Value of Research Writing

This type of writing course is far better, as I can see it, for engineers then an regular english/writing class. Research driven writing is a large part of what engineers do in grant writing, undergrad/grad research proposals, and peer reviewed publications of completed research. It only took me....14 weeks into the semester to realize how useful this course was going to be? I had no idea how to write an actual research proposal coming into this semseter and having this course from the outset will help me tremondously as an engineer.

Engineers, beware, this is only the start of your research writing!

Success!!!!

Finally a breakthrough!! After 3 weeks of mental block on the the revision of my essay the 2nd Major assignment I finally found an angle on the subject that I could talk about. I decided to talk about societies and how their ideals create their ideas of what a hero are. I think it turned out well. Now to await feedback......

Letter Genre

So far for my genre, an action letter, I have found mostly format related items. I haven't exactly found a matching letter format though a similar letter type would be a complaint letter. A complaint letter has the opposite end in view, instead of a positive action they want an action on an activity they don't like. I'm not sure if "letter" is the best way to describe my piece but my roommate is going to kill me if I don't get to bed soon because it's 0200 on Wednesday and we have to get up at 0650. I shall find more and decide whether or not to stick with the letter genre later today when I get up in a couple hours.

My life has devolved into a series of naps.......

Inititating Action

I think My initiating action (IA) will be on introducing Medal of Honor Recipients to schools. It may be a speech format but that could change. I will be rewriting the essay at the same time so the IA may change a little depending on what I use in the essay.

At class I found out how much people don't know about the Medal of Honor. I need to address this issue first or people won't really understand how important the Medal actually is and I will have a hard time convincing them it's a worthwhile project to undertake.

So that is the first idea I have and the finished product might look different.

Response to esssay feedback from Prof Scott

hmmmm

Well Apparently I can write a good starter speech, but not an essay. I need to rewrite the essay and focus in one of the questions I ask in the essay and use that as my subject and change my audience as well.

I think I will rewrite the essay before I turn in the Portfolio and also change the direction of my final Project. The essay will be on "What Makes a Hero?" And I think the Final Paper will be a letter or speech, I haven't decided, on intorducing the Medal of honor Recipients and how they can speak at schools or events.

Thoughts on Writing and the weather

I'm contemplating a theory that relates your emotions and writing with the weather. I'm sitting here at my desk and the skies have gotten darker and the clouds have gotten lower all day and I am in a gloomy attitude with not much motivation to do Homework. I think that when the weather is bad people don't want to write about happy events so they write gloomy tales of having hours of drill and sad country songs. Unfortunately for the world Poe only wrote when it was storming. This property is the inverse of the Reading property that says when the weather outside is frightful you want a good long book, a blanket, a comfortable chair and a crackling fire on the hearth.

Corrective actions at VT

There is no AC in the majority of dorms on Campus. How do we correct this? Contact the RA's to find out contact info and send emails to Housing and Dining Services to ask why the improvements to the dorms have not been made. Also sending a petition around on the VT survey system would reach everyone on the campus systems. This would allow the university to see how many students want the AC dorms.

There are no thermostats in the rooms to regulate climate control systems. The initial costs to the upgrades would be large but the long term savings on the more efficient dorms would counter these initial costs.