Monday, April 30, 2007
Procrastination...almost finished
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Procrastination...relaxed or lazy
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Procrastination...no breathing
Thursday, April 26, 2007
PROCRASTINATING
Monday, April 23, 2007
PRO crastination
My Generalized Writing Process Broken Down
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Procrastinatingggg...
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Procrastinating...doh...
Friday, April 20, 2007
Procrastinating!!!!
Monday, April 16, 2007
Procrastinating...meh
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Procrastinating...still
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Procrastination...oops!
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Procrastination...cont
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Procrastinating...ugh...
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Audience and Goals for Procrastinating
Goals: Well...to keep a journal of my day to day progress in the open so that I'm forced to actually change my bad habit. Here goes nothing.
Procrastinating...getting over it.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Productivity Pointers
1. Managing time: The best way to stay productive is to manage your time in an efficient manner. Now I'm not saying to do work at any and all times you have a break, but do as much as you can within the limits of one day. The best thing to do is to plan out a schedule after assessing your assignments for the day or week or what have you. Fit in work times of an hour or so with breaks in between. Take your time in completing assignments rather than waiting till the very last minute. Even for those people who work best while under pressure (due to waiting till the day before or day of a huge assignment) the best thing to do would be to do the assignment in advance and if necessary review and revise it the day of or day before to get that extra motivation in the revision. Time management is key to keeping yourself in a good balance of work and play, cause remember all work and no play makes jack a dull boy. And all play and no work gets jack an F.
2. Be organized: Without organization, assignments can easily get lost in the clutter of the day. Many people have different ways of dealing with organization, so I suggest finding a method that works best for you. These techniques can range from writing up schedules, having calendars, setting alarms for reminders, asking friends for help, keeping your work space organized and putting things away neatly, or remembering them (if you tend to lose and forget things easy i would highly suggest avoiding this one). Being organized will lead to ease in completing and doing assignments. Notice how this tip blends with my other tip. By keeping good track and organization of your assignment, you will also be better able to manage your time when you have a clearer view of what is to be done in what amount of time. Staying on top of the work is the name of the game.
Hope these helped...though these are my tips, I often have trouble sticking to them myself. So remember to stay motivated in any and all work that you do. Feel pride in what you do...just because it's class and school work does not mean it all has to be boring or stupid. You are here for a reason, remember that.
-Kevin-
Marketing Ideas
Marketing in short is the entirety of processes involved in the transactions of goods from the producer to the consumer. These processes include advertising, shipping, storing, and selling.
In the matter of the class blog, these are our top ideas for marketing. 1) Post Fliers around campus, on the bulletin boards, doors, walls, hallways, cars, etc. 2) Send Out an Email to the entire student body. 3) Information Desk for people to come up and inquire about the blog. 4) Raffle or Contest sponsored by our class and the blog.
Post Fliers
There are numerous ways we can go about doing this idea. First we can go around campus and post them on every bulletin board in all buildings. We can also attach them outside the buildings on doors and windows as we have seen around campus. We can also go to the various parking lots and both parking structures and place fliers on people’s cars. Not only on campus, but we can also post fliers at various locations that college students hang out at. We want to try to reach the maximum number of people that we can. BE REPETITIOUS. We can’t just post the fliers once, but to capture people’s attentions we need to do this step consistently (at least once a week). Also, we can get somebody to dress up in a ridiculous costume and stand out front of Zimmerman or around the Duck Pond and hand out fliers to people to at least catch their attention. These fliers should not be basic, but bright and outrageous with art, pictures, jokes, or anything to capture their attention and entice them to at least look at the blog while browsing through the internet.
Send Out Emails
Our plan is to send out a mass email advertising and informing people about the blog. Hopefully we can coordinate this with whoever is in charge of the UNM email system. I know I have gotten many emails from outside the UNM staff or the UNM system, so it is possible. This way we can get to everybody who lives on and off campus and attends UNM. The internet is viewed by everybody, so this way we can guarantee reaching our entire audience.
Information Desk
Many people around campus set up desks and kiosks in various locations around campus. We can do some inside the sub, outside the sub, in dsh, out front of Zimmerman, inside the duck pond, on the outer regions of the duck pond, etc. We could take turns of two people teams sitting at the desk at a time to entice and inform fellow students who walk by. This is probably the best way of informing our audience of the blog and its purpose. The information desk is a good way of marketing to our audience because it allows them to ask questions directly to the people who run the blog. This allows for one on one conversation between us and our audience. It is also interacting with the people who are going to visit the blog. This way they will have a better and clearer understanding of what the blog is for and how it will help.
Raffle or Contest
Alongside the desk, or having its own desk, we can hold some type of contest or raffle (sponsored by the blog) to entice people to at least come to the desk. We can captivate our audience with a fun game with prizes, and since everything will have the blogs name on it and we’ll be mentioning it numerous times, they will hopefully want to actually visit the blog. We can have small prizes such as candy, cups, pencils, pens, notebooks, mini staplers (highly suggested) or like $5 itunes cards (as a top prize cause it could get expensive), etc. We’ll have music playing during this to bring people to the desk and hopefully they have a good time and enjoy it enough to visit the website. Alongside the Raffle, if we can keep track of who visits the website or gather their input about the website, we can continue to offer small prizes or something. That way we’ll know if people are actually going to and using the website, rather than just looking at it and than closing it instantly.
These are our top four ideas for marketing our blog. Our main point is to try to help UNM students. We believe that these are the best ways to go about advertising a class blog, cause many UNM students are lax about finding help. We need to be repetitious, but also exciting and fun because nobody wants to just get simple help, we need to make it entertaining for them to capture their attention in some way. Young people have short attention spans, without those shiny colors this may be a lost cause.
-Kevin and Justin-
Goals and Audience for Marketing Ideas
Audience: The class and our group members.
How To Recognize My Common Problems
Some of my biggest problems in writing essays is writing with complicated sentences and not providing support for my paper. These tend to go hand in hand because without the support or factual evidence proving my ideas, I make my sentences big and grandiose in order to convince my reader of my points. It is rather easy to recognize these problems and correct them for future writing.
One huge indicator of writing a complicated unnecessary sentence is when I or any other writers search the thesaurus for a better word, or a bigger word that can cover numerous other words. Here the writer is attempting to sound smarter by using a bigger and more diverse vocabulary. However, in searching for this “magic” word, we will often lose the meaning in the sentence, or distort it slightly so it is no longer the same. Thesauruses provide us synonyms of words that are close to our original word, but are not the same. If we did not know the word to begin with, and it is not in our vocabulary, than we probably should not use it. Only use words that we know the meaning of and apply in our daily speech. If we are unsure of a word, or think that it will make the paper sound better, do not use it.
Often time’s complicated sentences are correlated with fallacious arguments. We often argue in circles and attempt to sound persuasive with little or no support. Here we often repeat the same or similar sentences in numerous different ways because we have little or nothing else to say or prove. To ensure simpler sentences, we must write to prove a point and ensure the reader understands it.
Finally a huge indicator of complicated sentences will be a huge essay with little or no support. Without support, the writer will attempt to be persuasive enough to convince you that his or her point is correct without providing the factual evidence. This persuasion will often result in misdirection or complications to confuse the reader into believing the point is correct. However, we cannot believe a person’s statements or assessments without factual proof. With more evidence, our points will be clearer and more concise so that we will not need to “impress” the reader.
There are no definite ways of defining complicated sentences or pointing them out. However, these are some of the most common causes of overly complicated sentences. In writing essays we must all remember to be clear and get to the point. Why argue around what we wish to state? Do not put our main point or statement at the end. Put it at the beginning and go from there proving why we believe our statement is correct. This should help eliminate the need for confusing sentences.
-Kevin-Goals and Audience for Recognizing Problems
Audience: Myself. Also anyone who has similar problems with overcomplicated sentences and lack of support. It can help anyone looking for a way to make their arguments better and more acceptable.
Writing Genre: Term/Essay Papers
Writing a good term paper can be as hard or as easy as we make it on ourselves. Practicing good preparation and writing will lead to an easier essay in the end. There are many different techniques in writing one, depending on the person’s own unique style of writing. However, there are a few common steps that we should all take to ensure a better, smoother essay.
First of all, after receiving the assignment make sure you understand the assignment and the instructions fully. If you do not understand them, don’t hesitate to ask the teacher or your boss to clarify these instructions. It is better to swallow your pride and ask for clarification rather than risk doing the paper incorrectly which could be costly in the end. Once you have understood the instructions to your assignment, it’s time to plan out your timetable. A common mistake among people with assignments due is they tend to overestimate their time or procrastinate till the last minute. However, the quality of the paper is often positively correlated with the effort and amount of time put into the paper (i.e. quick unmotivated papers tend to receive lower grades or lower remarks compared to papers that would thought out and analyzed). Plan a time table of the following steps and ensure time to finish the draft and editing steps before the paper is due. Now that you have your time table planned out it is time to move onto understanding the question at hand.
It is better first to ponder the subject upon which you are writing. Try to figure out the purpose you want to convey in your writing as well as whom your audience is going to be. Defining the purpose of the essay is key to writing a good term paper, because if we do not know what we are writing for, our points and overall essay may go astray. Additionally, assess the length of the paper and narrow your topic idea down to something reasonable for the length of your essay (i.e. not too long and not too short). We should avoid choosing long broad topics as our main topic for a paper that is to be less than what the idea would require. For instance having a 10 page paper on the affects of global warming over the past decade may be too broad of an idea for what your paper is limited too.
Next we move on to research, one of the most important steps. Here we must find as much information as we can on our topic to use for support of our ideas. This will also help refine your ideas to clearer and more concise points. Do not do the research after writing your paper. Researching after writing the paper will often times lead to quotes that do not support your point, or even plagiarism if you feel you needed to add something to make your paragraph flow better. Doing research before writing will better prepare you mentally define your topic to a more narrow topic that you can support clearly and easily. When researching, whether in books in the library, magazine articles, or even online sources, you should always keep track of where the information is coming from. You can do this in many ways, but always try to keep track of your information you have found in the best manner that works for you. Also make sure you consider which sources are more reliable or backed by scholars rather than some average joe spouting his opinion on some website.
Now that we have our research complete, we can move onto prewriting and brainstorming. Here it may differ from person to person, so find the method that works best for you. However, in some way, whether in freewriting, brainstorming with randomly jotted ideas, making outlines, making mind maps, etc, you should already be thinking about the construction of your essay and what you’re going to say. You should start defining a plan for yourself for your paper. Often times its best to write this down especially when you get long papers that may span more than 20 pages. Once you have assessed your research, have a plan for your essay, and feel confident about your topic, its time to write.
Start writing and don’t look back. Try not to make the essay perfect the first time around, because this will often lead to difficulty in finishing the paper, or you may get distracted from other points. Not a single person can write a flawless paper the first time around. Feel free to let yourself make mistakes, because the best thing to do is to let your creativity flow and just run with the paper. Writer’s block, as many writer’s know, is a terrible hump to get over. If you are able flow, than just keep going and finish the paper. Once you finish, set it aside for the time being and go back to it later. It’s best to give it a day or two so the paper seems fresh to you and you are more able to catch your own mistakes rather than reading it quickly glossing over it because “you knew what you wanted to say.” With this mindset it’s easy to miss simple mistakes that could possibly confuse your reader. Following the same idea of giving yourself time off before rereading your paper, it also helps asking an outside source you can trust to constructively criticize your paper. This will bring another person’s viewpoint into the mix and they will be able to see things you may not be able to do. Once you have done one or both of these steps, reedit as many times as you deem necessary till you feel confident in your paper.
With practice and a good work ethic, you can turn the fear of essay papers into the thing of the past. Writing paper’s are not wholly different than any other activity we choose to participate in. Humans are naturally inquisitive and insightful by nature. We are highly opinionated on many varieties of issues. We can use this in formulating our ideas of papers, because a paper is merely an expression of our opinion with support. Likewise, practice makes perfect. People make mistakes in everything and nothing is ever perfect the first time around. If we dedicate ourselves to our tasks at hand, there is no telling what we can accomplish.
-Kevin-
Goals And Audience for Writing Term Papers
Audience: Again, mostly myself for my benefit but also anyone who wants help in starting their paper. This can help any college student needs a better system when writing papers for classes.
My Writing Process
My writing process definitely differs from most people. I often times find it hard writing things down, whether in taking notes or studying for a test. I do most things mentally and find it is easier for me to keep it that way. I tend to keep better track of things with minimal paper and mostly keep it all in memory. When I write something, whether it be an essay or just an email, I tend to ponder the question at hand before sitting down to write. For essays, I commonly research my topic and print out the articles and readings. Afterwards, I do a quick read through highlighting important quotes that I could use in the essay. Than I take a small break, normally to get food or something, and start formulating my ideas on the topic. I begin a mental brainstorm figuring out my general overall ideas for the essay (a mental outline). After I feel confident in my knowledge of the topic, I sit down at my computer and type it out. For me, I often run through an entire essay from intro paragraph to conclusion. The first sentences are always the hardest for me, but once I start flowing, I tend to bang out the rest easily. As I am working, I also tend to edit my ideas in my head and correct my sentences grammatically as I type them. I try to be as formal and eloquent the first time around. After I finish I save my essay, walk away from it, come back to it at a later day, and do another read of it correcting any mistakes I may not have been able to catch. I ensure my ideas flow nicely, that my sentence and paragraph structures are in logical order, and my grammar and syntax is correct. I am done once I feel confident about my paper, but not a second before. This is my very simple process that I have fine-tuned mentally over many years. In high school, I would write out outlines and ideas first, but would suffer on the essay when I sat down to write it. In writing my ideas down, I would more easily forget my main points mentally so that the drafting process was more difficult. I would have to reread my ideas jotted down and focus on them, more so than the overall essay. This made it harder to flow when I actually wrote it because my writing would be broken up by averting my attention to previous things I wrote which would usually be dispersed between numerous pages front and back. In addition, with quotes I usually find them before I write, but add them in at the end. Once I start writing and I start going, I don’t like to divert my attention from it in any way. I like getting out all my ideas on paper, and than later adding the quotes in where they support my points. Never stop a writer at work, because writer’s block is a hard thing to overcome…especially when all your ideas are coming together so perfectly.
Goals and Audience for My Writing Process
Audience: Mostly myself, but also for anyone who has trouble writing and wants to see another person's process and perspective when sitting down to write.
Frontier Review
For a favorite restaurant to eat at, I have to go with the classic that is the Frontier. I am sure everyone in the
Located at
-Kevin-
Goals and Audience for Restaurant Review
Audience: Mostly college students in Albuquerque, mainly on or around the UNM campus. Also, I hope to make it appeal to anyone else browsing around that has never tried the Frontier and was curious about it.