Unit 3 Reflection

Unit 3 Reflection Project

Rami Fayed, Anthony Cassera, Jack Durrani, Christine Allawh

Writing 105

10 December 2015
Powerpoint:  http://www.slideshare.net/RamiFayad

For our presentation, we chose a topic that we felt as freshmen would be beneficial for other newcomers here at Syracuse, or just any student that wants to succeed in general. The PowerPoint we’ve created contains five topics that will help guide any student into success. Our first topic is grade expectations. Grade rubrics are something very important to be familiar with for every class. Each professor will have their own grading criteria, and although your expectations for yourself may not be the highest, it is always important to be aware of the fact that your first semester grades act as a blueprint for the remainder of your college career.

Studying is a very important topic we felt was vital to discuss. Study routines are the first thing as a freshman, that students should create. Looking at your work and class schedules and trying to find time to study for each class will have a positive impact on your grades. Time management plays a big role in how productive of a student one will be. Again, looking at your schedules and allotting time for studying and other things like clubs, sports, and free time will help make your college experience a stress free one. It is very easy to lose track of time and get distracted, so being organized with your time will help you avoid sleep deprivation, late assignments and bad quality of work.

The topic mentioned in our presentation can be applied to any class that you take here at Syracuse is ‘writing tips’. Practically every class that a student takes here at S.U. requires students to do some type of writing. Whether it is a written lab report, a paper on art history, or just a simple homework assignment, writing is a necessary part of every college student’s life. Therefore, the topic of ‘writing tips’ in our presentation will be beneficial to all students. These tips will help improve overall rhetoric and writing techniques of students while helping them understand what is expected by teachers in a typical writing assignment and how to meet these expectations. Another topic we chose was ‘available resources’ that we chose mainly because Syracuse University’s wide variety of resources at hand that students should take advantage of. These available resources include, tutoring, interview practice, networking events, advising or counseling, and the writing center. All of these available resources can also serve a multitude of purposes from helping students adjust better to their new environment as well as helping students prepare for a job interview and even simply trying to achieve excellence in the classroom by getting instant feedback on all writing assignments from the writing center. All of these are such astounding tools that if students utilize correctly, they will benefit from and ultimately see great success.

The video we chose to present in our project reflects on the mindset most students have before entering college, and then how it changes once they are in college. It is a satirical short video that we feel many students can resonate with. An example from the video in which a majority of people said they find most accurate, is the comparison of a student’s phone call with his mother while him being in high school, compared to that same scenario while him being in college. In high school he doesn’t appreciate his mother’s phone call and argues with her. Whereas in the college scene he is significantly more loving and kind towards his mother and expressing sentiment to her. Overall the video showed how much student’s change in transitioning from high school to college.

We decided to present these topics in a PowerPoint style because we felt that a PowerPoint is a very direct and informative way to showcase our thoughts. We tried our best to make the PowerPoint as lively as we could, using the colors of Syracuse University in order to reach our target audience of incoming freshmen at Syracuse University. Our whole project is based on how you could be a successful student at Syracuse, so why not add in some flair and color to spice it up? Just like in Lucille McCarthy’s “A Stranger in Strange Lands: A College Student Writing across the Curriculum,” we tried our best to create a presentation that new students can read through and use to their benefit.

When managing your time in college, we’ve found that it works best to complete assignments as early as possible to ensure that you have applicable time to complete the task to the best of your ability. We also found that at the beginning of every week you should make a schedule, or at least designate times each day in advance of when you are going to complete an assignment or prepare for an exam. This will help you stay organized which ultimately leads to success in academia. Schoolcouncilor.org preformed a study whose general consensus was that organized students are in fact more successful students. Start a habit of being organized to ensure optimal success in college.

Once you complete your work early, you allow yourself some much needed down time. College is a stressful environment, but staying active is one of the best ways to combat stress. One activity I am personally keen on is going to the Archbold Gym to workout. Studies have shown that staying active in college promotes higher test scores among students.(sparkpeople.com). Being active in college will not only make you feel better in college, but also look good too.

Another much needed activity proper time management allows for is sleep. Here in college no matter what everyone may tell you, they are sleep deprived. A recent study conducted by the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota concluded that over seventy percent of college student are sleep deprived, meaning they do not get the recommended eight hours of sleep a night. When you are sleep deprived your work is not your best and therefore you do not get the scores that you desire.

Earlier we explained why we included each topic in our presentation and how they’re supposed to help incoming freshmen adjust to college life and succeed in an environment much more fast-paced than they’re used to. We then gave an example of each topic, how it is beneficial, and the consequences of doing otherwise. With all of that completed, it is time to focus on the assignment itself. Not the presentation but the unit’s assignment and its relevance to what we’ve picked up in our writing discussions. Rewind three months ago to a quiet, awkward room in Huntington Hall which many feel was only put so far from most of the freshman dorms to keep them cold and unhappy during the winter. Inside the room are nervous freshmen afraid of being called upon so they won’t be the first person to break the silence. It was nearly impossible to get a definite seat for next class as there were no real desks or tables, just a mismatch of tables unevenly distributed in a room that can’t fit them. The most ironic thing about this scene might actually be the fact that we all walk by a much larger room with less people in it on our way down the hall to writing class each day. Back then we too were the anxious freshman who we look to help out with this presentation.

As an incoming freshman you tend to worry about a lot of things, but the topics we covered in the presentation are generally not what you think of when preparing for being independent. Especially if you’re planning on going away to a university very far from home you’re probably going to be more worried about the people you’ll meet, the friends you'll make, and if you’re roommate is going to be a total stickler. The difference between writing in college versus writing in high school never occurred to me. Instead of worrying about their social lives on their future campus freshmen should be informed that that’s only a small fraction of the entire college experience. We organized the PowerPoint to walk incoming freshmen through the process of which you should be preparing yourself throughout the semester to be on top of your game.

It all begins with you setting a goal or a structured idea of what you would like to see at the end of the semester. Once your grade expectations are set we thought studying tips were the next step in educating somebody on what they should expect from the courses they’re going to be taking. The transition from high school to college is a very confusing and stressful experience, and we all wish we could’ve gotten a little more guidance and help from kids who had just gone through it as well. That is why we now are helping out the grade below us. Our PowerPoint helps future Syracuse students avoid difficulties by informing them on the real things they should be stressing about. It isn’t the high school game anymore where you can contribute a small percent of your energy into schoolwork, not study, and do homework in class before the teacher checks. College life will swallow you whole if you retain that mindset still, and the shortened course length can really be tricky to students. Having a few months to do a whole year’s worth of learning for a subject is no easy task, and this is what makes unprepared freshmen feel lost and too far behind to catch up. Even when Thanksgiving break ended, there was no two or three-day intermission where classes gave us a break. No, you hit the ground running after breaks here at Syracuse and next to studying, time management is the key to remaining ahead.

College writing tips and available resources allowed students to know the raised expectations in writing assignments at the college level, and the facilities given to students to deal with those expectations. Revision is key, and making sure each paper is tweaked to perfection can save you a few points on each assignment. Do that with your homework and more points will add up. When you study you can go back repeatedly to anything you read that you didn't fully understand and earn those extra few questions on your next exam. Extra credit is also very prevalent in many college courses, so take advantage of each and every opportunity given to you to raise your grade at little cost. If you edit your papers, put more effort into homework, study more thoroughly, and complete all extra credits.  Your grade will skyrocket from what it would’ve been before if all the work is put in correctly. However, if I could just give one last piece of advice to any incoming freshman coming to Syracuse University, it’s that you need to take advantage of everything available to you to better yourself and become a better academic scholar.

Reflection of Letter to Family

    I generally enjoyed writing a letter to my family because it was so different from the other genres that we've been writing in class. It let me actually ask myself how I was doing allowed me to reach a different audience than any time previously in this class. It shows how through academic writing it can make you also a more intellectual person and expands our minds. Through writing and researching, reading and attempting to emulate other academic writers, it enables the academic writer within each of us. We are able to become them and encapsulate the same process and methods that they use to write. This alone helps us get an understanding of how to be good writers, and eventually good communicators. After all, good communication is the one thing that others see and perceive of you that allows them to determine how smart a person is. This letter was a great experience to show my family how in only a couple of months how much smarter I have become just from the amount of reading and writing I have done thus far. I will only get smarter in my endeavors and hopefully I was able to show how my expectations were not met yet I am still having the time of my life here and also that school is only going to get better. Being on my own is something that allows me to really see who I am as a person and also to learn new things every day. I really like my experience so far and through writing like this letter, my college experience will only get better.

The Manifesto of the College Student

With high amounts of debt to make up and still deciding on what we want to do for the rest of our lives, it is hard to decide whether we would rather pick a boring office job that will pay off our debt or a job that we actually enjoy yet we will probably be paying off our debt into our thirties. The daily struggle of getting no sleep, putting on weight, joining clubs and still trying to keep our GPA's up is something that we will never have to deal with again once we get out of these four years. Especially freshman year, it is hard finding friends and getting people to like you. Many people become depressed which makes it even harder to do well in school.

In order to do well in college we must:
Study, Study, Study: With the constant deadlines that approach must faster than anticipated, and all of the tests and assignments that have to be completed, time spent studying is never wasted time.
Join Clubs: In order to stay happy, make friends, and add something onto our resume, clubs always keep us busy and allow us to have some fun with something we generally enjoy doing, around people who do the same.
Get to the Gym: Working out not only facilitates a healthy lifestyle, but also releases endorphins in your brain to make you feel better and happier. It also can let us make friends if we play basketball or we can even find someone to workout with.
Get a Workstudy: Finding a job on campus might be hard and sometimes annoying, however it can really help you manage your time and will help you pay off those terrible loans.
Practice Interviews: Interviewing is the one technique that you will need to utilize the rest of your life. The more practice the better because once mastered, it can allow for jobs to start flowing in after your four years of college.
Do Internships: Getting your name out there and showing how hard of a worker you are within any industry can only help you. It even allows you to add another thing onto your resume. The more experience the better and will allow not only the company you interned for to take interest into you, but many others as well.

As long as you work hard while doing all of these things, the four years spent in college will be amazing. Full of friends, work, connections, and fitness, it might be stressful but it will definitely be worth it in the long run.

250- Word Response to A Stranger in Strange Lands

            McCarthy sees how students have to produce different kinds of work, and writing for different teachers. She notices how a student must adjust the way they talk to different teachers depending on their style of teaching and what they are looking for in your work. It talks about how writing processes in classrooms are all different and in every different class, students are presented with new speech situations. Therefore, it analyzes how students figure out what is required for each class and how they go about producing work for each class. To see, a researcher followed a college student named Dave around to a class in every semester of his freshman and sophomore years.
             I felt I could relate to Dave because I too have to adjust my writing styles for different requirements of different classes. The fact that we are reading this article now is almost startling to me because I noticed myself encountering the exact same thing specifically in my politics class. The first essay in my politics class (as with many classes) was my worst. I did terribly and I thought it was because I had never taken a politics class before and never noticed the requirements of what it meant to write politically before. Therefore I had to be more informed, use different more politically correct language, pun intended, and also just use a different rhetoric than what I was used to in other classed. I adjusted and by the times my second paper came around, did so much better. I was able to change my writing style to fit the needs of the class in order to fulfill its needs. Therefore I understand that like Dave you will eventually get to enjoy writing once you understand what it takes to write for that certain class. You have to be a chameleon and adjust to your surroundings in order to be a successful academic writer.

McCarthy, L. P.. (1987). A Stranger in Strange Lands: A College Student Writing across the Curriculum. Research in the Teaching of English, 21(3), 233–265. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40171114

Project 2 Reflection

This project was a good learning experience for me as it allowed me to be creative with my writing and zoom in on a specific moment of my life which a lot of the times isn't allowed in college or even high school for that matter. It was a fun exercise that taught us how to construct a nonfiction article that still brought light to a topic, while also using a story that relates to me and in the sense is creative when getting into the details of said story.  Also incorporating things I have read or even seen in the past like Grease and Death of a Salesman added an aspect of creativity as well. I didn't feel as if I was being forced to write. I wrote how I actually felt and was able to express myself while also using evidence to back it up. I really liked this project and I hope we do more like it in the future.

Unit 2 Project- Creative Nonfiction

Sexual Tension 

As a society, we see discourse communities in everyday life that go completely unnoticed. Two major discourse communities that are very prevalent in todays world is the battle of the sexes. The way people interact with each other almost always relates back to gender. The way that males might communicate with other males is completely different from how they would talk to females. This is a part of life, I mean after all, opposing sexes are mentally wired differently. It is common knowledge and even science has proven this fact. However, this causes for an extreme amount of tension between sexes. Although this tension sometimes goes unnoticed, in my high school it was hard to ignore.

As I walked into high school on my first day, one of the first major differences from middle school were our principals. Not only was my principal and vice principal now both women, but they both were also lesbian. Going to a high school everyday where I had principals that were women who were openly lesbian was a different vibe then what I was normally used to. Now I had no problem with this fact, however it was just going to be different than having a male principal which was what I was normally used to. The discipline might be different, they might have different agendas and rules to follow and also might be a lot more sensitive toward different topics than a male would. Although, many would believe there would be no difference compared to a male principal, it had a huge impact on the types of activities our school would partake in. Many times women and their rights would be promoted throughout the school through posters and other media that students would view throughout the school. It seemed ironic to me how they were talking about how women are oppressed yet they hold the highest position of power in the institution which was the high school. Even the teachers were predominantly female which causes some major discourse issues when attempting to have class discussions. As a male in the school I felt as if I was overruled many times in classrooms simply because females, including the teachers, would automatically team up on an argument I had proposed. I felt like I wasn't able to show who I was as a person because women would always portray the men in the classrooms as less mature and in effect, not as intelligent. Although us guys would sometimes say stupid things I'll admit, in high school we were extremely limited in talking out as compared to women. Girls would always get first dibs on anything we did, and every view in all of my history or sociology classes would always end up on how women are oppressed and how they need more attention, higher wages and equality. Although they are correct to a degree, I believe that it could be toned down a bit. This expression of views would just make the men in the school angered, and more likely to poke fun at women as a gender. Women need to be heard I agree, however in a public school setting, it only allows for a bigger polarization of sexes.

A girl in my class had an idea shortly after the super bowl commercial that was released by the female hygiene company, Always, which expressed how the saying 'you throw like a girl' is offensive. Her idea was to express this throughout the school as well. This girl then created an Instagram account which asked all girls to submit a picture of them playing a sport, or doing something they love. These pictures were all then compiled into one huge collage which was titled 'We Throw Like Girls' in the library. The saying is looked down upon by women because it teaches society that throwing like a girl is a bad thing. Now although this is true, there are also things in society that oppose men as well. Societal norms teach men that they need to act a certain way to be successful and there are many things that make us feel confined to this notion as well yet there is no campaign for that. Men like myself throughout our high school were fed up with all of the pointless attention only women were getting in the school. Because of this, many guys lashed out on this girls Instagram, offending some sensitive women by simply stating their mind. These posts were immediately brought to the attention of our principal who even called the gentlemen who made the comments down to her office. It seems quite unfair how someone who was only stating his mind in an argument can get disciplined for doing so. People nowadays are so sensitive to everything we do as a result of growing up in a sheltered environment like this one. The genders became so polarized throughout the school that people would be getting in arguments about gender everyday. It got to the point where guys would even argue that cheerleading isn't a sport just to rile up the girls even more. This led to hatred and would create a barrier between the two sexes that nobody was prepared for.

Instead of creating more polarization by promoting one gender, we should be promoting equality and how both genders are able to do whatever they set their mind to. No one gender is superior to the other and we need to see this. We should take notice of certain things in society that do oppose one gender, however we need to see the other side of the argument as well and see that standards in society are created for both genders. There is still a standard of men to be looked at as the leader of the house and for the woman to be the stay at home mom to take care of the house and kids. This standard in general needs to be challenged and in order to create change, bring awareness to the bigger picture. Awareness to only one side, will only create for more tension between the genders. Being in this environment really opened my eyes to the effects of tension between two discourse communities and how everyday these communities clash. We need to be able to come together to recognize the differences and problems with each community and be able to get past them in order to solve collective action problems between the discourse communities.

Gender in an institution, such as a high school, facilitates power through the organization and creates tension, and discourse problems among members. According to Karen Lee Ashcraft's Gender, Discourse and Organization: Framing a Shifting Relationship, within David Grants The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Discourse, discourse is "an outcome or reflection of one's gender identity" where "discourse becomes a vehicle of self expression" (Grant 276). Communicating automatically establishes our gender and self expression without us even realizing it. This is completely natural and until we realize this, the tension between genders will never go away.

One of the most famous movies of all time shows these communities in dissonance throughout, as well as exploits the common roles each gender typically plays especially in an institution such as a high school. The 1978 movie Grease shows how people, especially in high school, find their own group usually of the same gender that stick together. Typically, they are always at odds with another group usually of another gender where there are often discourse problems that create for even bigger problems for each other. For example in this clip, Grease Gender Discourse, Danny Zuko, the leader of his gang the T-Birds, fell in love with Sandy over the summer who is apart of the Pink Ladies. However, now that Zuko is in front of the gender groups he needs to keep his reputation in tact and is willing to sacrifice his relationship to seem cool and apart of his group. He starts off excited to see her however, after realizing that the guys were watching he immediately started acting cool and not caring about her presence. This is a shallow tactic, although he seems to regret his decision by the end, his decision already caused more tension between the gender groups. This movie is a great example of tension between gender discourse communities in an institution especially a high school. It is so easy to get caught up with the differences between gender which is shown a lot throughout Grease. Even the moral is quite oppressive towards women. The movie shows how in order for a woman to get the man she needs to change for him. This is a terrible moral and highlights the polarization of genders even more.

Although in my situation women seemed to be the dominant force, men seemed to be the much more prevailing force throughout Grease. Both perspectives are wrong and unjust. People tend to get hurt when you make generalizations based off of their gender. This is just part of the way we had grown up as this tension between discourse communities is even written in our history books. We see this tension throughout everything we do. We have tendencies to think that because we are a certain gender, it means that we shouldn’t be confined to what the standards are that are set to that gender. However, we need to see that these standards will always be there. Men will always be looked at as the one who needs to get a job and deal with the pressure that comes with the responsibility of his role as family provider which is shown in the play written by Arthur Miller, The Death of a Salesman. The husband Willy Lohman is put under so much pressure to support his family that he ultimately commits suicide. Many times, we fail to recognize this side of the gender perspective and usually just see how women are confined to their role as housekeeper and family caretaker. However, if a man is a stay-at-home-dad, he is looked at as someone who is weak and cannot provide for his family. It truly does work both ways and these generalizations will not get better until we, as a society, find a balance between gender communities. It is general knowledge that there will always be dissonance between men and women. This is why we have to try and find a happy medium of this dissonance and make sure one side isn’t oppressing the other. Although equality is hard to achieve, we can get pretty close if we notice that when we communicate, people express their gender through the terminology and discourse that they use. We also need to take note of the differences between communities and be accepting of them. Especially in an institution like high school, gender discourse problems can cause a nightmare that nobody wants to address. However, it is still necessary to address them directly if we want to truly create change and bring about equality between communities.