Some Light Reading for Ya
WRIT 1122
Major Assignment 2 (Essay Radical Revision)
This particular remix assignment asked us to take an existing essay, and then create a “cover version” of it. The purpose of this is to use pre-existing content and use it as either a structural or an idealist framework to create our own contribution to the greater rhetorical context. I chose to take a feminist essay by Rebecca Sonlit’s titled “Men Explain Things to Me,” and used it to create, “Men Explain Power Dynamics to Me.” This was my first go at writing a piece that speaks to my experience as a woman, and let me tell you, it lit a fire in me that has yet to cease.
Conservation Biology
Climate Change Lab
The Climate Change report is from the lab component of Conservation Biology, where we were asked to choose a wildflower that can be found in Colorado and research it’s flowering dates over time. Because many plant species are cued to bloom by warming temperatures, you can see how researching this specific plant action ties into climate change research. After the submission of our labs, we had the chance to revise them, and submit them for publication in the DU Undergraduate Research Journal, to which me and my lab partner’s reports were accepted (humble brag).
Diverse Rhetorics
Seminar Paper
For the Seminar Paper, a specific rhetorical tradition became our focus, and was followed up with a thesis-based research paper that furthered our understanding into the tradition. By using outside sources, specific questions were able to be asked, and while answers cannot always be found, knowledge is a beast constantly changing and growing. I found this assignment to be a sweet spot between my biology major and the writing minor because of the thesis driven research paper format, which mirrored very much how hypothesis driven lab writeups feel to me.
​
Theories of Writing
Writerly Identity
The piece on writerly identity speaks to what the underlying theme of the course was all along. Theory is pretty useless unless it is implemented into your own writing in your own way. This assignment focused solely on that, asking us to explore who we are as writers, what holds us back, what influences our voice, how does our identity come through in our writing. What do we need to write, what is our process, what makes us tick as writers? These are all questions that went into the answering of the question of writerly identity.
Memoir and Personal Writing
Personal Essay (Radically Revised)
For the Memoir Essay, questions were the driving force of the writing. Rather than choosing exactly what we wanted to write about, we choose a topic and a question, and let the writing lead us to the conclusion. This was done by finding a lens, leaning into reflection and scene work, and ultimately writing something that made the deeply personal universal (that’s the hope at least).​
Writing Design and Circulation
Radical Revision
Ahh yes, the final true writing assignment of my college career, what a time to be alive. For this, the challenge was to take a piece written here for a class at DU and then revise it in a way that would transport it into another writing ecosystem. This could be a transformation from academic to professional, civic (meaning writing for public good, politics, or informing the populace), into something for the popular audience (think more entertainment or generally informational). The purpose of this is to play with the rhetorical situation and flex the muscle of being able to write for any audience, increasing the “use-value” of a specific idea if you will. For me, I decided to take my capstone presentation I made for Ecology of the Rockies, which took a look at regrowth 20 years after the Hayman fire, and wrote a creative nonfiction piece on trauma.
​
