Discover Top Posts Tagged with #careerdiscourse

Career Discourse #1:

A. Please choose and describe a founding figure or invention, a key concept, problem, or object of analysis in the disciplinary domain in which you would like to teach writing. Choose an image that you have a strong connection with, that you strongly identify with, even if you have never thought deeply about why you are compelled by this thing. In your description, please first help your readers understand what that thing is and then freewrite about what you find intriguing, fascinating, stimulating, inspiring, motivating (etc.) about this thing.

One of the most interesting objects in the world is a ball and more specifically a baseball. A baseball is a small round object that weighs less than a pound and is fired towards men trying to hit it as far as possible. The seams on the ball allow for crazy movement depending on the grip that the pitcher uses. My whole life has revolved around baseball and the Phillies as my first word was ball. This object is able to cause such emotional swings by being thrown just once. There is so much meaning in every pitch and the ball being thrown starts it all. What is mind-boggling to me as well as many others, is the ability that some people have to put crazy movement when pitching. It is an experience to watch the ball whirl and curve every which way. The way at which a ball thrown close to 90 miles per hour can curve is crazy to fathom. Every pitch has different movement and the fact that by just holding the ball in different ways causes change is crazy. The way in which the ball can fly 400 plus feet off of people swinging a bat amazes me as well. Even with an excellent understanding of the sport I am still in awe of seeing a ball “drop off a table” from “12 o’clock to 6 o’clock” baffling batters as well as some umpires. As more advanced statistics come out such as spin rate, we can understand more about how one can put so much movement on a small ball from only 60 feet 6 inches away. It is a mind bending experience to watch the best balls being thrown and for this, it is an object that I strongly identify with.

#careerdiscourse #baseball

Career Discourse #1

C. Please choose and describe an educational scene (positive or negative, odd or typical) in which you experienced an epiphany or moment of insight during your childhood. Narrate in detail the setting, characters, plot, and mood and then share insights you may have had during or after that moment as well as those you may have looking back on that moment.

My older sister, Jordan, and I are seven years apart. Ever since she was twelve, she was constantly in and out of the hospital for numerous issues which included Uterine Didelphys and Endometriosis. She was constantly having surgeries and as a five year old, I really did not understand what was going on. By the time I was eight, I had spent more time in a hospital then I had on the playground. I truly started to see the impact it had on my family and how unhappy my sister was. I would do anything to cheer her up, which included getting her a new lip gloss from the gift shop or just sitting by her side. The hospital environment was always so hectic and I truly admired the nurses, they made sure the patient was comfortable and that meant so much to me because I just wanted what was best for my sister. I saw the difference it made in her recoveries from surgery between a good nurse and one who didn’t really care.

After her fourth surgery and a week stay in the hospital, she was coming home and I was so excited! I made her a little bed on the couch, brought all her favorite movies downstairs, made sure she had all her favorite snacks, and a pad to write down what time she took her medicine. I stayed by her side until she was better, always making sure she was comfortable. It is this time she told me, “You have a very bright future ahead of you and you can be anything you want in the world but I believe you would be the best nurse when you’re older. I’ve never seen someone so compassionate, you can really change someone’s life.”

Ever since that day I have wanted to be a nurse. I want to be able to change someone’s life for the better, no matter the horrible circumstances they’re under. It’s always the little things that can impact someone in such a big way. My sister referred to me as her little nurse but one day I will be a real nurse and I hope to impact my patients lives as much as I impacted my sisters. It is because of my sister and how strong she has been through everything that inspires me to keep going no matter what gets me down.

#careerdiscourse

Career Discourse

The glowing blank screen of a computer is both a foundational invention and a core problem or obstacle that writers must strive to overcome. For those who would compose, it is a great boon and it is an ominous pandora’s box. On the more positive side, the blank screen means that writers have an endless canvas on which to compose. However, that same endless canvas can be intimidating and paralyzing.

Prior to the introduction of digital technology, endless blank space did not dominate the mind of the writer. Writing technologies before the digital respected and acknowledged that all composition has an end. While paper and similar substances (papyrus, vellum) are essentially the embodiment of blank space, they do not continue endlessly. All notebooks have a last page, and even the longest scroll has a final edge. Regardless of the work a writer sets out to compose, the metaphorical end is physically in sight, because the paper has readily apparent boundaries. The typewriter does an even better job of not assaulting the writer with ominous blankness. While It utilizes physical paper as a part of its mechanism, it hides it from the writer, thus doing away with the negative qualities of paper as a physical manifestation of blankness. Additionally, it retains paper’s positive qualities. The great benefit of paper is that while it manifests blankness, it also manifests the end. This quality is not absent from the typewriter, as the writer sees the end as they load the paper into the machine.

Ensuring that the end is not obscured is a great quality for any writing instrument to have. With the end in sight, the writer understands that their labor is not eternal. This is not to imply that human beings are incapable of understanding that a work may achieve completion even if the canvas stretches onward. Obviously, a piece of writing is complete when the author deems it so. What is important here is that there is a physical representation of the end that visibly apparent from the beginning. This “end” does not exist merely as the part of the composition process where the writer ceases to write, but also as the purpose of the writing. In this way, the page and its cessation represent both the means and the end of writing.

Furthermore, the physical substantiality of various types of paper undercuts and dilutes some of their blankness by reinforcing the idea of composition through the composting of an assortment of ideas that have acted on the writer. Again, this is not to say that writers cannot understand this regardless of the medium they employ. Rather, the facts that paper like substances are themselves made out of other things from the world and have the potential to be recycled back into the world serve as reminders that all composition is a form of composting.

The more analog means of composition inherently provide writers with insight about their craft. Digital means require writers to have a firm grasp on those principles. When using digital means of composition, it is easy to forget those principles that paper naturally embodies. There are, however, definite benefits to the glowing blank screen. The endlessness of the writers can be a great force for freedom. It does not confine a piece of composition to any particular length, because it does not limit the composition to the amount of resources at hand. Even when there is a ready supply of paper, the writer is always aware of its being used up. This is not the case with digital technology. No matter how much space a writer uses, there is always more of the endless blank canvas of the blank screen.

#careerdiscourse

Cosmogram

I dream of a handcar on a paper train track that is operated by a typewriter instead of a lever. The handcar moves as I type, but I can get off and walk, too. None of it is lit. It is devoid of blank glowing lcd screens. On the front, where the masthead of a ship would normally be, there is a bust of the bard. Combined in this machine are ideas of freedom, movement, motivation, and composition.

#careerdiscourse

Micro Scene 2

http://electratastic.tumblr.com/post/134124242829/memory-illumination

I’m relatively calm at the moment, but circumstances are staging a determined siege against my mental defenses. My boss is detached and absent. She doesn’t really care about the mistakes I’m pointing out.

The book of orders is open in front of me to today’s page. Yesterday, my boss made labels for all of the various orders of pastries that we need to have ready at some point today. I point out the 5th discrepancy I’ve found.

“Oh. Sorry,” She replies.

I clench my jaw and continue to box up the orders. Anybody else might have simply read the labels that had been prepped, but by double checking them, I managed to avoid mistakes with the potential to seriously upset a customer.

As I stew about the injustice of my boss making more mistakes than me and the lack of recognition of that fact, the incredible ridiculousness of my irritation hits me. I’m ascribing a ludicrous amount of significance to my actions in a small bakery.

I look out the window and see a train barreling down the track behind the bakery. There is so much movement. The contrast of my own stagnant position and the train’s motion is stark. In movement there is significance.

#careerdiscourse

Frederick Douglas

Hours spent staring at a blank white screen in attempts at composition are inseparable from youtube videos sought out either to find motivation or to numb the pain of its absence. The memories are linked because the same machine is used to attain them. It’s very possible that I associate composition with despondency because the act of composition comes hand in hand with activities that I associate with boredom and un-motivation. The blank screen looms larger because of the motivation substitutes it provides.

http://electratastic.tumblr.com/post/134122820099/decision-scene-laziness-inaction-and

http://electratastic.tumblr.com/post/132488261714/composition-anti-definition-the-time-is-2am-and

#careerdiscourse

Composition: anti-definition.

The time is 2am and I have no intention of going to bed or having fun. I will stare at this screen until it wins, or I do. In order to fill the pages in front of me with meaningful words, I must first convince myself that it will be easier for at night, after multiple pots of coffee. Eventually, I will have created something, but first I will lament the creativity-stifling qualities of my kitchen table.

Composition is hours spent staring at screens: the one that covers my window and the one that glows in front of me, covering the window to something else (see subsequent post). Putting my fingers to the keys is like leaping from a diving board 25 feet above the water and I am in control every inch of the way down. I can stop and start again when I want to, and often the starting is hard, because when I reach the bottom, the water does what it wants, and I must fight. I ride the swells, glide down the backs of waves, and drift when the wind and the water are still to arrive

at an ocean

of text. All mine.

#careerdiscourse

Ulmer Excercise: Term Extension

Composition in a Garden

Composite conglomeration

attracts worms and mildew to coalesce

into firmness.

The site

where I dump

orchestral skeletons ferments

with leftovers.