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Michael Tripp

Dr. Erin Dietel-McLaughlin

FYC 13100: First Year Composition

06 December 2010

As you explore my portfolio you will come across several interesting pieces reflecting a

different aspect of writing. During FYC 13100, I have come to understand writing as any form

of communication using symbols, whether they are words, pictures, or sounds. Not only has the

class explored different “genres” of writing, but it has also explored many common

contemporary topics centering on technology. Remixing, bootlegging, file sharing, rise of social

networking are among the wide range of topics covered and their effects on modern living. Each

piece builds on top of the other as you will see. With each project, the planning and preparation

required grew progressively more intense. The proposals and annotated bibliography associated

with some of the pieces provide evidence to the required preparation. As you may also see with

the quality of work and organization, the later works are better thought out because the pre-

writing skills are much more developed through practice at that point.

The first piece is a compelling narrative essay. The goal was to use descriptive language

to embellish a personal, truthful story and connect the emotional aspect to a message about

technology. I spoke of an injury that occurred and threatened to change my life. Thanks to

technology my life is much better off now… It took two sentences to get my message across

now, but how much more compelling is it in narrative form? Read my narrative essay and you

can see just how much descriptive language and emotional connection makes a difference in

writing. You will have learned what we did by the comparison.

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Rhetorical analysis is the topic of my second major project. An appeal to emotion is one

way to persuade someone to the writer’s way of thinking, as seen in the previous paper. Now

other methods of persuasion are explored. An appeal to ethos, pathos, and logos are the classic

rhetoric devices beside humor, anecdote, and others. The goal of this work was to analyze pieces

from two other authors and analyze whether they are successful in persuading their intended

audience on the same topic. The second part of this project is too extend the analysis to tell

whether I recommend the pieces under analysis to the instructive text “They Say/ I Say” and

why. DeGeneres’ use of humor and ethos in “This Is How We Live” is compared to Stites’ use

of anecdote in “Someone to Watch Over Me” under the topic of technology’s benefit in my

project. Each article presents a very different argument, as well as different style that it is

presented under.

So far only the rhetorical analysis has had some loose citation of any sources. This is in

preparation for a legitimate research paper that is required for the next project. The purpose of

this project was to interpret and use six sources for a research topic of my interest relating to any

of the topics we have discussed in class thus far. It has always astounded me that the United

States does not seem to be making much of an effort in helping Third World countries. I

hypothesized that it could be because of the consumer culture of the United States. Pulling

resources from past history, economy, and psychology this seemed like a legitimate hypothesis.

The preparation was immense but spread out and made possible by my instructor. The material

was interpreted separately and then connected to the topic and organized. This is a valuable skill

that has made the next two projects “a breeze.” The research essay really wrote itself because I

was passionate about the topic and I had done the preparation beforehand.
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The last individual project is the visual essay. I am most proud of this one just because it

took so long to do and incorporated the previous topic’s research to make a difference. I am

pretty artistic in nature, so it played to one of my inherent strengths. It was easy to piece

together all of the elements and see how each pointed toward a certain goal. I spent so much

time on this project simply because I had fun with it. The purpose of the project was to create a

persuasive or informative piece using pictures and animation with few words to convey a

message. It was interesting to see how every detail of the project, from sound choice to picture

choice, was analyzed to see what message and rhetoric appeal the details would convey. In a

discussion after, Dr. E posed a question something along the lines of, “You guys really think

about what each detail of this visual essay conveys right? Why can’t you do the same for a

written essay?” Letters are just as much symbols as the pictures we see everyday. I almost wish

the visual essay was first because I think my writing would have had a clearer meaning and a

greater “artistic” feel in the other projects after having realized what I have after this project. It

was definitely a grand revelation in my world that the same approach for this essay could be

taken with written ones. My visual essay played off the researched essay by commenting on

how we do little to help the poor. My “commercial” encourages the audience to act through a

sense of sympathy and some guilt as you will see. More thought goes into the essay than one

would think, but some of what went in the planning can be read in the informal written essay that

goes alongside the visual essay.

The collaborative project was the last project of this semester. The purpose is to foster

group work overall. From talking to MaryAnn Spence in the guidance office, she said that Notre

Dame is known in the business world for having students graduate that, oftentimes, cannot work

in a group dynamic. They want to do things on their own. I had trouble leaving the topic choice
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and final outcome to others. Usually I am very vocal, but in this situation I did not grasp the

topic at hand before it was already decided what we were to do. I just had to figure that as long

as I do my responsibility well and on time, the others will too. They care about the project just

as much as I do. I worked with a survey team to create an online survey to gather information

about the use of technology on the Notre Dame campus and whether it helps to fulfill the mission

statement (also the topic of our project). We sent the data to the editing team for incorporation

into the final video of our project which you will see.

All the skills inherent in each of the projects are very valuable individually, but are even

more important as a synthesis. Especially the realization of what I had accomplished in the

visual essay in theory will help foster better writing in the future. By presenting the projects in

the way they were, it was easy to focus on the singular goal of the piece and then build off of that

into the next piece by incorporating the next “focused” element. With each project I felt more

and more of myself going into the project as a result. Instead of bland, boring persuasions or

research papers that students dread, I was encouraged to focus on things I am passionate about

while still staying within the course’s theme. Taking all I’ve learned I FYC 13100 and applying

it to my future courses and papers may be a little abstract since I will be moving towards a

biology route, but the majority of the ideas learned will translate over. For now, I am more than

satisfied and proud of what I have done this year. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. Thanks

for reading.