was a little bit weird. In the hospital lobby, there were not too many people just sitting around and observing, so even though my presence was not really a big deal to most of the people in the space, it felt somewhat weird being there and just sitting, watching and writing. Additionally, It was surprising that I was paying attention more to the people in the space and their actions rather than what was medically going on. It was interesting to notice how much I dont notice in such a big space when I walk through there so much. I did not expect to become aware of so many more things by just taking some time and sitting and observing. I also was not aware of how busy and rapidly the people in the space, not just healthcare professionals, are moving. Everything seemed to be sort of out of control for everybody but they were all in a space that helped them contain it.
Contrastingly, on the patient unit, it felt more natural to be observing. Since there were many nurses and other people around me taking time to chart and write, I almost felt as if I were part of the setting rather than an observer. This made it even harder to keep and objective standpoint and remember that I was there as a third party observer and not as a nursing student. I observed lots of things physically on the unit that I do not notice when I am there otherwise. I did not think there was that much I had not previously picked up on but I found out that there was. Additonally, It was weird for me to be trying to see what the space offered to the people in it rather than being a part of the resources that are offered. I saw objectively the goals of the space and what people are looking for when they come there. This has been hard to observe and figure out since the hospital, from my observations, is not some place that the general population voluntarily goes to unless it is the last option.

Ethos, Pathos, and Logos of Public Spaces

     I think that my public space makes many types of appeals. Being that it is a reputable hospital and is in the medical are of Ft. Worth, Harris downtown makes an ethical appeal. It has a great reputation and is filled with many respected and trusted doctors. Additionally, the Harris hospitals have a system of networks so people feel comfortable and safe within the known walls of the Harris hospitals. I notice people are not wary about the staff or the setting which allows them to focus on whatever health issue they or their loved ones are facing. 

     As for emotional appeals, my public space makes many. Well the people and situation occuring in the hospital are really what make an appeal to emotion. In the hospital, loved ones are either joyful and hopeful, or devastated and filled with despair. I observed emotional expressions ranging from smiles to faces with eyes filled with tears. Additionally, it is interesting to note the different emotions in a place like the lobby versus a place like the individual patient rooms. There are alot of different emotions the hospital offers and it is somewhat difficult to get a grasp on them all. 

     The hospital also definitely appeals to logic. Procedures, data, and information are being collected by doctors depending on what information they know about the patient. Hospitals are centered in logic, fact, information, and data, without which they wouldn't operate. I get the impression people understand the logic upon which hospitals are grounded upon and this actually helps them feel more secure in the hospital.

     Nurse and staff members work in logical manners and procedures in order to perform their duties. I think its somewhat of a mix of what type of logical appeals the hospital makes to patients and families. On one hand they know they are in a hospital because they or someone is sick and something is wrong so it makes sense for them to be there. Contrastingly, many people there are in a period of a crisis or catastrophe and cannot make sense of anything. However, for some people, during the period of catastrophe or crisis, it seems like the logical nature of the hospital is the only thing that can ease their minds or that they can make sense of. 

     I never really was aware of all the different appeal the hospital made to the users of it. It has been more difficult than I thought to maintain an objective standpoint to try and figure out what larger cultural appeals the hospital makes to the public.

In class: Logos artifact

For my logos artifact, I brought in one of my nursing text books. It is a text book about foundations of mental health. It appeals to logos because it has a lot of credible facts that appeal to logic. Since it is specifically dealing with mental health, it appeals to logos in both the aspects of logic as hard facts and logic as reason since mental health is something that is a somewhat debatable topic. It presents good evidence back up with many sources to provide a factual argument about the text which the reader is reading. I think just the cover of the book is an appeal to logos as the book is called Foundations of Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing. It encompasses many aspects of logos, presenting evidence based on research, experiments, facts, logic, and other way. It is not just another text book that spits out information uniformly, but educates and convinces with the way the facts in the books are presented and appeals to the logos of the readers looking to find fact and reason to better guide their nursing care.

Unit 1 Proposal

    For my public space, I am thinking about choosing a hospital. More specifically, I would be choosing Harris Downtown. I find this space appealing because it is somewhere that I personally have spent alot of time for many various reasons. It has personal meaning to me because of past events that have occured in hospitals and because I am a nursing major. I have spent time there as a consumer and a bystander, but also as a student in a nursing position.  It particularly appeals to me because it is a place I am passionate about and a place where I get to do something that I like. 

     Upon observation, I expect to find some new aspects of the hospital that I have never observed. Typically, I have been in hospitals either with family members at a traumatic time, or for my clinicals, during which I have been focused on patients and patient care. I see this as an opportunity to take a step back and see the hospital as a public space and uncover some aspects and observations I have never taken the time to notice before. 

     Since I am a future employer of a hospital but also have been, and possibly will be a future customer of a hospital, I would say that in some ways I am a part of a target audience. Hospitals appeal to people in need of health care and people in dire emergency and help. It is sometimes hard to predict what kind of target audience hospitals will have. 

     There are many pre-concieved ideas that I may have that could influence my objective observation. Because past events involving my own family members have occured at this facility, I may have a negative connotation when thinking about my own prior experiences at this hospital. To overcome that, I will need to step back and view the hospital objectively on the basis of the target audience and what the space offers them instead of what it has offered me in the past. Additionally, since I am a nursing major and spend a lot of time there working during my clinicals, I will need to not lean on my own experiences as a nursing student there as basis for objectively observing the space. I need to objectively observe it from the standpoint of dealing with the target audience rather than from the standpoint of an employer type position. 

     I will need to step back from my past experiences of all kinds to be able to objectively survery the public space this hospital offers in order to effectively write this paper. 

In Class: Ethos

My ethos artifact is my nursing name tag and CPR certification card. I think these both appeal to character because they represent what I plan to do, which is a profession where the employees have to have a lot of character. Additionally, I represent the institution of TCU's Nursing School while practicing nursing skills as a student and these things give some credibility and character to my name as a nursing student and member of the Harris college of nursing. My CRP card certifies me as a health care provider who has completed the national cognitive and skills evaluations in accordance with the curriculum of the American Heart Association for the BLS for healthcare providers Program. With recieving certification from these associations I think this gives some character and credibility to my name and helps to appeal to character by strengthening my character.

In Class: Public Space Analysis and Pathos

Understanding an appeal to emotion can help us to understand why places operate the way they do or how they advertise to certain people. For instance, hospitals appeal to people emotions by playing on the emotions that arise when people become ill. In advertisements, they have a clear appeal to emotions by discussing adequate care or saving one's life rather than discussing financial policies and things of that nature. Also, the people in this public space have usually made a decision based on pathos. The pick which hospital they have come to, if they can, based upon what will give them the most security and what makes them feel the most comfortable.
It is hard, I would think, for hospitals to make appeals to emotion at the same time as providing adequate healthcare and using the space not first and foremost for a visual argument, but to save lifes. I feel that saving lifes and the correlation between hospitals and emotions is so strong that there does not have to be as strong of an emotional appeal as there would be in somewhere like starbucks, where the advertisement and public space uses pathos to get people to buy a product. Understanding pathos in a public setting like this goes deeper than just appealing to emotions lying deep in someone because the population of this space is usually one of emotions heightened and present and in the now.

In Class: Pathos Artifact

My pathos artifact is a sun/moon ring that my best friends (who are twins) gave to me. It reminds me of home and the feeling and emotion of the comfort I get when I am with them and at home. It appeals to many emotions because it reminds me of all the times I have with them which have been anywhere from crazy, to happy, to sad. However the juxtaposition of the moon and the sun/star make me feel balanced and calm and remind me to take note of how I am feeling. Additionally, it represents a friendship that means a lot to me and reminds me what it is to be a good friend and how that feels. It is representative of what my life was like before college and reminds me what I have been through and how I have come out on the other side. Also, It just makes me happy to see it and be reminded of my two most favorite people. It brings me back to how I met them and sustained a friendship through soccer, something that was also a huge part of my life. Thus it represents the competitiveness and mental and physical endurance that I went through not only by myself, but with my two best friends by my side.
The sun/moon/star juxtaposition also reminds me how different my two best friends are. Though they are twins, they are the most opposite people in the world and this reminds me to appreciate and cherish the uniqueness of everyone and to be aware of my feelings.
This ring reminds me to be who I am and not be afraid of how I am feeling but to embrace the strong emotional appeal brought on by all that it represents to me.

Analyzing Arguments in the media

     This commercial definitely uses many of the arguments the the book alluded to. This commercial makes a strong appeal to emotion in regards to talking about the tragedy that has occured in Louisiana and the people who it has effected including the fisherman and "communities" featured in the commercial.                    

     Additionally, this commercial argues to inform with the statistics that are given throughout the commercial in regards to money and payment claims. This argument is used to appeal to people and try to get them to focus on the information they are being given rather than just the crisis of the oil spill. 

     This commercial also definitely makes an argument for the future. The people at BP are trying to focus the audiences attention away from crisis and toward the help that is being provided the people effected by the crisis (like shrimpers and fisherman) and how BP has drawn out plans in their budget and created outreach groups until "people impacted can get back to work". The commercial alludes to the time when things will be "back to normal", an argument based on means of projection. 

     Another argument used in this commercial media is argument to explore. The problem of the oil spill and crisis to follow is presented to the audience. Additionally, the commercial clevely points out, that though oil has not been seen in some amount of time, the work is just beginning. This urges the audience to explore the assertion that the problem exists and that we, the viewers of the commercial, may need to conduct some exploration into considering what currently is the real problem in the gulf. 

Lastly, I think that the commercial employs the use of the Rogerian argument. It approaches the audience not in a threatening way, but in one which invites the audience to consider the problem at hand and evaluate how BP is solving it. Through this method, BP is trying to win over consumers and people by establishing trust rather than by trying to disprove something about themselves. Also, they make ethical appeals to the viewers by mentioning the various statistics regarding funds, outreach groups and committees, clearly trying to establish some credibility to their name after the recent events in the gulf area. 

     From watching this commercial I definitley see how many various types of arguments that we read about can be employed by media and commercials to permeate our minds. 

In Class: Blog Space

One space I was thinking about doing is a hospital. I am not sure if this would work or not as a public space because in a sense it is a public space but it also only appeals to a population who needs to go there. Additionally, different types of hospitals like public vs. private hospitals offer different types of things to people so that would also be something to consider. I am a constant visitor of hospitals since I am a nursing student but I think it would be interesting to view it as an observer rather than a participant. Also, I think it would offer an interesting large cultural framework.

Another place I had in mind would be a frozen yogurt store. This is really different from my first idea but I think this might better meet the requirements for the assignment. Somewhere like menchies would definitley have a strong visual argument as would other frozen yogurt places but I am not sure how I would decide which one I wanted to do. 

Other ideas might be the rec center, the kroger by campus, central market

In Class: First Week of School

My first week of school started out with a nursing test at 8 am monday. I was happy to get that over with but also not happy to have a test the first day of school. I moved this year and am walking to the nursing building which has turned out not to be such a bad walk. I am definitely overwhelmed with my classes and clinicals and having to wake up really early again. I really like my new apartment and my roomates and that is really fun. I have spent alot of time this week unfortunately reading and doing homework. This is my only non nursing class this semester so hopefully it will be an interesting change for that. It is a race to get here on time right after my class before this. My classes are overloaded with reading and work but this first week has still been fun but summer definitly ended too fast in the past few days. After my orientation to my psych clinical that I had yesterday I am definitley interested in what the following semester will bring.
It's been a week of readjusting to focusing on homework and getting used to living someplace new but it is nice that alot of people are going through the same thing. I am enjoying my classes and this first week of being able to still have fun and go out some before the semester gets really hard.

Entry #1

     I am a junior from Houston. I am currently a nursing major and a spanish minor. I chose to take this course because it is required. However, I am looking forward to taking a class dealing with writing in the form of argument. From this, I hope to gain a new perspective on writing. I have had many different types of experiences with writing from high school and the course I took here freshmen year. The majority of the writing I do know is email and facebook and texting along with any writing I do for nursing. I do not really think about how I feel about writing when writing emails and things of that nature, but I feel good about them and use them as a source of communication and a way to convey things going on in my life. 

      I think the blog makes a sort of argument on how much we want to share and how we are going to share it. The colors I chose were colors I like and are somewhat understated which reflects me in a way. The visual aspects of the blog make an argument whether we want them to or not even though I didn't feel as if I was making an argument when I chose these things. The choices I made introduce me in a quiet way and in terms of the participation in the course, in way that shows me as an spectating participant so far, wondering how much participation will be required on my part for me to get the most out of this class.

     I have read, understand and agree to the terms of the course syllabus.



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