#tw2023

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Welcome to my portfolio!

My name is Njideka Maduakor, I prefer to be called Jiji. This Blog is a writing portfolio for the course Tech Writing Eng 009 in Howard University.

Please make your way to the navigation bar at the top.

Directory: Direct links to every project worked on in this course. Overview: Descriptions of the projects.

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Essay 4 - Internet Resource Guide

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Essay 3 - Job Application Package Resume

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Essay 2 Woodlawn Planation Proposal

To: Shawn Halifax, Executive Director of Woodlawn Plantation, Alexandria, Virginia, 

From: Njideka Maduakor, Sophomore Biology Major Chem Minor,  Howard University, 

Washington, DC 

Date: February 27, 2022

Subject: Reduce and Reuse. A plan to restructure the Woodlawn Plantation site. 

Purpose: The purpose of this proposal is to recommend first taking a further critical look at the wedding expenses. Then after you have restructured the expenses of the site, replace it with whatever revenue is absolutely necessary to keep the plantation in good standing, financially and morally. By transitioning away from weddings over the course of a few years, Woodlawn site coordinators can evaluate the cost of maintenance and potentially replace weddings with an event equivalent-though potentially not as profitable as weddings currently are. 

Problem Description: Shawn Halifax requested Howard University Students in the ENG-009 Tech writing course to propose a solution to replace wedding events on Woodlawn Plantation in Alexandria Virginia. These weddings account for 34% of the plantation's income. Weddings on plantations are problematic. While it is George Washington's estate, it once housed 155 enslaved people. With the majority of the weddings being hosted by white Americans, it is culturally tone deaf to have such a celebration where so much inhumane suffering occurred. Murder, rape, torture, all just some of the horrific things blacks were subjected too on those grounds. Woodlawn’s current mission is to “Engage with our community to preserve history and care for nature at this former site of enslavement…promote sustainable practices, nurture wellbeing, and contribute to community repair.”  Weddings do not align with the mission of the site and in fact- no matter the demographic- is actively against the mission. 

Proposed Solution: I propose a slow and steady approach to the problem. After a discussion with Shawn Halifax, he already expressed interest in looking at requests for weddings with more scrutiny. I do not agree with this potential idea. Instead, start reducing the number of weddings. If 25 weddings are held during the wedding season, next year make it 20, the year after that make it 10, and so on and so forth. As the years pass, assign a cost benefit analyst. Keep track of all the upfront costs, unexpected costs,tangible costs, intangible costs and ongoing or future costs, as well as for the rest of the revenue where that money is being put down.  Finally consider how much of the costs are actually going to the maintenance of the site. Discovering which areas can be as subsidized or reduced. Replacement of weddings can be done with community events, school events, collaborations with Howard, or anything that may be equivalent to whatever costs may be necessary when weddings are gone. Community events could include; Farmers markets or Spotlight nights. School events could include classes, Critical race theory classes, educational tours, or student cleanup projects to help with maintenance.  These events could be run by Woodlawn staff, or have a representative from the community as a way to provide a job position. 

Alternative Solution: The alternative solution is to possibly not remove weddings at all, but as part of your mission to inform and collaborate. Make sure that both the wedding planners and the guests have full understanding of the location. Maybe offer a tour, or a pamphlet encouraging guests to treat the land delicately and send donations of their own accord to your program. Of course this would happen during the wedding, or before the wedding starts so people can contextualize the location. This may help in the future dissuade people from continuing to have weddings at this location. 

Budget and Timeline: Unless a similar position is already filled, a cost benefit analyst will need to be hired, the job pay rate averages from 53k - 103k a year. On to the costs of weddings you will need a full breakdown of where the costs are going. ‘Upkeep’ could be a wide range of things. This plan could stretch between five years, with a reduction of 5 weddings per year, or a seven year plan with a reduction of 3 weddings per year. Woodlawn Plantation operating budget was likely around $1,023,153.21 last year, based on budgets from previous years and accounting for inflation. 34% of that money is equivalent to $347 872.10 US Dollars.which means if twenty five weddings are hosted, one wedding needs to cover $13,914.88. According to eventective.com micro weddings with only 25 guests can cost upwards of $10,000 dollars. Huge weddings with over 300 + guests on average are $25,000 dollars. This potentially signals places where costs could be cut as weddings are slowly reduced, and would need further analysis and full breakdown of operations budgets with the woodlawn board. 

The budget regarding post restructure events will mostly be up to Woodlawn. Though the cost for a ticket to a plantation tour can cost anywhere from 79-100 USD according to similar sites pricing. At the current costs that weddings cover that would require around 3,500 guests a year to match the pricing. It seems unrealistic, but if the budget could be reduced to only need 3,000 or even 2,000 that could create an easier to overcome hurdle. With the amount of weddings hosted, Woodlawn already receives at least 7,000 guests. It is already a popular site in Washington D.C which makes it all the more likely they could sell tickets at that price and still have visitors. 

Experience: I am put in a unique position as a Howard student, that is first generation African American that did not descend from slavery. I was personally appalled by the mere suggestion, even though I have no connection to these sites I can deeply empathize with the feelings of those who were victimized at woodlawn. 

Conclusion: The journey to eliminate a problematic practice is a long one. Replacing weddings with any other events will be difficult, many people would likely not come to a plantation for any other reason. Perhaps with the implementation of this proposal you may be able to delay the search for a suitable replacement. 

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Tech writing Essay 1 - Rhetorical Analysis

Njideka Maduakor Rhetorical Analysis 2/9/2023

In 2003 Valve Corp, may have been ahead of their time creating a revolutionary internet service called the Steam Store. Even now as it approaches its twentieth anniversary it is no secret within the industry that Steam is the biggest name in the market for buying games for home computers and laptops. Steam by Valve Corp. is a website that knows its front page is its most important page, so it uses eye-catching visuals, a strong ethos in the form of web design and formatting that makes the page easy for users to navigate and  developers to advertise their products. 

The first of the convenient and personalized design choices that store.steampowered.com makes, is the advertisement you are greeted with on the front page . The largest image on the front page is a rotation of pictures that are featured products, the colors of said advertisements often contrast with the dark blue colors of the website, though it's unclear if this is intentional or not. Most of the time featured and recommended games are also on sale or recently released which is a usage of pathos, a sale speaks to consumers making them believe they are making a smart purchase. One very subtle thing that the frontpage does that is beneficial to developers and returning users is that the front page advertisements are curated based on your previous purchases. When not logged in, the advertisements are based on overall popular user purchases. Steam Store presents a pleasant, eye catching first impression that benefits both users and publishers whose products are sold on steam.

The design flow of the front page is effective user manipulation. Instead of overwhelming people with information, prices and statistics it provides flashy images and clean design to encourage people to click on these tabs and explore for themselves. The usage of an user algorithm allows people to manage a staggering number of products in the store, creating visibility for only things they are interested in, and potentially creating visibility for products that one might not have seen otherwise due to popularity biases. 

Continuing on the topic of the front page, it has a very logical design flow. Say that you are using a device with HD dimensions (1080 x 1920 px)-through various studies conducted by valve is the most likely device for a user to access a steam store through-the front page is split into two halves. To put it simply; If you are using a standard screen, the front page has two halves that fill the whole screen. At the very top of the screen, backed by a darker color than the rest of the front page, is Steam website specific options. These include; Store, Community, Account, About and Support. Below that is another category bar that is smaller, including easy access to features that likely only avid users will concern themselves with. Below that bar is the featured bar which takes up most of the space in the first half. Then to the far right is a list where you can discover gift card options, more recommendations, discovery queue and browse broad categories. An interesting choice is the fact that the browse categories option continues as you scroll down, but the webpage is designed so that without scrolling, you will see what consumers,devs and valve corporations consider the most important topics, first. 

Even though the site is geared towards consumers, one potential issue is that it's not very clear for game developers who want to distribute their product on how to do so from this website. You have to scroll to the very bottom of the screen in order to even find the join the distribution program option. Even then it does not link you to streams other websites designed specifically for partners, but rather a page explaining the steps you need to take to get published. This is an interesting dilemma, it fits with the idea of not letting the user leave the website, but also is a slight inconvenience for those who are just passing through to reach a less known opportunity. Overall this is a bit of a flaw with the Steam Store, despite being a great host website, it does nothing to help lead people to developers pages or information, in fact sometimes going out of its way to make things like that inaccessible. A plausible reason why they might do this is to not hurt the ethos of the devs or steam itself. By standardizing how games are presented you remove the possibility of allowing the developers to present themselves inappropriately. 

Despite that fact, I still strongly believe that the Steam website does a fantastic job of being useful for people interested in PC gaming, long time gamers and devs who want to distribute their product both independent and major publishers. Steam Store website is cleanly designed. It effectively uses ethos to convince new users to default to their service and pathos to encourage old users to explore the site and continue to discover new games. 

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Final Reflective Essay. 

Njideka Maduakor 

April 27 2023

ENGW-009

Tech writing has given me a new lens on how to construct essay writing. When I started this class, my least favorite part about writing essays was overcoming the grammatical mistakes I make. I think of myself as a writer, mostly doing fiction works and casual writing. I have been in other ENG courses at Howard but I am far from an academic writer. So when I entered technical writing I was nervous that the work we did in this class would be higher level than what I was prepared for.

Throughout the course, we worked on four essay projects. My biggest takeaway from the tech writing course is to consider the assignment carefully. Susan Mockler is very clear about what she wants from our work and provides many good writing tips over several days before the assignment is due. My writing was at its worst when I didn’t address the prompt of the assignment, and my best work was when I covered everything that the assignment asked for. 

To discuss the essays in order. The first assignment was to write a rhetorical analysis of a website. There was so much I missed in that one. I struggle with conveying my thoughts on paper clearly. For this assignment, I picked a website I was personally knowledgeable about. This led to my analysis of the website being biased, the usage of terminology that the average person would not understand. Still, I received a passing grade on the assignment, but not an A like I had wanted. 

So I pulled up my bootstraps and hauled myself over to the writing center as we started on our second assignment; A Proposal to Woodlawn Plantation. This assignment was a tough one. We were being asked to propose a solution to a financial problem. The topic was also particularly sensitive, as it involved whether or not plantation weddings should be held. Working in the writing center was a breath of fresh air for me. Not every teacher has all the time in the world to look over your work. One representative dedicating 45 minutes to helping you produce something more meaningful made me rethink my writing altogether. Thus the essay that I was originally hitting my head against the wall for, became so much easier to compose. 

The third essay was a bit of a break for me, we were tasked to make a job application package. I had already been applying to jobs over the course of winter break. I practically had a resume and several cover letters already composed. So this project allowed me to refine the writing I had already done. Which was likely for the better as it left me with a much better resume to continue job applications with. I enjoyed this assignment quite a bit as it was the most relevant one to me at the moment. 

Finally, we worked on an internet resource guide. I broke the rules on this assignment a little bit, instead of doing my exact major I had done something I was personally interested in. This assignment was my best, both reflected in my grade and my personal feelings about how I presented it. I worked with great care to follow the guidelines for the assignment. I also had a very insightful peer review session for this assignment. 

Tech Writing has probably been the most challenging, thought-provoking, and useful writing course I have ever taken. Many of the skills I learned through this course have been able to apply to other areas of my life. The teacher was very understanding, professional, and patient. I am also personally proud of the growth I have had throughout the semester.