Feedback Letter

After reading Thomas' letter in response to my essay about the Special Olympics, I was reassured that the essay was going in the direction that I intended. I am actually glad that Thomas read my essay because he is the type of audience that I am trying to address, athletes at Virginia Tech. Some of the things that he liked were the relations to sports, and the testimony from a basketball player that struck a chord with him. Thomas understands what it feels like to help the less fortunate, so he knew how important organizations like the Special Olympics are for people who need the help.

Group Workshop Feedback

My introduction included a personal experience and attempted to relate to student athletes. The conclusion tied the idea that student athletes from Virginia Tech can make a positive contribution to the Special Olympics Virginia community. My group was able to identify the topic: persuading Virginia Tech's student athletes to volunteer their time to the organization. They also picked up on my broader theme: that the Special Olympics is able to do so much for other people, but they haven't received as much help, namely, they haven't received enough funding and they could use more volunteers.

I am concerned that my essay may have a too narrow focus, because I found it hard to write 3-1/2 pages. I also felt that I began to stretch some of the ideas, and my essay began to look more superficial than I intended, because I was trying to fill up the space. I am going to try and dig even deeper into the topics that I touched on in my essay.

Criteria for a Good Essay

In class, my group (Skye, Emily, and I) came up with the following criteria:

• The author should sound well informed
• Specific focus/scope
• Descriptive
• Conversational
• It needs a purpose, opinion, audience, and a truly passionate author.
• It must be relatable/appealing
• There should be some form of organization and structure
• No lying

I took some of those ideas and made my Top 10 list of criteria:

1. Conversational: The essay should carry on like a conversation, because an essay needs to flow and is casual.
2. Should answer the question "so what?": This is kind of hard to explain, but here I go. The question "so what?" is asked because in the essay, the author will explain an idea or an event, or a person. But based on that, what should make me care about what was written. I think to put it simply, the essay must have a message.
3. Has a distinct purpose: The author should use the purpose to focus the essay. Slight digressions are allowed if they somehow help accomplish the purpose.
4. Uses appropriate language/vocabulary: The language should convey tone and take into account the audience (what they may or may not already know).
   
5. Engages the reader without losing credibility or truthfulness: We talked about stretching the truth in order to keep the story interesting; I believe that the essay has some discretion but the essay cannot steer to far from the truth.
6. It should convince the reader to strongly consider the thoughts of the author: Since the essay I am writing is a persuasive/informative one I thought this was important.
7. It should inform: The information should come across clearly and it should not confuse the reader. Informing people is not only the act of giving out information, but also making sure that the information is understood.
8. The essay should flow freely: The essay is not pinned down to a specific structure or way of organizing, as long as it fulfills its purpose (there still needs to be some form of structure).
9. It needs to consider it audience: Along with choice of language, the essay must try to relate to the audience in some way, because that makes the essay stronger.
10. It should find new or interesting ideas: The essay can be an exploration in search of ideas. The essay should bring up things that have not been brought up, or interesting to consider.

Good Essays

So there is a new mysterious definition of essay lurking out there, making us uncomfortable with the structured essays we were taught to write. After reading Encountering the Essay and Essayists on the Essay I realized that an essay has a little more to it than at first glance. The readings essentially said the same thing and that an essay doesn't have precise definition or a structure. An essay is, however, a casual, personal, audience-aware, and thoughtful piece of writing. In the readings an extremely interesting idea was brought to my attention: that the essay should read like the thoughts of the author. Namely, the essay should read as if the author is thinking through his ideas in the essay (coming to conclusions, struggling to understand ideas, or progressing through paths of logic). Also, a good essay needs to include the voice of the author in the writing; the essay is a conversation between the author and the reader. That means that the author needs to make sure to consider what the audience may know, or may not know, in order converse with the reader without confusing him. The essay is highly based on opinion and the observations that the author makes and the conclusions he draws from them.

In order to make the essay that I'm writing about the Special Olympics a good essay, I need to create a conversation with the reader by including my voice--this can be achieved by including personal experiences that the reader can relate to or by simply including the first-person perspective to the essay. I think that this would be a huge step towards making my essay "good". Also, since an essay needs to consider the audience, I decided that I would further specify the purpose and audience of my essay. I am going relate my experiences as an athlete to the athletes of the Special Olympics, and try to convince other athletes to contribute their efforts to the Special Olympics organization. In order to write this essay I need to make it informative, relatable, and most importantly persuasive. I will try to inform people of the different ways that they can get involved as well as reveal what others have said about the organization.

An essay doesn't have a specific structure; it can be written in thousands of ways. A good essay can be pinned down to an essay that portrays and personal viewpoint that includes the authors voice, considers the audience, and has a clear purpose.

Research Proposal Feedback

When I sent my email, containing my paper, I wasn't sure what to expect when I got it back. Most of my English teachers required us to hand in a hard copy for them to mark-up in red or green ink. I wasn't sure how I was going to get feedback on my paper. Well, to my surprise I got a play-by-play response from Grete.

I got a lot of feedback about the MLA format and since this is maybe my second or third time dealing with it. (block quote formatting, quote formatting, works cited section, etc.) I also got some interesting feedback about how to present the problems section and the proposed solutions (results) section. I also think I can go into more detail about the specific materials/resources that I need to complete my project. For example, since I am asking for money from the Kennedy Foundation, I intend to include a budget breakdown of how much money I will need and how I'm going to spend it. For my problems section, I am going to include all the problems, including Blacksburg and the international Special Olympics organization. I also intend to revamp my proposed solutions section, to the present suggestions section, because the research that I am going to conduct is supposed to help me gain more information and help me understand how to attack the problem.

I actually like the comments inside the document because I can revise the document and have the comments right next to it.

Essays

Yes, these essays are a lot different from the essays most of us were taught to write for school. They provide a nice narrative that includes a ton of details in order to convey a message. These essays are a lot like the articles that I've read in magazines like "The New Yorker" so I'm not startled by the way the essay is written. The essay I liked most was "Ali in Havana" because the amount of detail that the author put in was incredible, and everything seemed to help support the themes. For example, when the author describes the restaurant, he describes the people and the surroundings but also imparts the idea that Cuba is a volatile country, yet hundreds of tourists visit it.

"The Stunt Pilot" was my second run-in with Annie Dillard, who wrote "An American Childhood". I love the way she constructs sentences and incorporates detail; it's insane. "The Stunt Pilot" had a better flow than "Ali in Havana" because of Dillard's language and conversational tone kept my eyes moving across the page.

I hope to incorporate these two skills into my own essay writing: 1) including meaningful details and 2) establishing a flow that keeps readers interested and comfortable.

Rewriting: Chapter 5 - Revising

These questions were answered after the conference with Ms. Scott.

What's your project?

In my research proposal I would like to evaluate the problems facing the Special Olympics as well as propose solutions to solve them.

What works?

The proposal presents a substantial background section, but can be cut shorter given the audience. I think it is the strongest section because it is highly informative and provides context.

What else might be said?

I could talk about how exactly I would go about getting the information and begin to propose solutions to the problems outlined in the research proposal.

What's next?

I think that I can add more to the methods section to show the funding agency that the research was well thought out and planned. I added a conclusion and abstract sections to tie up the research proposal.

Various Research Proposal Thoughts

My audience is the people who don't really know much about the Special Olympics. It has been brought up by many volunteers and supporters of the Special Olympics that many people view the Special Olympics as a nice event that happens every year but brush it off. Some of the criticisms that I received in class was that my introduction paragraph had too many numbers in it. Looking over it again, it seemed like I was just throwing facts and figures around, rather than setting the mood for the whole research proposal.

Just recently I found an organization to which I will propose my research, I chose the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation which provides funding for organizations like the Special Olympics. They have charity funds and fundraisers to benefit those who are mentally and physically disabled. During my research, I found that the Special Olympics community needed a jump-start, both in activism and awareness. I felt that by presenting my research to the JPF Foundation I could receive money to initiate an ad campaign to raise awareness of the Special Olympics community's efforts and to change the way that the Special Olympics World Games is presented, i.e. get it televised in the same way as the International Olympic Games.

During my conference I noticed that my Background section seemed long and disorganized, Grete suggested that I use subheadings in my background section to break up the content and organize the information, as well as provide an overview of the information. In my methods section I am going to include the various interviews that I would perform if I had the chance at different levels of the Special Olympics community and the United States Olympic Committee.

I am currently rewriting my paper and I will provide comments on how it turned out.