Good Money and Good Causes

It was interesting to see this application of writing explained because at this school in the science departments we are taught specifically how to write our own proposals so I never thought about institutions needing a professional writer to convince an organization to fund research. It was surprising to see that even a starting wage for the writer could be $20-$30 an hour. It did not seem like a lot of money at first but considering the following statements on the length of proposals and the constant editing and sending it to the PI and other parties involved in the grant proposal, it seems like the hours would quite easily stack up to a sizable quantity. At first sight I also thought that it would be a really boring job but Karina Stokes makes a really great point that it can be rewarding to assist in helping organizations get funding to help in medicine, education, and helping people in general to have better lives. I think that this sounds like an awesome opportunity to be involved in something great for the future and that it can even allow specialization. I am interested in medicine so I could chose to focus the majority of my grant writing for hospitals and medical research facilities. This article was also useful in the sense that it also provided useful lists of what to include in writing a proposal in an easy to follow bulleted format while describing it more in depth in the body of the article.

Student Examples of Profiles

Both examples were very useful to picture just how I would end up writing my own article about my interview. In the first example the student did a very good job in using appropriate literary devices in their description of a professional writer. The second example was very focused on the importance of doing what you love and that sometimes to achieve that goal, you have to tailor a job to meet your own requirements. It was nice to see two different examples in this case. Both pieces focused heavily on the portion of getting from Undergraduate school to the specific professional field. While I think that is incredibly useful and important, I also feel that there should have been an equally large emphasis on a look into what the person does daily, I feel like both examples lacked a little bit in that aspect. I personally would first like to know if it sounds like that job is good for me, before I undertake the journey to find myself there.

Hearst Journalism Awards article review

I thought that Halle's article describing Mimi Silbert and her business of rehabilitating criminals was very touching. She uses some powerful quotes by some of the ex-convicts and ex-addicts and seeing them recognize the importance of the work that she does. They can see how hard she is working and are actually able to recognize that they are getting an impressive chance to go back to society and actually end up appreciating her and calling her an angel. I think her most impressive quote was the “She’s under 5 feet tall, but just a whirlwind of energy,” Henderson said. “To see her in the meetings with mostly these guys who are big, often over 6 feet tall … she just says ‘jump’ and they say ‘how high?’ ” to emphasize just how much effect she has on these guys and that they seriously respect her for what she does for them. The only thing I did not like about this article is that it did not flow, it was mostly a collection of broken up quotes and even the formatting of the article was incredibly broken up rather than a flowing paragraph after paragraph. Overall, her writing style is very good; easy to read and stylistically appropriate in word choice.


Article can be found here: http://www.midisco.org/hearst_journalism/championship.php?type=Writing&year=2007&id=1&view=3

"FOR HIRE: Fine Art Appraiser"

It was nice to see the formula that was described in the previous article in a true form and be able to see the correlation between the points in the formula and the actual text and information on the person. While the person and her job was not all that of interest to me, I did learn about this professional field and I can see how the ever changing situations of the job can be appealing for the right person. I feel that this description of Nan Chisholm's career is perfect in the sense as it describes the overall and what they do on a daily basis. It provides the highlights and only marginally brushes the downsides to encourage people that are interested in it to pursue the field. 

This Article can be found here: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/10024881.html

"The Formula"

This is a short, sweet, and to the point article about writing a business review. Many of the points that it makes in the sections are very helpful and really do bring about a good way to balance the information from an interview between personal life and what the article message is really about, how that person functions in the business. I really like the fact that this "formula" encourages the writer to put a little bit of creativity into their piece, making it a full circle, making the reader picture a scene unfolding in front of them. The only part that I found downright disturbing was the description of the man being viewed as the "candy-man" at church, he honestly sounds like someone I found find creepy and suspect of being a pedophile they way they describe him. I think there could have been a better way to phrase that feeling of kids loving him at the church and the fact that he always interacts with them. The personal side of this formula also seems a little pointless to me. I feel like life at home does not really reflect how that person makes decisions and conducts him/herself at the office. I think that it only hampers the view of the professional to include religion, hobbies, and that personal of information. It is fine to include that yes they do have a life and don't sleep on their office's couch every night, but I feel like it is easy to get overly precise over that information and start to drift from the key point of characterizing the person in their chosen profession. After all, is that not the true message of the article?

On "How to Conduct and Interview"

This was very straight forward article on how to conduct and Interview. I felt that while this information could be found as useful, it seems completely obvious. This article would be suitable in a Middle School setting for learning how to conduct an interview, say for a source for a paper, but in a professional sense it is a very simplistic article. The one piece of information that was remotely useful was suggesting to rewrite your notes after the interview before any fragments and abbreviations did not make sense. I think that I will end up using the article mostly as a checklist to make sure I have prepared everything for my interview and have not accidentally forgotten an important piece.

"An Alphabet That Thinks" - R. Lanham

I really enjoyed connecting the problems that arise today in the discrepancy on media with regards to how the past generations viewed advances in their time and that printed books were being created and that even that simple change in media created a storm of how it would change the way text was absorbed and the depth at which people would be able to consider it. I agree very much with quote about why we read, "we seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves... we want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own." This just goes right down to the core of why I read for enjoyment, I love to see a new world and I love to see a new point of view based on what the author thinks or what kind of point of view he is presenting or arguing. I also really liked the model for human communication "CBS" - clarity, brevity, and sincerity. It is a very accurate portrayal of how people actually communicate. I feel that while this excerpt presented good variety in points of view of whether technology was going to be destructive or beneficial, I felt a lack of settlement in the case as I did not have the full text to read. I would be interested to see the Author's own ultimatum.

"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" response

I found with this article that I connected to it a lot. I absolutely find myself more interested in the fast version of information skimming that is presented on the Internet as the efficient way of obtaining knowledge. While reading the article, even though I felt super connected to what the author was saying, I still found myself zoning out while reading and having to go back a few sentences and attempt to concentrate all over again. I think that while the Internet is super useful for research and a great database for everything, importance still has to be placed on traditional forms of media for informational purposes. I feel like I obtain a lot more and think critically when I read traditional media. There is a large distinction between when I read the newspaper with the paper actually in my hands and when I browse it on my phone. I tend to read fully and think deeply about articles in the paper, but those same articles on my phone will only get briefly skimmed to determine the overall point and then I continue on to the next section. I think that this article was fascinating to make the connection between my own concentration issues and lack of motivation to read full length articles or any type of formal information media and the way that my generation especially views everything digitally. While staying connected is great and can provide many benefits, I feel that I even find myself struggling to concentrate as my phone rings in emails, my phone buzzes in texts, and I skim through thousands of pages of information in brief seconds on my laptop. The connection is there, but it is a different level of connection, just surface skimming. There is a whole different level of connection when you delve deeper into an article and have only that article in front of you and no distractions, the brain can focus and actually think critically about the information being presented rather than purely absorbing it.

Article link: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/