Pb1b

Amanda Amico

English 101-108

October 23, 2016

Zack DiPeiro

Pb 1b

“Sneaker Reading 360”

Have you ever heard the term “sneaker head”? In today’s society little material things like sneakers sell for anywhere from 40$ – 3,000$. I went on a website named “Kicks on Fire.com”, and I was able to gain everything I could possibly want to know. This website is the official guide to Sneaker News, Culture, History and Release dates, and even the best places to buy and sell certain shoes. This website is the most read and downloaded sneaker blog. Looking through this website, I was able to find out that not only are sneakers a very big interest among both sexes, but there is money to be made in sneaker sales, may they be private or corporate. There were images of the new Nike flagship store and all different types of sneakers. The author suggests that knowledge of the new sneakers and their release dates is very valuable.

I looked at sneakers from 3 different perspectives. They are listed below with a short explanation with some questions I think may be asked

1. Consumer - When did this shoe come out, and what is the cost of the shoe? Whose shoe is it, like the name brand or the person it’s named after like Jordan, for example. What do these sneakers look like, and what is the level of comfortability for your feet? How popular are they? Are they custom aide or limited edition, are they durable?
2. Seller – Are these worth selling? What does the shoe look like? Who else is advertising this shoe? Will I be able to market and promote this product? How much can I charge for this product? What kind of clientele is this product going to attract? Can I make a profit that’s worth it?  Is the shoe unisex or what age group should I target for this sneaker?
3. Manufacturer – How much is it for the materials needed to make this shoe? Is there enough supply on demand? What contracts do I need to draw up to guarantee the sale of this shoe and any other legal aspects that have to do with making and mass distributing this product? Make sure I have influential people willing to be paid to endorse this sneaker? How many distributors can I get to sell this for me?

I found that certain methods of reading we were taught in class helped me to better understand this text and let me view it differently. Below I will list the methods I used and why I felt they were effective:

1. KWL – When reading about sneakers, people usually look at what they already know about the shoe, they look at things like knowing what they have heard or seen. Then they go do their “homework” or research. By doing this they are able to examine everything they wanted to know. People ask questions like what do they look like, how much does it cost? What brand is it? Are they durable? What do other people think about these sneakers? After both those steps we understand clearly, what we have learned. Can tell you everything from name, release date, popularity rate, sales rates, what celebrities are wearing or endorsing them? what entertainers have mentioned these sneakers in song lyrics or even made whole songs about the shoe..
2. SKIM – I think it is also useful to skim while reading about sneakers. The reason I say this is because, not all people are “sneaker-heads”, so they really don’t want to read the whole thing. So to avoid having to read it in its entirety, they read the last paragraph first, and then they read 1 -2 sentences from all other paragraphs. Or the bold print in advertisements and stuff like that. Reason for skimming is you can get key points without reading the entire content of the text first. Skimming gives you an idea of what kind of shoe, the brand name, release date, etc. Skimming prepares readers for the text itself.

In closing I hope you find the tips I listed just as effective as I did, and are understand why I chose the methods I did. It feels to me like they are going to be detrimental pieces in my writing.

thlog # 2

THLOG # 2

In class this week we read a course reading titled “Reading like Writer: by Mike Bunn. In this Bunn stressed how important it was to know how to make the connection between reading and writing. He also suggests that reading in a certain way can make you a better writer. This helped me to recognize that if I try to understand the choices the author made and why, then I can decide whether or not I may want to make those same choices in my own writing. Now we all know Zack has said to us several times in class that “You are reading to learn about writing, well to my surprise Bunn says the same thing in this text. I also liked the use of Allen Tate metaphor of reading like you were an architect, The reason I found this extra  helpful was because, I was like “fuck, if I got to think like an architect, I’m going to know every inch of this property and why and how these decisions were made. Now if I approach my writing this way I could just research by reading, annotating my readings, asking questions about why the author did certain things, thinking about it and probably ending up having an understanding of why they made certain choices. Then I have the freedom to decide if I want to use any of those writers’ conventions in my future writings. Ultimately you’re trying to learn how the text was constructed, so you can “build” one for yourself (Bunn). Now I am not sure about anyone else in this class, but I NEVER really sat and looked at other [peoples writing and analyzed it for the sake of improving my own writing, Lol! Call me a slacker but I would just read the text and complete the assignments, never wondering about anything the author did. After treading this today when I am about to read a text I am going to ask two questions:

1. What was the author’s purpose for this writing?
2. Who was the intended audience for this writing?

Knowing at the outset that the author as trying to reach a specific group of readers makes it easier to understand that some things may be more or less effective in a general audience. Basically it’s important to know your intended audience and genre, because in writing it is important to know that there are particular genres for particular situations... It is even mentioned that it’s good to question the authors judgement sometimes, ask questions, because everything we learn and all knowledge we acquire can be potentially used or helpful in future writing pieces.

thlog # 3

Thlog # 3

So as you may have already noticed, I am writing in unusual, fancy font. This font is called Lucida Calligraphy. The reason I am doing this is because my professor gave our class a really awesome writing tip. He told us that when we have “writers block” or are just stuck staring at the blinking cursor on the screen, just try paying with the fonts, pick something “funky” or “fun”. Right now I am experiencing that exact problem, I KNOW WHAT I WANT TO WRITE ABOUT, BUT NOT HOW TO WRITE IT!! My professor is what some have called “unconventional”, however he is able to actually show us things in class with visual presentations and his methods have given me –and several others in the class- a better understanding of some difficult things simply by explaining it in a way that may be very unusual to others.

 For example, Zack uses a method with “Nesting Dolls” -which I could actually say is a move of his- simply by him taking apart a set of wooden nesting dolls he was able to give a better understanding of genres. He showed us that genres are also broken down, like for instance, football/teams/coaches/players/spectators. That breakdown was shown to us with him going from the biggest nesting doll to the smallest, demonstrating the breakdown of genres. I find myself imagining the nesting dolls in my head now, applying them to my day to day life. I never in a million years when I entered this course did I think we would be listening to country music, playing with nesting dolls, or even drawing for that matter. We were going over pointers for one of our assignments, and here comes Zack with highlighters, big pieces of white paper and distributes them to me and my peers. Now we are all wondering “has he lost his mind” but we stayed quiet. The assignment he gave us was to draw our thought process of our papers out, like how we composed it in our mind. I thought it was going to be super hard ,and a little useless. However, I actually loved it! After that class I went home and took a blank sheet of paper and sketched out my writing project on there. I wrote like the title and then set a space for each paragraph and put what point I wanted to discuss in each one, then I stepped back and looked to see if the paragraphs were going to transition into one another and flow properly by the points I listed I was able to see if the following points supported the previous one.

 I have found these “unconventional Methods” to be very enlightening, and I know that once I master them better and get a more solid technique I will be able to be an awesome writer (I hope)!

thlog # 4

Thlog # 4

I want to start this thlog off by saying “I fucking love shitty first drafts”!!! I say this because in the handout we read called “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott; she stresses that in order to gain clarity in your second draft, and sometimes brilliant in your third draft, you must first create the “shitty first draft”.
 “The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page”(Lamott). This is very familiar to me because I like to write poetry, always have. I have even made my attempts at short stories; it is my dream to one day write a novel. Now when I am in my writing process I find myself just writing whatever flows for me at the moment, and the I go back and revise it, adding things and removing things, until I am satisfied with the final piece. I thought that was just something that I did, maybe because I wasn’t good enough of a writer to compose an amazing piece in my first try. In this text Lamott explains that all writers start with a shitty first draft, like horrible. They too go back and revise it until they are satisfied with the outcome of the final draft before publication.
 In your first draft I feel free-writing is the way to go. The reason I say this is because when you free write, it’s raw and uncensored. You are writing from your very core, not caring if it’s socially acceptable or meets the modern literature association’s standards.  The only thing churning in your mind is ideas that you are transferring to paper or monitors, and when that flow is over, you can sit back read it and then maybe think of what is missing or what is monotonous. You can look and see if you transitioned it properly or gave enough evidence to support your thesis. It is even suggested that you write a second and even third draft, so that you can continue to build and improve your paper In our class we practiced this method by bringing in hard copies of our first drafts, grouped with classmates and did evaluations on each others work, we then came back with a second draft after being given the evaluations from our peers and repeated the process again.
I found this very effective because it gave me a heads up on what I was lacking in and what my strong points were, and then I was able to compose my papers with the confidence that I had come a long way from my “shitty first draft”.

PB1a

Amanda Amico
English 101- 108
 October 13, 2016
 Pb1A
                                                  "Drug Addiction and Genres"
    I picked Drug Addiction for my topic. You can learn about drug addiction in several different places from the subway to the CNN News. There are many written things you can find on drug addiction. These are all genres on this topic. Drug Addiction is a chronic, often relapsing brain disease that causes compulsive drug seeking and use despite harmful consequences to the addict and those around them. Drug Addiction is a brain disease because the abuse of drugs leads to changes in the structure of the brain. Kerry Dirk introduced us to something called genres and explained how important it is to be able to identify them and understand how they function (Navigating Genre, Dirk).
   So let’s take a look at some on this topic of drug addiction. There are articles published in newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Daily News frequently, talking about drug addiction – especially opiates – on the rise at an alarming rate across the United States. You also see advertisements on the subway and buses seeking drug addicted individuals to do addiction studies for statistical, medical, and scientific research studies. There are even adds for rehabs, welcoming addicts to come get clean. In the field of drug addiction, you have doctors, counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, rehab and clinical technicians, etc., who all have to write notes on the patients they treat called progress notes. These notes are used to document the client’s progression/ regression while in treatment. It is also known protocol for them to conduct what’s called a biopsychosocial, which documents the client’s addiction history. They then put this information together to form what’s called a patient’s chart, which is used to identify the patient and to give other doctors/clinicians/addiction specialist knowledge of the client. There are several papers published in scientific and medical journals on drug addiction.
   You can also see it written about in articles of magazines such as People, Harvard, and Time Magazine just to name a few. Tabloids are even known to write about celebrity drug addictions. Robert Downey Jr., Lindsay Lohan, and Brittany Spears have all struggled with drug addiction and been the target of media articles talking about it. There are warnings posted on over the counter medication labels warning of addiction risks as well as information packets given out with prescription about medications informing patients of dependency risks that come with certain meds.
    As many of you know when there is something like addiction, there must be something in place that helps teach how to battle this “disease”. In this case there are the N.A Basic Text and the A.A Big Book that help teach addicts about the 12 steps of recovery and a new way of life. They also hand out pamphlets with all types of information of locations holding meetings and recovery information such as “Just for Today” handouts. These are placed all over the city, so they are easily accessible. You can even find drug addiction being written about in poems or the lyrics of a song. Drug Addiction is something that people tend to write FB posts and blog about on social media, it’s actually a very controversial topic.
 Although, in the United States it’s becoming a more and more accepted topic of conversation. President Obama gave a speech in which he read off a tele-prompter addressing the rise in drug addiction rise and staggering overdose toll in our nation, and how he had a plan to combat it and try to get all suffering addicts help. Websites like WebMD have even been made to educate and speak on drug addiction.
     Surprised? I bet you are, because I know I am. I never realized how many places I could find written text having to do with drug addiction. The even more mind blowing thing is every individual thing I just named that were written texts on the topic are all individual genres. Genres are everywhere. We can find them in any written thing, because every text written is a form of genre on a certain topic. When I started this class I thought genre meant types of music. I never understood genres were way more that until I was given this assignment, so I guess now you can call me enlightened!

 WORK CITED:
 1. www.m.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/drug-abuse-addiction
 2. www.drugabuse.gov>publications
 3.www.cnn.com/2016/05/12/health/opiod-addiction-history/
 4. www.facebook.com/pages/drugaddiction/111701262179435

Thlog 1 Genre Knowledge

Learning about this thing called Genre... Genre. When most people hear that word they automatically think of types of music or movies. In reality genres can be anything that is written. Today my professor gave us the definition of genre as typified responses to recurring social / rhetorical situations. Like if you think of it as all written texts having to do with on certain topic no matter if its a bill, an advertisement (written) a report, article, research paper, letters, etc... these are all genres of that topic. If you can understand and navigate genres , it makes writing a much easier task. All you have to do is go to your topic for instance and then look up several different genres that speak on that topic , then you can break down what you want to know and keep the genres that will help and then discard of the rest. It makes research and writing so much easier. In my Pb1a I wrote about drug addiction and I had to list different genres of my topic. I wrote down that progress notes written by doctors, research papers, N.A Basic Text & A.A. Big Book, pamphlets, medication information sheets, magazines can all be genres that give me info on my topic and help me to see how different people view it and what their beliefs are on the subject. I am not going to lie it's not as simple as it seems though. Like Dirk explained in our class reading " Navigating Genres", you need to know what particular genres are called for in what particular situation. Knowing how and when to use certain conventions is also important in navigating genres and understanding how they function. Having this knowledge and knowing who your intended audience is are very important keys to writing, and I think that even though I am having a slightly hard time with this genre thing ( Every time I think I got it, I get confused again) it will benefit me greatly in my future writing assignments in college. I noticed that since Zack explained to the class that genres are everywhere in our everyday life, I find myself subconsciously walking down the street noticing things and then saying okay, this is a genre for that or there is another genre for it..actually it's kind of amazing to find myself engaging in English 101-108 activities while outside of school. I am a promoter for music shows and festivals and now I can spot out at least 1/2 a dozen genres off the top of my head that I never would of realized held any importance. Like lets use Nightmare Festival for an example. Tickets, Flyers, Facebook Posts, Magazine Articles, Campsite/festival Ground Maps, Sales reports, Reviews, Schedules, the Line-ups are all genres!! I just really love the fact that I am learning all the time, sometimes without even wanting to..lol.

Pb2A

Amanda Amico
 English 101-108
November 12,2016
 Pb2a
                                                  "Statement and Suicides"
    Did you ever have a signifigant other that could say a few words, or touch you in a certain way that would make you weak at the knees or simply explode into uncharted emotional territories? Or how about yourself? Have you ever done or said a certain thing to make your parents give you exactly what you want? Answered yes didn't you? These signature things we do or say with the sole purpose to persuade or get some kind of emotion out of another individual are called "moves". Even authors use moves when writing. For my Pb2a my professor asked me to pick a text and identify and analyze moves and their purpose and effectiveness.
    The text I chose was from a newspaper called The Inquirer. The article is titled "At Penn, Memories of an activist". Staff writer Jason Nark covers a memorial service remembering a suicide that happened 20 yrs. ago. Nark tells the story of that sad day on October 22, 1996 when University of Penn student Kathy Chang walked onto campus and committed suicide by soaking herself in gasoline and setting herself in flames on the west side of Van Pelt Library at University at Pennsylvania campus. The tragic event would forever be remembered by all who witnessed it. However Chang's friends and colleagues don't see it that way. At the service they were observed more as celebrating her life rather than grieving her death. Women were dancing barefoot and men hung beautiful banners over a peace symbol at the memorial site. They referred to Chang by an old nickname "Kathy Change", and said that she wanted to transform the world. They look at her death more of a statement, or type of meaningful transformation, instead of a tragic suicide, even though there was a history of mental illness in Chang's family and she had already made attempts on her life. I will be listing 3 moves I identified myself, and then I will list 3 moves the author used from the "They Say, I Say" appendix.
     Here are the "moves" I found: 1. Immolation History Move - the writer helps support claims that there was meaning in the way Chang chose to take her life, straight down to the method of self-immolation which to this day remains a symbol of resistance. He backed these claims up by stating other prominent members in history that died by immolation. These figures included Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk who died of self immolation in 1963, Norman Morrison, a quaker who was named a hero in Vietnam for dying in the Pentagon from immolation in1965. I found this move to be effective because it helps to persuade the readers into entertaining the theory of this being a statement with meaning due to the fact of what the method of death means and the type of people that chose this as their way to leave this world. It could imply that the suicide was fully planned. 2. Remember Me Move - the author made it clear Kathy Chang was an activist who called herself "Kathy Change" and often dressed as a butterfly, stating she wanted to change the world. He mentioned she was a strong presence on campus for 15 years, being involved in protests and movements. It was even mentioned that her note to the police said she wanted to make a statement about life and death. The writer gave background of Chang being an actress and said some people thought of her suicide of more like her last "big act". This move was effective from my point of view and I think the writer chose it because it gives readers an idea of the kind of person she was and why she would want to be remembered as a work of art, leaving a message in peoples minds. 3. Establishing Ethos - I noticed the writer mentioned that the suicide occurred 20 years ago, and that Chang was a strong figure on campus for 15 years. He said she was recognized by High Times Magazine as "Freedom Fighter of the Month" in 1990. And he also went as far as to list the fields the people who attended the service and spoke about Chang were from. These fields were musicians, activists, artists, and even a historian. This move was used to build credibility for Chang, giving readers a glimpse of the type of people she attracted and befriended. He also states that she left an impression on all those that were there to honor her memory. Now lets look at what I found from the "They Say, I Say" appendix: 1. Entertaining Objections - At this point the skeptical part of the author has to ask questions, and object to the things that can't be ignored or overlooked. Even though Chang's note to the police and her friends recollections of her all point to this being more of a meaningful statement, one cannot ignore the fact that her mother committed suicide from a drug overdose and Chang herself had a history of mental illness she had been battling and made prior attempts on her life. I found this effective because when reading or writing I feel you should always be informed and know as much information as possible. Ask questions, make objections, seek truth. This move helped to say that even though Chang was a wonderful person, with a beautiful soul, this act may have been nothing more than a sick individual giving into her internal battles. 2.Introducing Quotations - writer states that Robert Helms, a historian of Philadelphia's Anarchist Movement said " you can forget about the general public understanding Kathy Change". This was effective because the author wanted to introduce us to the source that gave us the statement in quotations. 3. Capturing Authorial Action - the author acknowledges that poet Andres Castro mentioned the 40,000 plus people that commit suicide every year in the United States in several different ways while speaking at Chang's memorial service. This was done to show us that it is good to be educated. People probably didn't even know that the numbers were so high. It brings an awareness to readers.