Dear Leslie Wolcott,
In the course of the semester we were forced to challenge the field of our choice and put learn about through various different
assignments. First you gave what I liked to call the mock assignment since it was the easiest and well shortest of the semester which was the literacy review. With that assignment you began to teach us how to think about writing as more than simply writing and bout literacy as more than just simply knowing how to read and write. This assignment in my opinion opened up my way of thinking and got me ready to continue onto greater and more challenging papers. But I guess like the saying goes be careful what you wish for.
Of course the next assignment was a lot more challenging in this one it became apparent that the field of our choice was going to become all we
read about for the rest of the semester. Of course as you know by now the field I chose was Public Relations. Once I chose the focus that I wanted to
pursue you pushed us even further into not simply accepting the field as it is but into categorizing into what is called a discourse community.
We did so and then we wrote a little something I like to call genre analysis. Probably the hardest paper I ever had to write and it wasn’t even the longest. It was hard because the concepts you wanted us to grasp were so foreign that not even Devitt or Swales could help me understand them.
It was only when I was actually forced to write the genre analysis that it all made sense to me how a discourse community is born out of a genre and how its important to understand that a genre isn’t just the typical category that we were so used to hearing about ever since the first grade.
Of course even though it all clicked in some sort of weird way as I submitted my paper I became nervous for what my grade would be and to my
surprise I did very well on it. Of course I went through the process of editing and I even had one of my peers who isn’t in the class read it to hear an outsiders opinion and his exact words were “so we have been lied to all of our life a genre isn’t just a category” and I said yea that pretty much it.
Following the genre analysis was the most daunting assignment I have ever had. It was an annotated bibliography and if I do recall correctly you said “you will have to read over scholarly articles or journals in your field and then synthesize each one into a comprehensible summary of the most important points. Well once I heard thirty I freaked out I thought to myself how in the world will I ever do that. Well by going online and reading. While doing the annotated bibliography learned how to use the school database which was most helpful but only that but I learned how to read for research for the first time. As I read and learned more about the issues with ethics in the field of public relations I realized that every researcher has very similar things to say
and I began to make connections. ME MYSELF AND I, I had no help from anyone else except for guidance from you but other than that I was really doing legitimate research on my own. I think this was the most rewarding assignment because at end of it felt like I could talk about the issues I read
about and have some real facts to back up my arguments.
Now of course the learning process didn’t just stop with what I felt was the objective of the class which was to teach us how to research and
make connections I the research. After that was done and I felt like I had conquered the 1102 class we then had to use the research we had already conducted and write a literary analysis of it. A what? Who? That’s what I said when I heard what the next assignment was. The lit analysis even though it had an intimidating name was actually less challenging than what I expected it to be. And now as I reflect on the assignment I realize that the reason why it felt less challenging was because you had already provided me with the tools I needed and I already had the knowledge on the field so all I needed to do was apply it. In a way it all tied back up to our first assignment the literacy narrative because I feel like throughout the semester and through the course of the assignments I became literate in yet another language. I learned the language of good research and writing and the ability to become a part of a discourse community and not just be a sideline member but be actively involved in the discussions.
The last and final assignment which derived from everything we learned during the course is the project proposal. Now being literate in the issues with ethics in the field of public relations I realize that it’s ok to step in and speak and even propose what I think would be a good way to solve some of the problems. For my project I decided to make up a survey in which the practitioners within the field will be forced to be hones not by persuasion but simply by the innocence of the way the questions are set up. I didn’t propose to find a solution to the ethical issues in the field of public relations.
What I proposed was to find the root of the problem and then maybe once the root of the problem is identified then it will be possible to identify a
solution.
I do want to take a portion of this letter to simply thank you because I felt that as a professor you did a terrific job. You opened my eyes to a new world of writing and research that I never considered and I believe you provided me with the tools to become a better writer. I hope to use everything I
learned in this class in my career. I now know that the field that I have chosen will hold many challenges for me especially as a new public relations practitioner but I hope that by using tools such as research and discourse I can come to an agreement with the issues that afflict my field and be a very successful and reputable public relations practitioner and hopefully one day the best public relations manager.
In the course of the semester we were forced to challenge the field of our choice and put learn about through various different
assignments. First you gave what I liked to call the mock assignment since it was the easiest and well shortest of the semester which was the literacy review. With that assignment you began to teach us how to think about writing as more than simply writing and bout literacy as more than just simply knowing how to read and write. This assignment in my opinion opened up my way of thinking and got me ready to continue onto greater and more challenging papers. But I guess like the saying goes be careful what you wish for.
Of course the next assignment was a lot more challenging in this one it became apparent that the field of our choice was going to become all we
read about for the rest of the semester. Of course as you know by now the field I chose was Public Relations. Once I chose the focus that I wanted to
pursue you pushed us even further into not simply accepting the field as it is but into categorizing into what is called a discourse community.
We did so and then we wrote a little something I like to call genre analysis. Probably the hardest paper I ever had to write and it wasn’t even the longest. It was hard because the concepts you wanted us to grasp were so foreign that not even Devitt or Swales could help me understand them.
It was only when I was actually forced to write the genre analysis that it all made sense to me how a discourse community is born out of a genre and how its important to understand that a genre isn’t just the typical category that we were so used to hearing about ever since the first grade.
Of course even though it all clicked in some sort of weird way as I submitted my paper I became nervous for what my grade would be and to my
surprise I did very well on it. Of course I went through the process of editing and I even had one of my peers who isn’t in the class read it to hear an outsiders opinion and his exact words were “so we have been lied to all of our life a genre isn’t just a category” and I said yea that pretty much it.
Following the genre analysis was the most daunting assignment I have ever had. It was an annotated bibliography and if I do recall correctly you said “you will have to read over scholarly articles or journals in your field and then synthesize each one into a comprehensible summary of the most important points. Well once I heard thirty I freaked out I thought to myself how in the world will I ever do that. Well by going online and reading. While doing the annotated bibliography learned how to use the school database which was most helpful but only that but I learned how to read for research for the first time. As I read and learned more about the issues with ethics in the field of public relations I realized that every researcher has very similar things to say
and I began to make connections. ME MYSELF AND I, I had no help from anyone else except for guidance from you but other than that I was really doing legitimate research on my own. I think this was the most rewarding assignment because at end of it felt like I could talk about the issues I read
about and have some real facts to back up my arguments.
Now of course the learning process didn’t just stop with what I felt was the objective of the class which was to teach us how to research and
make connections I the research. After that was done and I felt like I had conquered the 1102 class we then had to use the research we had already conducted and write a literary analysis of it. A what? Who? That’s what I said when I heard what the next assignment was. The lit analysis even though it had an intimidating name was actually less challenging than what I expected it to be. And now as I reflect on the assignment I realize that the reason why it felt less challenging was because you had already provided me with the tools I needed and I already had the knowledge on the field so all I needed to do was apply it. In a way it all tied back up to our first assignment the literacy narrative because I feel like throughout the semester and through the course of the assignments I became literate in yet another language. I learned the language of good research and writing and the ability to become a part of a discourse community and not just be a sideline member but be actively involved in the discussions.
The last and final assignment which derived from everything we learned during the course is the project proposal. Now being literate in the issues with ethics in the field of public relations I realize that it’s ok to step in and speak and even propose what I think would be a good way to solve some of the problems. For my project I decided to make up a survey in which the practitioners within the field will be forced to be hones not by persuasion but simply by the innocence of the way the questions are set up. I didn’t propose to find a solution to the ethical issues in the field of public relations.
What I proposed was to find the root of the problem and then maybe once the root of the problem is identified then it will be possible to identify a
solution.
I do want to take a portion of this letter to simply thank you because I felt that as a professor you did a terrific job. You opened my eyes to a new world of writing and research that I never considered and I believe you provided me with the tools to become a better writer. I hope to use everything I
learned in this class in my career. I now know that the field that I have chosen will hold many challenges for me especially as a new public relations practitioner but I hope that by using tools such as research and discourse I can come to an agreement with the issues that afflict my field and be a very successful and reputable public relations practitioner and hopefully one day the best public relations manager.
Sincerely,
Stephanie Ramirez
Stephanie Ramirez