Final Blog

Overall, I wish I would have done the other form of internship rather than the group tutorial version I did. The type of work we were doing seemed very remedial and wasn't what I was expecting. Also, it didn't seem to be taken very seriously by the group. When we would split into our two separate groups to revise each others writing, we would basically just say yes or no. For example, for the parts that asked whether the paper did or didn't follow the assignment and whether or not it stayed focused, we would simply say yes and move on to the next paper. My personal experience was fairly negative. I feel I would have chosen to stay more engaged if I felt as though the work I was doing was actually helping me improve.

As for the final portfolio, I've got all my work completed, I just need to transfer it to my webpage I have created. I'm very close to finishing it and publishing the finished product. Also, I'm completely fine with Beth using my paper if she'd like. I'm fine if my name is on it as well. Considering it could help someone else, I might as well claim a little credit!

Blog 11

                                PO Box 647204         
                                Pullman, Washington 99164-7204

                                March 20, 2013

Ms. Georgia Martinell
Executive Director, Second Chance Animal
P.O. Box 1822
Orofino, ID 83544

Dear Ms. Martinell:

     My name is Joshua Perry, and I am currently working on a group project that is being completed for an English class at Washington State University. We have been working on a detailed revision of your organization’s website, as well as brainstorming many different ideas to improve Second Chance Animal’s donation and volunteer turnouts.  My group and I have come up with a few recommendations that we believe would be very beneficial to Second Chance Animal. I’m writing this letter to inform you about what we believe is working well with your non-profit organization, as well as what could possibly be improved to ensure your organization continues to grow and meet its future goals.

     The first issue our group noticed about your website is that it is fairly difficult to find how and where we would be able to help donate or volunteer. Once we finally found the section that explains what to do if we wanted to volunteer, there was little to no explanation about what opportunities are available. We believe a good option for this situation would be to place the most valuable information on your homepage. A link that connects to all of the volunteer information would be incredibly beneficial. This could let the audience know what kinds of opportunities are available, as well as when they would take place. It is somewhat inconvenient to make people attend a meeting that only takes place twice a month to find out how they can contribute. These changes may help you receive a much better turnout if all this information was available in a simple and noticeable location on your website rather than at the very bottom of a page of photos. 

          Another issue our group noticed was the difficulty in finding out where to donate goods to Second Chance Animal. Since the only way to donate is by contacting you and meeting with you to drop off the food, it may be inconvenient for some. It’s difficult to make a quick donation of food when there is nowhere to drop it off. Especially when the times that are convenient for you and the individual who is donating may conflict with one-another’s schedules. We know that money is a definite issue, and that finding an “office” location is overly expensive. A great alternative to this could be talking to a location that you already have business connections with and seeing if you could rent out a spot to place a drop-off bin. People would be much more inclined to donating if it was as simple as throwing a can of dog food or a toy in an oversized mailbox. This way, whether you’re busy or not, people who want to make a donation can do so without taking up your time. Placing the location of your drop-off bin in flyers, on your website, and other forms of media would get the word out and our group is positive you would receive a much larger number of contributions.

          We did like how your organization hosts the variety of fund raising events in order to bring in more donations and raise awareness about what Second Chance Animal does. Having photos of these events on your website is a wonderful way of showing how community-oriented Second Chance animal is, as well as showing people what to expect if they choose to attend. Also, the choice of photos seems to be far more effective than other animal based media we have seen. They portray exactly what Second Chance Animal is trying to do. Photos such as the ones of your volunteers building dog houses are incredibly inspiring. By avoiding the use of heartbreaking photos of abused animals, it seems Second Chance Animal will be able to get a much more productive reaction from your audience.

          We want to thank you for taking the time to look over our recommendations and giving us a chance to help spread the word about your selfless organization. Our group has enjoyed getting to learn about Second Chance Animal and all of the wonderful things the organization aims to do. If you have any questions about any of our recommendations, or would like to contact us for any other forms of support, we can be reached at joshua.perry@email.wsu.edu. Thanks again for your time.

Sincerely,





Joshua Perry, Cody Cameron, Kyle Schneiders


The formatting got a little messed up when I pasted the letter into this blog, but the actual letter will be properly formatted. For the presentation, I am going to explain the purpose of the letter. I'll let Georgia know it is intended to show a few recommendations our group came up with that may improve their organization, as well as how certain aspects are working well and should probably be left the way they are. It will basically be a brief introduction to her about what to expect when reading this letter.

Blog 8

Part 1:
In our class today we didn't end up doing a "mid-term." Instead, we did a 'quick write' where we were given a sentence, and then we had to build from it for an allotted amount of time. Once our time was up, we passed our papers to the right, and continued the other persons paper for the next time frame. We kept rotating our papers until we got our own back, and then we had to explain whether it stayed on topic and maintained a specific focus. The portion that is italicized is my portion of the writing, and the rest was done by the rest of our class.

It is raining. Fortunately I will be in Miami in a couple weeks for spring break and will be enjoying the heat! Last time I got to enjoy the warm weather was far too long ago, so the excitement of being in beach weather has been progressively building since I booked the trip. The original plan was to go to Vegas with a large group of friends, and the day before we planned on booking the trip we all had a change of heart. Rather than blowing all of our money at the casinos, we’ll be spending it on cold drinks and fake cuban cigars. We will be able to sit on the beach and soak up the sun. Not many people get to do this, this time of year. Especially cause its spring break there may be more students my age that may be thinking the same thing as me. But at the same time it could be nice to have people there the same age as me doing the exact same thing. We will have something in common and be able to have twice as much fun getting to meet people from different schools around the country. However just the thought of being on a beach where the weather is warm and away from cold and snowy Pullman is all that matters. For a week no thought will go into how many layers to wear and whether or not to wear snow boats or regular shoes. The only things on my mind will be the nice weather and the thought of drinking some ice cold beers at the beach as I forget about everything else.

This paper definitely seemed to stay on topic. It also seemed to flow quite nicely after a quick read through. For the proof reading there is just a few things. One example is the word cause being used instead of because.


Part 2:
My group has decided to do the educational tri-fold. We are just waiting to receive the tri-fold that has already been made so we can discuss what needs to be fixed and what is already working well. Since it is an educational tri-fold, the basic information that will be included is 2nd Chance Animal's mission statement, a few interesting facts to hold the readers interest, and then a section on what they can do to help (i.e. volunteer work, donations, etc.) Until we receive the already completed tri-fold, we won't really be able to split up what portions we will be individually working on because we don't know what needs to be fixed yet. Hopefully we'll have it by Monday!

Blog 6

Part 1:

The writing tutorial this week was basically the exact same as last week. Each group member brought in a piece of writing from a different class; we split into our two separate groups and began revising. Once we finished our revisions, we discussed why we made the changes we did with everyone and then moved on to the next set of papers.

Part 2:

The Securities Commission is New Zealand’s main regulator of investments. The Securities Commission was created under the Securities Act of 1978., It and it is an independent crown entity. The Commission is required to cooperate with overseas security commissions, advise the Minister of Commerce on conduct rules proposed by security exchanges, and to promote public understanding of the law and practice of securities, among a variety of other things. In order to be able to perform all of these functions, the commission is given numerous powers. They can receive evidence regarding security law a practices, cancel or suspend registered prospects, as well as carry out inspections, as recommend future regulatory ideas. By having these securities enforced, it ensures outside states that they can be confident when trading with, and investing with, the country of New Zealand (Securities Commission, 2009).

Part 3:

For the paragraph I decided to revise, I mostly added some transitions to make the sentences flow a little better. The first revision I made simply added a  ', and' in order to make it a compound sentence. For my second revision, I decided to cut out some unneeded information and add a transitional phrase to bring some closure to the sentence. Overall this chapter didn't confuse me in any way. I did like the section on the normalization of sentences though, and how it can make an idea more cohesive.

Blog 5

Part 1:

For my group tutorial this week, I had my first experience with a group paper revision. We were split into two groups, read the papers of the other group, and then proceeded to complete a quick revision. After revising the other groups paper, we would explain what revisions we made and why we made them. The other group would do the same thing for our groups papers. I noticed that depending on what different people are majoring in, the writing styles vary drastically. For example, one of the students in the group had an entire paper that did nothing but explain a single math problem. It was an entirely different form of writing and it caught the rest of us off guard. Another student had a paper written in the form of a news paper interview. Having never had to work with papers in these different formats made it quite challenging to edit them.

Part 2:

"Distinctly different from the previous theory are the ideas of Homer. According to him, Aphrodite was the daughter of Zeus and Dione (Sacks 28). In Aphrodite and the Dione Myth, George Depue Hadzsits reviews the writings of Homer in an effort to determine how exactly the myth was created and believed. He concludes that Dione and Aphrodite must have been linked as  were mother and daughter because of the many qualities they have in common. Dione was said to have a “well recognized affiliation with moisture, including, rain, stream and sea” (Hadzsits 46). Therefore, it would seem only natural that its logical that she would be the mother of Aphrodite, who’s name means ‘foam-born,’ and is associated with the sea. " 

There weren't any portions of this chapter that I found hard to understand. I really liked how it talked about eliminating uncertainty from papers by making sure different hedge words couple well. The example given in the book used both seem and clear in a single sentence. Those are two conflicting ideas, and it causes confusion for the reader. If something is  "seems'' a certain way, then it isn't going to be clear. The word clear is a statement of fact, and therefore should only be used when its meaning is undeniable.  I also liked how the chapter focused on eliminating fluff from papers and using words that are more direct and evocative. Rather than using extremely angry, use livid or furious. It just makes a paper more interesting and to the point. 

Part 3:

The other group would do the same thing for our groups papers. I noticed that depending on what different people are majoring in areas of study, the writing styles vary drastically. For example, one of the students in the group had an entire paper that did nothing but explained a single math problem. It was an entirely different form of writing and it caught the rest of us off guard. Another student had a paper written in the form of a newspaper interview.

For my first revision, I decided to change the wording to make the sentence more to the point as well as shorten it. The second revision I did was for the same reason. The part of the sentence I eliminated added no significance to the sentence. It was basically just a bunch of filler words.

 

Blog #3

Part 1:
So far all I have done in my group writing tutorial was go over the syllabus. Each of the group members is to bring in a minimum of five pieces of writing for us to revise as a group. I believe this will be a great deal of help when it comes to gaining a better understanding of what to look for when revising a paper. It will also be a great opportunity for me to have papers for other courses edited by my peers.

Part 2:
I found chapter three to be fairly interesting. I have used transitive and intransitive verbs, compliments, as well as modifiers in every piece of writing I have ever completed. It wasn’t until I read this chapter, however, that I found out they actually had names! The idea of transitive and intransitive verbs was a concept I was able to grasp quite easily. Transitive verbs need a compliment, and intransitive verbs do not. Deciphering whether a verb is transitive or intransitive becomes a little bit more difficult when a modifier is thrown into the mix. An example that was used in the text was, “The customer laughed.” Laughed is an intransitive verb.  When the sentence is changed to “The customer laughed at the joke, uproariously, in the showroom,” the verb is still intransitive. Since the verb did not need the additional wording to complete the verb, it isn’t a transitive verb. If the verb being used did need a compliment in order to complete its meaning, it is a transitive verb. The example used in the book was, “I bought the shoes.” If the verb hadn’t been complimented by “the shoes,” the verb would be incomplete and the sentence would not have any meaning, nor would it be a real sentence.

Part 3:
So far All I have done in my group writing tutorial was go over the syllabus. Each of the group members is to bring in a minimum of five pieces of writing for us to revise as a group. I believe this will be a great deal of help when it comes to gaining a better understanding of what to look for when revising a paper. It will also be a great opportunity for me to have papers for other courses edited by my peers.

---My reason for editing my part one response was to get rid of some of the wordiness and make it more direct and to  the point. I removed the filler words, such as "so far," as well as removed some of the repetitiveness. By repetitiveness, I mean my use of the word "group" in the second sentence. I already stated it was being done in a group, so saying "as a group" to end the sentence was unnecessary.

Blog 2

Part 1:
My education in management and business will allow me to benefit this company in a very positive way. I have taken multiple Management and Supervision classes, as well as computer classes such as IT and Engineering courses. My studies in these areas have helped me understand what it takes to be a part of a team of associates and how to manage my time in the most effective way possible. Also, my computer background will help when working with the company’s software, which will allow me to complete transactions and returns with as little hassle as possible. 

Part 2:
 Well for the reading portion, I have already lost my book some how. So I will have to make up for this tomorrow after I purchase another one.

Part 3:
My experience in these areas have made me a more effective leader and team player, as well as enhanced my time management capabilities.

I've taken multiple leadership focused classes.