final final changes to the project! ...no really i mean it this time.

I changed my genre for the initiating action project... again. I finally decided to do an oral speech. I think this is the best way to share what I have to say about my community and the best way to communicate with my audience. I was really happy to get positive feedback from Prof. Scott on this genre change. I wasn't sure if giving a speech would be a boring alternative to the original creative PowerPoint presentation I was planning on, but she agreed that the best way to share my story with my audience would be through just talking aloud. She gave some suggestions on how to tweak my speech and I am going to take those into account to adjust a few things here and there for the portfolio. I'm glad I finally settled on an approach and genre for this project, completed it, and got positive feedback!

Initiating Action Project

After getting a lot of helpful input from my group members in class on Monday, I have decided to take my Initiating Action project in a whole different direction. I plan on doing a presentation for students at Virginia Tech who are already involved in a Christian campus ministry. I am targeting this audience because I feel that they should be informed about my community, Disciples on Campus. This community often approaches people on the sidewalk, inviting them to their Bible studies. Students who are already open to religious groups and activities (such as students in Campus Crusade for Christ or InterVarsity) are generally more apt to accept an invite to a Bible study. Once they attend this Bible study though, I fear that they may have the same negative experience I had. My presentation would inform this audience of the controversy behind Disciples on Campus, the things that the members of that community do not tell you openly about. I would give this presentation before those ministries' regular weekly meeting times (ie: Thursday evenings for Cru, Friday evenings for IV). My goal would be for my audience to be exposed to the controversy and my personal experiences so that they may take away from my presentation what they will and be more informed about this group if they happen to stumble across them on campus one day.

The genre I would use for this project is a PowerPoint Presentation. I like this media because I can be more creative with it than I could with a speech or typed paper. I feel that it is able to hold the audience's attention better as well, since there are colors, graphics and animation usually involved. I looked through some websites about PowerPoint and learned more about the history behind its creation and what its purpose was designed for. It is mainly used by business people, but also used often by students. It is referred to as a form of "persuasive technology", which is perfect for my purposes. I'm excited to get creative with this presentation!


references:
www.robertgaskins.com (Gaskins is the creator of PowerPoint)
www.wikipedia.com

Community Improvement

This assignment has proved to be very challenging for me. It is difficult for me to think of a way to improve my community, not because it doesn't need improvements, but because it needs so many I almost don't know where to begin. First of all, my community is closely affiliated with a global religious cult, and could potentially be a harmful cult in itself. Therefore, in order to improve this community I would have to suggest they change their entire way of operating and interacting. It would go beyond improvement-- more like complete reconstruction or total abolishment.
However, since I really do not have enough information to prove whether or not this community is a harmful cult, I will have to settle for a slightly less extreme improvement in my community. The method I have chosen instead would work towards bringing the community out of the dark and making it less exclusive to be a part of. If it was less exclusive, there would probably be a lot less controversy surrounding them.
I would suggest that they become more involved with other campus ministries at Virginia Tech. As of right now, they are a low-profile ministry on campus that keep to themselves mostly. That is, they only participate in activities with their church and other members from their same community. If they were able to get out and meet new people, even people from ministries like Campus Crusade for Christ and InterVarsity Christian ministries, the cult-like seclusion of their group would greatly diminish. I would get them involved with these other groups by planning and promoting events that would serve as a mixer for many different types of ministries on campus. Such events might include an ice cream social, a shared worship service, a volleyball or football tournament, anything that would include a lot of people from outside their direct community. This could actually be beneficial not just to my community, but to many communities. Meeting new people and expanding your circle of friends beyond your exclusive inner circle is always a good thing...and for my community, it is definitely a necessary step in the right direction towards moving away from their alleged cult-like qualities.

reaction to feedback

I was really pleased with the feedback I got from Prof. Scott! I was surprised that she had so many encouraging comments to give me about the essay. I was so glad that she seemed to follow the overall theme of my paper- I had doubts about whether or not I had made my point clear enough or affectively enough, but I was happy to be reassured. She did give some good tips of how I could improve it further, by taking out certain sections that are perhaps not necessary. I will definitely change a few things, but overall I'm glad that I won't have to work on this paper too much for the portfolio, which will give me more time to improve the papers I had more difficulty with.

Peer Reviews

It was helpful to get input about my paper from Liz. I was surprised at how much she liked it! I wasn't sure if it was a good topic or if my writing style was affective, so it was nice to be encouraged :) She did mention that the flow was a little choppy, so I am working to change that. I'm adjusting the structure to hopefully make the transitions smoother from paragraph to paragraph. Thanks for reading and giving your input, Liz! I think it is always a helpful exercise to have classmates edit each other's papers.

Thoughts on Essay Writing

Reading those articles gave me some good insights on essay writing. All throughout high school I was constantly writing essays, but I never stopped to think about what exactly an essay was and how it differed from other types of writing. It was interesting to see how an essay is compared to an article. The main thing that sets an essay apart is the personal voice of the writer that comes out. I don't usually have a problem letting my personal voice get incorporated into my writing-- usually, I have the reverse problem. If I am assigned to write an article or more factual report, I have to control my own opinions from leaking into the piece. That's why it was so fun to write the rough draft for this essay-- I was able to let loose and let many of the things the article was talking about, like using personal voice, telling and showing instead of trying too hard to prove yourself, etc., incorporate themselves into my essay. I know I still need to tweak the rough draft a lot, but reading these articles encouraged me that it's ok for my personal tone to be prevalent in this type of writing!

feedback on the feedback

First of all I would like to thank my parents for always calling me Becca instead of Rebecca so even though I really should have been one of the last batches of people to get feedback on my research proposal, I lucked out and was counted as one of the 'B's at the beginning of the alphabet :)

Secondly, I would like to thank Prof. Scott for spending time reading and commenting on all these proposals. I wasn't expecting the commentary to be so detailed and specific-- it really helped that the comment bubbles were directly attached to a specific excerpt from the paper. I was encouraged by the positive feedback in her overall statement, but I was also glad to see that she was able to point out a lot of things for me to work on as well. I felt as if my paper could've been improved in various ways and her feedback pinpointed exactly what to change and how. Definitely a very helpful form of revising papers!