THE PROM SITUATION

Dear Joseph Nguyen,

            A time where I could go back and change it would probably asking this one girl to prom. It was my Senior in High School and Prom was probably two months away. I was going to ask one of my close girlfriends. It was April 13^th, 2012 and it was the day I was going to ask my friend (won’t say her name) to Prom. She and I have been close friends for about two years. I asked two of my boys to help me decorate her car. I spelled out “PROM?” in baby blue tape and with flowers on the hood of her car. I was skipping my 6^th hour to do all of this and I had to hide in a bush for like 30 minutes because school wasn’t out yet. It was after school and she came out with a bunch of people behind her and she got up to her car and then I came up and gave her a rose and asked she would go to prom with me. She said yes! I was so excited and happy and she was as well.

I got home and told my parents and they were happy for me. I told many of my friends I had a Prom date now and didn’t have to worry about it. I asked her what dress she was going to wear it was going to be silver and I was like I’ll get a silver tux to match her with. I was thinking in my mind, “This Senior year is going to keep getting better and better.”

It was about three weeks after I had asked her out to Prom. She texted saying, “Joe, we have to talk.” When a girl says that, a guy knows it’s something serious. She told me she couldn’t go with Prom with me anymore. She told me the reason was that her mom wouldn’t let me because I was not the same race as her. The girl was European and I’m Asian. When she told me this I was pretty sad and devastated. In my mind I was like why would she tell me after three weeks after I asked her. I told my boys about this situation and they told me that she wanted to bail out and go with someone else. I didn’t know what to believe, I was confused for a couple days.

The next day I saw her and we both had the same English class together and we sat next to each other. It was pretty awkward. She didn’t say a word to me that day or even looked at me. My friends asked me why she was like that and I had no answer.

The last two months of high school and she still didn’t really say anything to me. I don’t know if she was stubborn or if I was stubborn. I just felt like she should’ve said the first word because she was the one that wouldn’t go to Prom with me. It was weird for me. I was like, “Yo this is mad weird” to one of my boys. She didn’t even talk to any of my boys either which was weird. They told me to find another date which I eventually did.

If I could go back and change this I would do so in different ways. Maybe I should have asked her if her mom was fine with me going to prom with her. I would also change how we interacted in English class. Maybe I should’ve been the one that talked to her first because she was probably shy or embarrassed to talk to me. If I would have done these things or at least tried too, our friendship would’ve still been strong at the end of the school year and till this day. I also regret not asking her to sign my yearbook. In the end the past is the past, you can’t really do much about it but move on. It’s called life.

I haven’t talked to her for a very long time now and I don’t want to bring this situation up even if we do have a conversation. I see her sometimes on campus and all we do is really just say hi to each other and go our separate ways. Sometimes I do miss talking to her and venting to her. Hopefully we can rekindle our friendship one day.

Love,

Jn

REDESIGN REFLECTION

1.    1.   I felt worried about going into this assignment for different reasons. The biggest reason was to going to write 5-7 pages. This is a lot of pages to write about on an advertisement. I was also concerned with coming up with new ideas and finding ways to expand them.

2.   2.    I did not really have a choice to pick on an ad because there were not that many interesting ones in S.I. I should have bought in my own magazine or looked at ads before going into class. It was my fault because I was not prepared. I just chose this ad because it seemed easy and it had information that could help me with my essay.

3.     3.  I was not sure how to redesign my essay but my peer group helped me come up with an idea. They told me about the idea and then I sketched it into my mind a piece at a time.

4.     4.   A challenge I faced at the beginning was finding the ethos, pathos, and logos. I had to look up and find examples which helped me generate my own ideas about them.

5.      5.  One thing I liked about my assignment was it was a Sports Illustrated magazine. I love to read about sports and athletes. I used this advantage by applying both of these aspects to my ad.

6.      6. I have a better outlook with ethos, pathos, and logos. In the past I have learned of these things but I had forgotten what all three meant prior to this project. This project reminded me what all three of these meant.

7.       7. If I was given a second chance I would pick a better ad that I have liked more. I would also try to learn how to use Photoshop so that my redesign picture would be more professional like.

Joe's Process Memo

Literacy Timeline

The most logical part of my timeline was trying to place my literacy and writing in chronological order. Basically, I tried to think from the past to the present. I think for me it was very hard remembering details because it is to remember a lot back when I was a child. Getting photographs was very hard because my parent were never the type to take pictures or record things. They did not do this because back when I was a child they were not good with technological things and barely understood English.

I noticed some things when I was doing my timeline. I realized that I do actually like reading if it is something that I am interested in. Also, I learned that I do actually like to write if it is an easy topic or subject to actually write on. I also learned that read and writing is important now and in the future.

I actually noticed a theme throughout my timeline. The theme was basically magazines influenced my skills and hobbies. I focused on a variety of magazines such as sports, health, and cars, etc. I learned many things from reading magazines when I was a little kid. I learn many things about cars and professional sport players.

I decided to make my main focus on my narrative based on magazines. I decided to pick magazines because I loved reading them as a little kid. I love magazines because it is very easy to read and it is not boring. It actually has some color to it unlike old-fashioned books. It was difficult for me to pick an experience. I could not recall many experiences with magazines. I probably came up with maybe 4 or 5 when I was writing it down on my paper. I do not know but whenever I finish with a magazine I just do not recall what I did while I was reading it, so it was very hard to find a lot of experiences.

Making a timeline actually taught me that I can recall some parts of my reading life if I think really hard or if I ask my parents. It also taught me that life goes by really quick. It told me that I actually like to read and write on my own time.

Literacy Narrative

I narrowed down my area of focus based on magazines and some experiences I had with some magazines that I have read. It was pretty difficult with trying to center my ideas. It was hard because I can only write about magazines so much. It was hard trying to write it in a straightforward story because I have had other experiences with comic books, books, and others. I just narrowed it down to magazines because it has influenced me a lot.

When I started to begin my narrative, I tried to organize it in chronological order. I tried to place which magazines I read first in order from the past to the present. It started with kid magazines into adult magazines. It was pretty difficult putting my thoughts onto a paper because it takes some time for me to think. It takes me time to think of the past and other things. I like to take my time and do not like to be rushed. Some strategies I took when writing the draft was to take notes, put ideas into bullets, make a pre-timeline, and plot out random thoughts onto paper.

After the peer review editing, I change around some of the wording. I also changed some verb tenses as well as spelling errors. I also omitted run-on sentences. My partners were helpful because they spotted errors that I did not recognize or missed. They helped me to improve my writing. They told me some of my grammar errors and to omit some of my words. They were very helpful.

I was not thinking of a video because I thought I thought it was going to be another normal paper.

Animoto Slideshow

My partner did choose some of my best sentences. They chose of my introductory sentences to use and also some of the sentences of magazines that influenced me. I used maybe around 6 or 7 of the sentences into my slideshow.

It was pretty difficult editing my slides down into 52 words. I had to take some words out or try to find the synonyms of some words. I also had to use the & sign instead of saying and. I really had no strategy. I just tried to put the words fit in there as much as possible or putting it into 2 slides.

My images were a complimentary text to show some of the pictures of some magazines I read. Some of it showed relationships such as my parents. It was also to provide for details for my slides.

Some images were from the web and some was some of my own pictures. I had to take a picture of my picture because I do not have a scanner.

My song I chose was Pursuit of Happiness. I chose this song because I like the beat and instrumental too it. I would put the real song but it has too many inappropriate quotes in it. It is like my pump up song. I tried tying it with my literacy by making it for entertaining.

I could have ended my animoto differently. I could have with a summary slide or something else.

Ford-150

Ford F-150

1. An ideology of this commercial is that American cars, particularly Ford, is “Built Ford Tough.” The commercial shows people who work with trucks on a daily day to day basis. I know this because I see people loading up their cargo on the trucks and people towing a trailer. It also states that it has better numbers than other trucks. I can see this because the commercial states that the F-150 goes 21MPG to the gallon and weighs 5,000 lbs.

2. I believe the intended audience for this commercial is for people who have bought trucks in the past or is using trucks currently, so these people are the buyers/users. The audience can be other car companies also. It can relate to other car companies because there is a lot of competition in the car industry.

3. I believe this commercial can relate to negotiated reading. I agree that pick-up trucks are very useful for certain jobs. The commercial also has a dominant meaning. It is showing it is manly and it shows this by showing jobs particular for men and it has dominant man colors.

Digital Literacy

Digital literacy such as blogs has more influence online rather than in a class assignment. It has more influence because it is more entertaining and interesting. Bloggers usually have fewer errors because of auto spell and grammar check. They also have less plagiarism because each one’s own blog is their own work and opinions. Blogs are more elegant because it has many functions and usages. One can choose to make their own templates and backgrounds or make designs for their own blogs. Bloggers can choose to change font size, customize the color, and change up the texts. They also can put up many things such as videos and works of art to try to lure people into reading their blogs. Online might be more persuasive in different ways. They can try to lire you in by using videos, music, or feature celebrities. I believe online blogs are far more creative and entertaining than doing some boring in class assignment. The thing with blogs is that you can get to express one self. It has more influence because us students actually interact and get involved with blogs. The blogs are something we can relate to because it shares what we like and our interests. In my opinion an online blog is far better than an in class assignment because I get more freedom of what to write and I can also add many other things into my blogs whereas an in class assignment half the time is something just written on paper. This is why I believe online blogs are better than assignments.