Pursuing my Passion

Yesterday concluded the final round of group presentations in my WEPO class for our final project, and I really enjoyed seeing how every group conducted their own composing process. For our final project we had to work in groups and contact different local organizations so that we could create three different texts for them. My group, for instance, decided that we wanted to work with a nonprofit organization. We worked with Young Life Tallahassee, which is an organization that teaches children about the gospel of Christianity. For our composing process, we had to create three texts to inform high school students about an event Young Life was hosting, called Signing Day. This is the day that those interested in their summer camps would sign up to attend them. Last Wednesday and this Monday, we were able to see how each group created their texts for their organization and how effective those texts were. Overall, I believe that I learned a lot from my classmates. All of the teams ope...

   If there is one thing that I have learned from my WEPO class, it’s that definitions are not set in stone. When I began this semester, I believed that I had a concrete idea of what various terms that are used in the English world meant. Genre, writing, and editing were just some of the key words that I had heard over and over while taking English classes in secondary school. These terms were drilled into my head since elementary school, so of course I would know what they mean. I believed that college would just expand upon these previous definitions, but this class alone has changed my opinion on what certain words mean.    In my initial blog post, I stated that composing was less detailed and planned out when compared to writing. I stated that a composition could be compared to puzzle pieces and a writing would be the complete puzzle. I now believe the opposite. I believe that writing is not as formal. Writing could be writing a to-do list, a journal entry, or ...

                Project 2 for my WEPO class required that I find an assemblage and then remediate it into something new. An assemblage is something that is composed of parts of something else, and can be anything from a painting to a poem. For my project, I decided that I would take a song and turn it into something else, but what song and what new form would I use for this new creation? Ultimately, I decided that I would use not one, but multiple songs sung by Beyoncé for my project. I would then take those songs, analyze them, and use them to give advice to others in the form of a listicle. Here is a link to my final product: faithsiplin.atavist.com/ 5-life-lessons-from-beyonce.                 A common theme on my blog has been writing and composing. I often use my puzzle piece analogy to define these two terms. Composing is a sk...

                On Thursday, I had the opportunity to sit in on a talk by Jody Shipka. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, since this was my first guest lecture that I had attended in college, but I was not disappointed by the experience at all.                 Whenever I read an article or essay for a class I always feel some type of detachment from the author when I am reading their work. I can never really picture the person that devoted their time to an essay as a typical human being like the rest of us. For some reason, I tend to put authors on a higher level than the rest of us. This lecture by Shipka shattered my preconceived notions about authors completely. I realized that the people that author these articles and essays that we read in various courses are just average people that decide to write an article, and make sure that their goal is accomplished. N...

The basis of today’s blog post will be the difference between bare repetition and ethical assemblages. Arola and Arola define bare repetition as performing something the same way that your ancestors did, or in other words, copying someone else without changing their work to create something different. Creative repetition is what they would consider an ethical assemblage; this is when someone takes something that someone else has already done and transforms it into their own version of this original idea. To stick with the recent theme of music and remediation, we will be comparing three different versions of the same song, “Back to Black” by Amy Winehouse. Here is a link to the video for Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJAfLE39ZZ8 Here is a link to Florence and the Machine’s cover of “Back to Black” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qqe35aouiOc Here is a link to Beyoncé and Andre 3000’s version of “Back to Black” https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

For project two, I believe that I will be turning a song into a story and creating a book. Since I have decided to choose this as the subject of my project, I believe that my audience would be music lovers. Even though I am turning a song into a story, I think most of the people that would be interested in this book would be the people that are familiar with the audience and the people that follow that artist. However, this remediation would also introduce a new audience, those that do not know the song but read the book, to the artist and song as well. Remixing is extremely common for my primary audience, which would be those that love music and people in the music industry. Often when you people think of remixing that think of a song that has been remixed or music in general. In fact, according to the Everything is a Remix video, remixing originated in the music industry. Since remixing is common in the music industry and common to the audience that I will be targeting my rem...

For my Writing and Editing in Print and Online (WEPO) class, we had a project in which we had to pick one of the selected key words we were presented. Once we picked this key word we had to create an exhibit that would teach a targeted audience about this key word using three different artifacts. When I looked at the key words, I automatically knew that I wanted my project to be centered around the term, “design.” I chose this word because for one, when I think about a design I think of physical objects, like buildings and architecture. I may be the only one that jumps to this image, or I may not be; regardless, I wanted to explore how design and English work together. I wanted my audience to realize that design goes hand in hand with English and how we interpret meanings. I decided I would choose three different poems and analyze the role design plays in their overall effect using an infographic. Here is a link to use to view my project, https://www.canva.com/design/DACip0p93hA/FO...

For this blog post I will be analyzing a piece of writing. My intention when analyzing this text is to determine how the piece utilizes various requirements to be considered a rhetorical situation, as defined by Lloyd F. Bitzer. I will also use Amy J. Dewitt’s definition of the term “genre” to explore how the writing could be classified and how this classification effects the way the piece is written. Finally, I will use a term from my Writing and Editing in Print and Online class to show how the author utilized this term in his piece. Initially, I was conflicted as to which way I would take this assignment. At first, I attempted to find a piece of writing that explicitly discusses grammar and how English is utilized by people in the same age group as me. However, I learned that finding articles that were suitable for the topic and centered around grammar were difficult to obtain. Thus, I started over and began thinking about my assignment from a different perspective. In the int...

When I was assigned my second blog entry for my website I was excited to hear from the people that I would interview. I knew that I was going home for the weekend and could not wait to hear my family members’ opinions on writing. While my blog is targeted towards editing and pursuing my passion, I decided to take this time to discover how my opinions as an English major would contrast from people that decided to follow a different path for their education. I decided to interview my sister, Brandy, sister-in-law, Chastity, and brother, Byron. Each of my siblings chose a different educational path from my own. Some decided to earn an associate’s degree, while others decided to pursue a bachelor’s degree. Each of them have different lives; their careers are different and some have children while the others do not, which I assumed would create differences in their ideals and purposes about writing. My assumptions were proven correct, as each person had differing answers to my questions...

My name is Faith Siplin and I’m a junior at Florida State University. I’m currently majoring in English with a concentration in editing, writing, and media. This blog will chronicle my journey to establish myself in the editing profession while continuing to learn more about our complex language.                 My love for English, specifically the grammatical side of English, blossomed in one of my favorite classes during high school, which was also taught by my favorite teacher. During sophomore year I took English 2; the first half of our semester was focused on learning and using different copyediting symbols to edit writings. While other students groaned and reluctantly used the symbols to edit the various sentences and paragraphs that we were assigned, I found a sense of joy from the assignments. Correcting these passages came naturally to me and I thoroughly enjoyed the work. However, this wasn’t t...