Does one have to have a child in order to post a blog?

False.

I have taken it upon myself to start writing (interesting) posts on this blogsite. I was required to create it for my Technical Writing class in the Fall of 2008, but lately I’ve just felt so left out that maybe I should mold it into something more. Sure, I’m not the ‘diary’ type but I’m sure I’ll have my readers on the tips of their toes with each post. 

Of course, you are welcome to scroll down to read incredibly thrilling posts about resumes, classes, and how to write proposals. Or you could just start fresh and have this be your first official blog post. Whatev.

So, as I said before, I’m not with child, nor do I possess one. I only have recently been stripped (figuratively) of my schoolwork and have extra time to devote to a small commitment such as a blog. Yes, you heard me, spring has sprung and class has ended. I finished up my last class today and only have a few brainless exams to endure in a few days. After that is finished, I’ll be en route to Austin, Texas with a pit stop in the DFW area. What does Austin hold? Hopefully my persistence will make an appearance and this blog will be a tell-all about my summer in the capital of Texas. 

Why the sudden urge to blog? After surfing the net looking for internships, I came across a lot of design blogs. They were fun and lighthearted and the authors simply posted things they liked or things they were doing. So, I thought, why not me? Everyone ELSE is doing it!

So for my first post, here is a tidbit of what I’ve been up to pre-blog epiphany:

CAD project-approx. 35 hrs of work over a period of 5 days

trip to College Station-April 23-26th

Lighting Project-due April 28th (tomorrow)

Furnishings Notebook-due April 28th, printing in progress

Texas Roadhouse-consumed 20hrs of my week for 7 months now…

I’ve also been juggling being a cat-mommy, a messy roommate, a sneaky daughter, and an overbearing aunt lately. It’s all in a day’s work…

Well, as soon as I figure out how to insert pictures, I’ll be right on that. Mel, help?

Man, that list has gotten longer in the last 2 1/2 years! Anyway, welcome to my ‘weblog’. Mom, that’s ‘blog’ for short. I have to write this blog for my technical writing class and I’m supposed to have a defined audience, so how could I pass up my family? I knew Dad would appreciate the fact that I was putting out an effort for school and Angela would love commenting and criticizing my posts from the stance of an English teacher. 

So here it is.

There are going to be a lot of assignments that you won’t understand, but that’s the beauty of it. Each assignment had an average of 62 pages of instructions and even paragraphs highlighted in red to get the point across, so there are certain parts of the posts that won’t make sense. Just embrace it. That’s what college is about, right?

Mom-I’m sure after dumping the cookies and calling the authorities to make sure this link isn’t a virus and then actually being able to navigate the ‘world wide web’ and get to this site, you’ll find it interesting. I know, I know…that was an extremely long sentence and I’m sure it was a run-on or whatever, but it was necessary. What would a weblog addressed to my family be without my sarcasm? 

Dad-So here it is. PROOF. You might still think that I’m partying my way through college (even though I assure you that isn’t true) but maybe after this blog you’ll put a little stock in the fact that I’ve been doing some good with the thousands of dollars you pour into Tech each year. Don’t try and tell me that making a website is easy, either. There is a lot more than punching buttons and posting links. This is the result of HOURS of hard work and it’s worth 20% of my final grade, mind you.

Angela-the ENGLISH teacher. Dun dun dunnn…I’ve already braced myself for endless comments on grammar and spelling and everything else you can find wrong with my blog. All I’ve got to say is this: Interior Design. I can criticize you on your house and space planning. Ha. Hope you enjoy it and it makes you miss your english classes!

Chris-Will you read this? Doubtful. 

Noah-I know you are only 6 days old at this moment, but maybe in 18 years when you are in college, you can look back on this and see what Auntie Di did! I’m sure the internet and computers will be drastically different, but who knows. It could happen. 

Well here goes. I hope y’all (I AM from Texas, aren’t I?) enjoy this and give me a nice pat on the back when I go home in a few weeks! Love you!

Here’s Dr. Fricke’s short explanation of the summary memos:

This assignment is a final chance to frankly reflect on and discuss the entire proposal project effort.  It is therefore also the only group assignment where individual people in the group might get a different grade.

So from there, we were supposed to answer these questions in our memos:

• How well did your group manage the overall proposal report and presentation project?
• If the overall project went well, then exactly why did it go well?
• If the overall project did not go well, then what were the problems?
• What exactly did you contribute to the overall proposal report and presentation project, and precisely how did these things benefit the group effort?
• What are two or three specific things that would you personally do differently if you had the chance to repeat the entire project (and why)?

We were also supposed to turn in the handouts that we used during out presentation. I’m still not clear why we had to turn that in again because we gave everyone a copy when we did our presentation. 

Basically, the memo focused on the report and our experience with the group as a whole. We repeated some things that we had already discussed in previous memos, but I felt like this memo was a chance to be more open and speak freely. We didn’t get our grades back because we handed them in on the last class day. 

In my memo I talked about how our group worked through the project. I thought we did a really good job and got a lot done. I have had bad experiences with groups but this group got down to business. We didn’t know each other at the beginning but that helped because whenever we sat down to work we could actually accomplish goals instead of goofing off and joking. We also were asked to name a few things that we would change if we did the project again. I listed a few things in my memo that you can read about, but I just thought of another one a few days ago. I would have done something to get more involved. I believe I pulled my weight and what was required of me, but I know I could have done more. I felt a little lost because I didn’t understand the goal of our assignment and our proposal until we got more in-depth and it was too late to take on responsibility. I handled the graphic design part of the proposal and did a little writing and editing on the side, but I could have put forth a little more effort and helped my group members out. They were really hard workers and I’m glad they were in my group!

So here are our three individual memos and our presentation handout: 

Stephanie’s proposal summary memo

Zach’s proposal summary memo

Diana’s proposal summary memo

Proposal handout

Ok so here it is, the formal group proposal report we have all been waiting for. This is what we had been working on since November 4th. 
Here is the general goal of the report in Dr. Fricke’s words, just so I don’t have to try and explain it myself:

Ok that was really long, I know. Sorry.

Our group decided to do our report on promoting local rainwater harvesting. That was actually our official title that we used throughout the project. If you took the time to read all of my previous memos and rough drafts and stuff then you should have a pretty clear idea of what the report was about. We ended up getting an 85 on our report. We all were accepting of it, but we all thought that we did better than that and might have deserved an A, compared to some of the other group’s proposals. Oh well, that’s water under the bridge, and a B isn’t a bad grade.

Along with our formal report was our presentation. We weren’t required to write an entry on it but I decided I could hit on a few points since it ties into the report. We were asked to give a presentation on our report that met a few goals that Dr. Fricke posted on his website. The class was grading the presentation, so we decided to aim it at them. We made it as short as possible and as interesting as possible with a video clip. We also brought donuts and juice for incentive. We ended up getting a 91 on the presentation and I think we were all pleased with that grade. It was an easy presentation to give especially during the ‘crunch time’ of the semester. I walked out of class feeling refreshed because most of my work for that class was done. 

Our report was professional and informative. We did a lot of research on it and tried to make it as realistic as possible. Here are some examples of other group’s proposals:

-Implementing a Sex Education Program in LISD

-The BCS: Why it Doesn’t Measure Up

-Bike Laws on Campus

There were some good proposals, but maybe I thought ours was so good was because it was dealing with some ‘green’ issues and I’ve worked a lot this semester with that sort of subject and I was excited about it. Regardless, it was a good report that we put a lot of hard work into. I think the most important thing is that we walked away proud of the work that we had done. 

So here is our final report:

proposal-report1

Here’s the goal described on Dr. Fricke’s website:

Show that your group is making useful progress on the formal group proposal report project.  Get useful help and advice if your group needs it.  Understand whether your group is ahead, behind, or right on schedule and use this information to save everyone time and effort in the long run.  If your project is going well, this assignment is an opportunity to get help from Dr. Art to help you save more time and effort while still producing a fantastic final proposal report.  If your project is not going well, then this assignment is an opportunity to get help from Dr. Art to fix specific issues or general project challenges before they sink the overall proposal writing effort.

Dr. Fricke told us he wouldn’t be grading us on our rough draft, he just wanted us to be working on it and have something to hand in. We were all rushing to get things done for other classes so we completed about half of the rough draft to take in for editing. I went to Dr. Fricke’s office on Monday (yeah Dad, his OFFICE) to talk about editing. There wasn’t much to edit, but he looked it over and mostly helped us with our memos. He told me that we should probably come up with one template to use with our memos so they would be easier for him to scan and look at. I also talked to him about this blog and some goals with it. At first I was going to cater to a group of students that would be taking technical writing as my audience, but a few weeks ago I changed my mind. I thought that writing to my family would be way more fun and it would give the blog a more relaxed feeling and I could feel free to speak normally and casually!  

So basically Dr. Fricke gave me a few pointers on my weblog and looked over our memos.

I went home and edited our memos for all the grammar and heading issues that Dr. Fricke pointed out to me. Then the next day in class we sat down and I told them everything he had said. We kept working on our rough draft but it was just pieces at a time. I think when we handed it in it was only about 6 pages. The end result was 15 pages.

Oh yeah, Dad, I forgot to say that we went in 4 days early for editing! That way, we could talk and revise in class and then hand it in on that Thursday. I don’t remember what we got on this assignment, but I’m sure it was an A or a B. Hopefully an A. 

Ok so below is our cover memo, rough draft, and our individual progress memos. Hey, you can never have too many memos, can you??

Cover Memo

Rough draft

Diana’s progress memo

Zach’s progress memo

Stephanie’s progress memo

The outline was a little tricky. We knew that we wouldn’t be doing our presentation and the report wasn’t due for a few more weeks, so we still didn’t have an idea what information we would include or what format it would be in, or really what our report would be. I was thinking that he would want a really detailed outline, maybe 3-5 pages with bullets and information and sources included. After we talked to him in class about the outline, though, he told us he wouldn’t even be grading the content, just that we had started on it…oook. ?? So we threw the outline together in class and helped ourselves out a little bit by guessing what the report might look like. The outline was about a page long and was basically the information from Dr. Fricke’s website that told us what should be included in our report. We added a few things that we could think of off the top of our heads, but we saved it in class and got to work on our individual memos. 

Here is the assignment goal as it was posted on Dr. Fricke’s website:

This assignment is an opportunity to keep group members focused on the formal group proposal report project and to make sure that everyone is completing the work that they agreed to perform both successfully and on time.  If your project is going well, you can use this assignment to get help from Dr. Art to help you save more time and effort while still producing a fantastic final proposal report.  If your project is not going well, you can use this assignment to get help from Dr. Art to fix specific issues or general project challenges before they sink the overall proposal writing effort.

One thing that was different about this assignment was that it was our first assignment where our memos were individual instead of a group effort. The assignment description helped us out again on this one and we just divided up the required contents to insert into our memos. A big part of the memos could be cut and pasted because we were asked to answer the same thing. That was the case a few times with this project and our various memos. 

Another great thing that I didn’t say before was that Stephanie printed up 3 calendars and brought them to class with the due dates of everything for the group project. We sat down and decided when we wanted to get the assignments done and edited. This was a huge help and really helped to alleviate some stress and anxiousness involved in such a big project towards the end of the year. 

So down below should be our cover memo and outline and all three of our memos. Get to readin’!

Cover memo and outline

Diana’s progress memo

Stephanie’s progress memo

Zach’s progress memo

As far as the group project goes, this was the best group I have ever had. Sure, I had been paired up with friends before and had a good time, but this group made everything seem so easy! My group members were Stephanie Blackwell and Zach Long. No, Mom, you don’t know them. We were all randomly assigned to a group so we went with it. The proposal was Stephanie’s idea. The final title was “Promoting Local Rainwater Harvesting”. Stephanie was an Agriculture major, or something like that, so the proposal related to her major and she understood and appreciated it probably more than Zach or I did. I still thought it was a cool idea, don’t get me wrong. It just took a lot of thinking to wrap my mind around it. You will just have to read my later entries to see the entire report! Ooh exciting and climactic, I know!!! 

This first memo was really detailed, about 5 pages long. We decided as a group at the beginning that we would divide each assignment up into 3 equal parts and each do one of those parts. That method ended up working really well for us, I think. The proposal plan memo was only worth 2 percent, which was a little disappointing since we put a lot of effort into it along with the next two memo assignments. But I guess that’s just the way Dr. Fricke decided to divvy up the points. 

Oh yeah, and here is the LONG goal of this 2 percent memo as described on Dr. Fricke’s website…

Create a detailed plan for completing the formal group proposal report and proposal presentation assignments.  Spending up-front time and effort to make a detailed and realistic plan that everyone can use to organize their work will save you LOTS of time, effort, and potential headache later on. 

A focused, detailed, comprehensive and realistic proposal plan will help you in three ways.

First, it will provide a blueprint for the entire group effort.  This will help everyone in the group to stay focused and on track, and help everyone to complete their tasks efficiently and on time.  It is therefore a good idea to include a work schedule and a list of very specific responsibilities for each group member.  The more realistic and detailed you can make these items, the more useful your document will be. 

Second, it will help you to identify potential problems early and help your group plan to prevent these challenges from sinking the project.  It is therefore a good idea to include a realistic discussion of things that could go wrong with your plan and a work schedule that actually matches the abilities and commitment level of everyone in your group.  Be honest with your group members when you do this — DO NOT commit to something that you know you can’t or won’t realistically accomplish.

Third, it will help Dr. Art to offer more detailed, useful advice and help early on in your project.  It is therefore a good idea to include a list of unresolved issues, questions, or other things that the group is likely to need help with.  Remember that it’s Dr. Art’s job to help your group succeed.  If you suspect that you’ll have a problem with something, then clearly asking for help EARLY on in the project will save everyone time and effort later on.  On the other hand, if you don’t clearly ask for something then you’re not likely to get it.  Be clear about what you want and need Dr. Art to do for you.

Here is the first of three memos for the proposal project:

proposal-plan-memo

Did I vote online?

No.

Did I vote at all?

Ha. No.

That is personal information, and I have various reasons why I made each decision, but that is another story… 

Just for clarity, here is the general goal as described by Dr. Fricke on his website…

Practice audience analysis and editing skills that will help you to more quickly and effectively complete later class assignments.  Understanding who will read your documents, what you’re trying to accomplish, and how you can edit the wording, organization, and content to match your audience’s needs is one of the most important skills that you can develop in this course.  The instructions analysis assignment is an opportunity to practice evaluating how well a document meets the needs of an audience.  It will hopefully help you to evaluate your own writing in this same way.

I actually really disliked this assignment. Maybe it was because it was so tedious, or maybe because I just wasn’t feeling it…I don’t know. It’s most likely because I think of myself as more of a creative person and this assignment was so writing-based and basically a ‘how-to’ that I just wasn’t interested in. It had a long list of instructions which was really hard to follow. After a semester of long instructions, I didn’t want to WRITE about instructions. 

Another thing that turned me off of this assignment was the part where we had to pick out the instructions we were supposed to analyze. Some people picked some really easy things, and some people chose something complicated. I didn’t want the assignment to be unnecessarily difficult for me, but at the same time I didn’t want to pick instructions that bored me to death. Unfortunately, that was the case regardless. Haha kidding, kidding…sort of. 

As you can tell, I am way more comfortable writing in a casual way, just like I would talk to someone. That’s yet ANOTHER reason why the assignment made me a little sick to my stomach. It was so structured, like everything else in this class, and it was almost painful to write. 

Maybe I shouldn’t complain about “Instructions Analysis” so much. It could be worse, like “Advanced Accounting”…. haha sorry Dad. No offense.

So here it is. Below are my instructions, progress memo for the assignment, and the actual instructions analysis memo. Enjoy it more than I did!

http://www.ehow.com/how_2061837_register-vote-online.html, instructions

progress-memo

instructions-analysis

Well here, this is how Dr. Fricke described it:

Practice testing and improving instructions.  Ideally, it would be nice if the instructions you choose are in some way related to your major or your future career.  However, you can choose to analyze any set of instructions that can be user tested.

Ok, ok, so here is the truth. I didn’t do the assignment. I think it’s safe to say that because Dr. Fricke already has my grade for that assignment as a 0 and it shouldn’t be any more of a dent in my grade for not having it linked through this entry. I seriously thought for awhile about writing a memo and pretending that I had done it all along, but I thought that might be misleading. Instead, I’ll tell you why I didn’t do the assignment.

First, it was due a week after our Formal Memo was turned in. I didn’t feel very informed on what the instructions selection memo or instructions analysis was going to be about. All I knew was that we were going to be looking at instructions and user testing them. It sounded fishy to me. I am the kind of person that has to think for an extended amount of time about what I’m going to choose for any given event or problem or situation. When I’m pressured into that decision, I just throw something out there and it doesn’t turn out well at all.

Second, I had about 12 other interior design projects and things going on, plus work, plus church, plus whatever issues are involved in my life. No, that’s not an excuse, but sometimes you just have to sacrifice somethings to get everything else done. 

Third, I saw that the assignment was worth a whole 3 percent of our grade. Granted, it all adds up and I would have loved to receive a 100 on the memo, but I knew my efforts would not get me that grade.

Another minor reason why I didn’t do the assignment is because every time I logged onto the english website I felt overwhelmed. There were so many instructions even for tiny tiny tiny assignments. Sure, instructions are great and they really help guide and direct some people. I am not one of those people. I was actually stressed out every time I thought about technical writing because I felt like every assignment was HUGE and my 3-4 hours of working on it wouldn’t get me the best grade. 

I know, I should have done the assignment. (yes Dad, I KNOW.) But it was just one of those days and one of those times that I felt I needed to sacrifice technical writing for interior design. Believe me, there were times when the opposite was true. 

So there it is…No link on this one though…

Write a two to three page formal memo.  Your memo should follow a format, organization, and writing style that CLEARLY matches your specific topic, audience, and goal.  For example, you might produce a “memo” that takes the form of a detailed letter written to a campus administrator or a politician.  Or you might produce a more straightforward document with the type of conventional memo formatting described in Chapter 15 of the textbook.  Once again, you will need to decide for yourself what type of format and organization best fits your particular audience and purpose. 

Whatever the design, format, and content of the memo, it should be two to three pages (1,000-1,500 words) long.  This length requirement is not flexible.  Talk to Dr. Art if you think this is a problem for you.

My memo was written to college freshmen that didn’t want to join a sorority or a fraternity because of the partying and wanted to belong to a different group. The group was intended to be general, but of course it was related to my involvement with Cross Campus. I mostly talked about the fact that some people in college are all about the partying and getting drunk and that can get old for some people. I know that some people are intrigued by that when they first get to college, but honestly, I was never one of those people. Sure, I tried out the “sorority scene” when I was friends with Andrea and she was a Zeta Tau Alpha, but who wants to get dressed up, spend all your money, smell like smoke, and not have any recollection of a single weekend while at college? Sure, it might be fun for some, but not for me. That’s why I decided to write about a GOOD experience since I’ve been at Tech, Cross Campus.

Mom and Dad- Y’all have both been to church with me and experienced the HUGE gathering that is Sunset Church of Christ. I think you have both met Jeff, the campus minister, and he’s a pretty cool guy. Jeff helps the leadership team (we meet on Monday nights) and he helped us come up with this believe, belong, become theme for this school year and I was pretty proud of myself for working it in to my memo. I got some points taken off (Dad cringes) for the memo header because I didn’t have a book to look it up and there was nothing on the internet to help me out. 

Overall, I was pretty pleased with my writing technique and my informative/persuasive writing. 

Take a look at the memo below.

formal-memo