Zimmerman 1

Eric Zimmerman

Dr. Angela Miss

UWRT 1104

13 March 2017

Analysis of the Whole Life Concept Paper

The purpose of my Whole Life Concept Project paper is to inform the reader about my

passion and identify how the passion is going to impact my academic and post-academic life.

Three smaller papers were combined in order to narrow down the focus of my passion and

ultimately create the final Whole Life concept paper. In the paper, I attempt to inform the reader

about my passion and how I came realize that passion, what my future goals were, how I could

achieve those goals, and how the project was beneficial.

The paper begins by identifying my passion in life is, how I came to the realization that

this was my passion, and what my future plans are in order to pursue my passion. In order to

identify where I may have developed my passion for building, I thought back to any memories

throughout my life that may have been signs of my passion. The reason that I talk about my

childhood is because it allows the reader to attach a set of memories to my passion and to

understand how my life has always been impacted by my passion. The paragraph is structured in

a chronological order from when I was young up until my current age and then extends into the

future. The arrangement of the paragraph allows the reader to follow my understanding of

building and shows how I connected the dots in my life to identifying building as my passion. I

believe that talking about future goals is a way to communicate to the reader that building truly is

my passion and that I am currently pursuing ways in which I can use that passion in my everyday

life. This paragraph could use more direct details instead of just talking about the memories
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broadly in order to give the reader a better look at my reasons for choosing building as my

passion. For example, instead of saying Whether it was Legos or pieces of wood that I had

pieced together in an attempt to make a project, I always remember having a love for building

things (Zimmerman, 3) I could have said something more along the lines of, I remember

sneaking down to the basement and taking whatever pieces of scrap wood I could find just so I

could use them to build a shelter for my army men. One of the main reasons for my passion for

building stems from my primary discourse community. I grew up in a very small, blue collar

town in Upstate New York. My grandpa owned a farm, and my uncle had a construction

business. I believe that these two people were my main influences in developing my passion.

Growing up, I would go into work with my uncle occasionally to look at some of the houses or

barns he was building and it was always exciting for me to see the construction. I also started

working on my grandpas farm when I was about 8 and he always had me doing construction like

jobs like repairing things in the barn or building more shelving for his greenhouse. I believe that

this is where my passion for hands on building came from.

In the first sentence of the second paragraph, I repeat what my passion is but I also

address what the paragraph will be about. Informing the reader about the topic of the paragraph

gives the reader a chance to understand what they will be reading and what they should take

away from this paragraph. Branching off of the topic sentence, I then talk about the ways in

which the project has helped me come to the realization of my passion and how I came to that

realization. I came to the conclusion that building was my passion while writing the first of the

three smaller papers where I was asked to identify my passion in life. As a freshman in college

its hard to identify anything that youre passionate about, but to identify what you believe to be

your lifes passion is an even more difficult task. In order to answer this question, I had to sit
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back and think for a couple of days. Through this self-evaluation I was able to come to the

conclusion that building was my passion. I think that informing the reader that I had evaluated

myself and my past allows the reader to understand the thought and effort that was out into the

topic of this paper.

The next main talking point of the paper is the topic of the project and my personal

opinion as to whether or not the project is useful. I believe that adding a personal opinion lets the

reader get a sense for my feelings towards the project. My personal thoughts are that this project

allowed me to reflect on what has brought me joy in the past and how I might be able to

implement that in my choice of career. After a lot of thinking I was able to come to the simple

conclusion of building. All throughout my life I had a knack for building and I can never

remember a time that I was not happy when I was building something. The project gave me the

opportunity to reflect on my past and come to the realization of my passion which is why I

believe that this project is beneficial. Instead of just saying it was a good project, I talked about

how the project could help others and how it could make a major change in their thinking. One

of the keys to having success in the project is to actually devote time, effort, and thought into it.

The fact that I was able to identify building as my passion also helped me decide that I should

stay in the major of civil engineering. The sentence This project has allowed me to pick apart

my passion to get to the heart of what really matters in my choice of a major and has helped to

guide me in discovering happiness with my major and career path (Zimmerman, 3) uses strong

language in order to show the reader how the project has helped me and what it has helped me

discover. The word pick apart and heart use imagery to show the reader that I have really

dug down to the roots of my passion. Building is a passion that is pertinent to the discourse

community of civil engineering. In the discourse community of civil engineering, a knowledge

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of mathematics, physics, and building are crucial to having success and having a passion for

building really allows me to blend in with the community. I may have to mushfake my way

through the math and physics as it does not play a huge role in my decision for choosing

engineering however I believe that I have enough understanding of the topics in order to

successfully mushfake and develop my own way of understanding the topics better.

The fourth paragraph goes on to talk about the engineering field and how my perception

of the field was changed based on the project. I used examples in this paragraph to show the

details of how the project shaped my view of engineering. I said that the project has helped me

by allowing me to look at all of the different disciplines within the engineering field and

determine which one is best suited for me and providing a look at the classes that are necessary

to become a well-rounded civil engineer (Zimmerman, 4). Both of these sentences are examples

of how the project has shaped my view of engineering by allowing me to look deeper into the

major through research and analysis. I also mention that I ran across many engineering skills in

my research that may help me to understand what it takes to be an engineer. I have begun to

understand the amount of mushfaking and adaptiveness that will need to take place throughout

my college career in order to be successful in the engineering field. As mentioned earlier,

engineering is about more than building and I would like to fully immerse myself in the

discourse community of engineering. Although full understanding of a discourse community is

not truly possible, I would like to make it my goal to become as fluent in the language and

knowledge of engineering as possible.

The skills that I can acquire to aid me in achieving my passion and how I can obtain those

skills are crucial pieces to applying my passion to my life. The fifth paragraph analyzes academic

skills that can be acquired and the sixth is about skills learned outside of the classroom. The use
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of specific classes sets up a plan of action and shows that I have an idea of the path that I should

be heading. This portion allowed me to figure out what classes may be in my future as well as

how those classes may teach me engineering skills. I believe its important to provide specific

skills and classes so that both I and the reader can see how those classes and skills may apply to

my passion. I also was able to look at what skills I may not be able to acquire in the classroom. I

believe that it may be even more important to identify those skills at this point in my life because

they are skills that I can begin working on right now. Research was required for both of these

paragraphs but I believe that the research really deepens the readers understanding of how the

skills can be acquired and what steps are necessary to get there.

The final paragraph wraps up the entire paper by restating my passion and briefly

summarizing the topics of the paper. The final paragraph is a good closer for the reader because

it reminds them of the topics of the paper. I finish off the paper by saying that I am very

satisfied with my choice of major and believe that is the best major for me to pursue so that I can

implement my passion (Zimmerman, 5) because this directly applies to my passion, major, and

personal goals. I believe that this final sentence will resonate with the reader based on the

content and tone of this paper. Somewhat similar to how Dr. Martin Luther King Junior tried to

put the readers of Letter from Birmingham Jail in the life of an average African American

during the time period, I believe that in order to be a successful engineering student, I will need

to put myself in the shoes of an engineer. I will not be successful as a student if I cant connect

my education to the real world.

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Works Cited

Zimmerman, Eric. Whole Life Concept Part 4. Essay. University of North Carolina at

Charlotte. Charlotte, NC. 2016. Print.