Taylor Dove ENG 1102 Dr.

Ashlyn Williams 18 September 2013 Reflection In conducting my first assignment, I felt that I was successful in being creative, providing easy to understand definitions of complex ideas, and in adding visual supplementation for my audience. As for being creative, I felt that my idea to create a booklet was unique. I decided to create a booklet because I thought it would be a nice way to organize my paper. A table of contents would help my audience easily locate portions of my booklet that they were interested in. Furthermore, a booklet would appear to be more professional, and would be more visually appealing for the reader. When constructing my definitions, I attempted to take the reading's somewhat dense and complex definitions, and simplify them. Take for example my definition of a figured world: "Figured world: place driven by socialization and made up of people that behave in a certain way in response to the 'culture' of that world. In a figured world there can be many different types of 'actors' or personalities, and the actors can often be grouped into categories." In this definition, I attempted to use a more basic vocabulary and give secondary definitions ('actors' or personalities) to help the reader understand the abstract idea of a figured world. Finally, I tried to provide many visual elements in my booklet to not only make it look nicer to the eye, but to give the audience an image to refer to when describing something they have never seen. For example, in my description of the cardiovascular section of the fitness center: "The third and final section is the Cardiovascular Equipment section (see Figure 5), which includes treadmills, elliptical machines, bikes, and rowing machines."

Figure 1. Cardiovascular Equipment Section

I also wanted to video tape my interview so that my audience could see an example of one of the actors at the UNCC Fitness Center. Furthermore, video recording can capture the tone of the actors voice, their facial expressions, and is a more intimate experience for the audience in comparison to solely reading an interview. I felt that this was one of the first peer workshops that I have participated in that I received useful and encouraging comments. My peers pointed out that it would be helpful if I brainstormed additional artifacts, added the gym hours to my assignment, and revised

one of my more vague definitions. Thus, I decided to add the "sanitation wipe" as an artifact: "Sanitation wipes: No one enjoys using a piece of equipment that contains bodily fluids on it. Not only is this a danger to one's health, but it also is just plain right disgusting. Thus, sanitation wipes are absolutely essential to the functionality of a gym. If someone does not wipe down their equipment, they are creating a hazard to other members and may cause someone to stop working out, and in turn disturb the flow of the gym." I added the hours of the SAC Fitness Center to my rules and conventions, as I felt hours of operation would be considered a rule or restriction: The gym is open during the Fall and Spring semesters Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 6AM - 11PM; Tuesday and Thursday from 7AM - 11PM; Saturday and Sunday 12PM-11PM. I also revised the definition of an actor as it was slightly confusing: Draft 1 Definition: "Actor: a person, or member of the figured world, that takes on a certain persona and acts a certain way based on their surroundings." Revised Definition: "Actor: a person, or member of the figured world, that takes on a certain role in the figured world and performs actions in response to their surroundings." My group pointed out that I did not use Times New Roman font, which helped me realize I needed to get permission to alter the formatting of my booklet. The positive feedback my group provided me with encouraged me to continue trying to improve my paper. I used all of their suggestions, as I felt they would definitely improve my assignment. I hope that in reading my paper, you pay attention to the descriptions that I provided after subtitles and after the listed artifact, actor, or community. In my descriptions, I tried to provide metaphors and lots of detail so that my audience could truly envision my figured world and try to categorize themselves into what actor and discourse community they would best fit. I also wanted to address the fact that in formatting my booklet, I intentionally made my font different than 12pt, Times New Roman. I felt that in order for my booklet to be visually appealing, it needed larger titles and subtitles, different fonts, and color differentiations.