Publishing the Parking Problem

I shared my Opinion Editorial with a candidate for student body vice president. He shared my feelings that parking on campus is a serious issue. He had already thought of several ways that he was planning on dealing with the issue. He was going to meet with city officials to open up city streets for parking and to improve the university's image in the community. He had also thought of meeting with city bus planners to change routes to make them more convenient for students. The ideas of permanent solutions such as a parking garage and campus shuttle also sparked his interest. I hope that as he finds a position of authority that he can make these plans a reality.

Let it be heard

I posted my opinion editorial on a BYU forum called cougarguard.com, which is basically a BYU sports forum, but they had a section of topics about outdoors and stuff like that. I thought it would be perfect to post it there because I can reach not only people who already agree with me, but also those who maybe mostly care about sports or other things and whom my topic affects. So far nobody has replied to what I wrote. But I am going to continue to check it often to see if my editorial had somewhat of an effect. As I was posting it, it made me really think about what I wrote, to see if it was applicable to my audience. It made me really realize how important it is to know who your intended audience is and write specifically to them.

Op Ed Publishing

I also published my writing on facebook. I wrote about caffeine on campus and had to put a disclaimer for my friends saying that if you didn't go to BYU you probably wouldn't understand it, which is what most people told me. Those that do go here thought that I had a valid argument but that things probably wont change because there is really no reason to do so. My target audience was people familiar with the church and/or BYU and since many of my friends are not, they didn't understand why I wrote about this but had something to say nonetheless, i.e. "I don't drink pop that much anyway." Writing has everything to do with the target audience and I am used to the audience being just the teacher grading it, but this was interesting to see others react to it.

Opinions From Across the Seas

I spent awhile debating as to where I would publish my Opinion Editorial, but finally decided to post it on my Bebo page. I choose this website because I have many of my British cousins linked to it, and wanted to see their opinions (considering that they go to universities in Northern Ireland). The feedback was great! Many of them agreed that they wished their textbooks were e-books and expressed how they had many of the same problems as we have with our textbooks. Overall, I feel as if my opinion editorial could have been better. I don't think it was bad, but rather believe that if I had provided more time for myself to work on it, I could have had some deeper insights and provided more information. Through publishing my paper, I have learned that my paper not only applied to a BYU student audience, but also to a large audience of university students throughout the world.

Publishing (I was not feeling creative today, do not judge)

Quite honestly, I was not entirely happy with what I had to publish. I feel like I did not do as well of a job as I could have, and thus I was not so keen on going out there and sharing it. I think it makes it a lot easier to share your work when you are so proud of it or passionate about it. I ended up posting my opinion editorial as a note on facebook and tagged all of my BYU friends in it as well as some of my friends back at home. A few people commented on it. Most people agreed with my thesis and thought it was a good idea. My friends back at home were surprised to hear that BYU did not have such a great recycling program. Actually publishing my opinion editorial makes me realize just how important writing really is. If you are writing an essay to be turned in, you do not think that it is that important. I mean, honestly, the only people reading it are you, your teacher, and maybe a small handful of students who edit it. Big deal. That does not mean anything. But if you actually go out there and make it so others can read it, you realize just what an effect your writing specifically can have. It’s kind of cool if you think about it.

Church attendance

I totally published my article on facebook.  Yes I know that sounds really lame but it was really cool.  At first I wanted to hide it but I just kind of left it open for people to read and I actually got some feedback.  Luckily most of my friends are members of the church.  They attend BYU just like me and agree with a lot of the things I was saying.  Overall I think it was a cool experience!  Like it was really exciting when I got those notifications!  I'll probably keep doing things like this in future.  

Bookstore Follow-up

As most of you have already heard, the bookstore director found my blog post of my op-ed on our class blog and asked me to come and meet with him to talk about it. I was pretty nervous about meeting with the director but after talking to several people about it I decided that it was a good idea. Roger Reynolds and his assistant were both very polite and nice to me even though many of my arguments were very strong and were not very nice about the bookstore. It was very interesting to have my ideas and my arguments analyzed and sometimes disintegrated by the facts I was given. By talking to the director I realized that a lot of my arguments were uninformed and were not based upon actual facts. With the new information I was given I was able to redirect my argument to apply to the faculty at BYU and not just to the bookstore.

I never expected this type of an opportunity and I am very grateful for it and how it changed some of my ideas and my views. I tried to find an email address for either the bookstore or the director so that I could send him my updated paper but I wasn't able to find one. They asked me to give them a copy of my finished draft so I think I will print one out and let them read it and get their response. I also posted my op-ed on facebook and the responses I got were all positive and supportive of my arguments. But then again, my paper was not directed toward the students at BYU.

What others thought.

I shared my paper about fraternities with a couple of my BYU friends. I was a little reluctant a first because I was not very confident with my paper. Also with switching my opinion on the matter I didn't want others to think that I think frats are a good thing.  If I was to know that I needed to "publish" the paper I would have paid a little more attention to the smaller details as I was writing the paper. I also would have picked a topic that meant more to me, and that would have made it easier for me to do a better job. 

The Daily Unverse fiasco....

First, I sent my opinion editorial to the Daily Universe to see if it could be printed. They have yet to respond so I went ahead and posted it on Facebook. I received a few comments and they all believed that my thesis that meal plans should not be required was completely legit. I was pleased to see this response. I'm glad i was able to post it to let people see my opinion. I know nothing can really be changed by having it on Facebook, so i hope that the Daily Universe will post in sometime. I really enjoyed this this paper. I learned how not to be too assertive in my argument and give lots of reasoning behind my argument.

Feedback on O.E.

I shared my paper will the girls in my hall and a group of guys in my ward. It was difficult for me to share my writing and except criticism because I'm just used to writing something and turning it in to a teacher. However, I learned a lot from the feedback I received. My topic of sororities and fraternities was very controversial between the students I shared it with. They pointed out the strong points I had made but also pointed out a ton of negative aspects. For me I saw that although I had some strong arguments I should have focused on backing up counter arguments more. It helped me see the my strengths and weaknesses in my article and I also saw that the stereotype fraternity and sorority is one engraved in the minds of others that is not likely to be changed.

"Sharing is caring, it can be fun"

I chose to "publish" my opinion editorial by sharing it with a group of people in my building. For those of you that don't remember, my opinion editorial was about obeying visiting hours. I chose to share it with people in my building because I felt that they were the people that were most likely to be influenced by my ideas. Also, they are the people that could actually make changes in their actions after reading what I had to say.

I was a little bit nervous about sharing my opinions with others, especially when they were most likely to disagree with me. However, I was still happy with my paper and was proud of it. People's opinions varied in reaction to my paper. Some people totally agreed, others said that they had never thought of it in those terms, and others wanted to debate with me about the topic. A lot of people brought up counter arguments that I had never thought of, but I still feel like my editorial was convincing in my argument. Overall, sharing my opinions with other people made me more aware of my audience. It caused me to think about writing not just for my teacher, but actually for communication of real ideas with real people.

Sharing Opinion Editorial

I shared my opinion editorial on facebook. While I like the idea of letting people know about this particular issue, I didn't like the fact that it was my words being shared. Putting it into perspective, I realize that if I was going to seriously share this with many people, I would definately make sure my paper was perfect. If a large audience were to look at this paper, I would want it to convince everyone of the issue at hand. No one has commented on my paper on facebook, but I would assume that they would like a more convincing argument that would attract everyone on facebook.

A Great Learning Experience

After completing my opinion editorial and submitting it to the Daily Universe, I was able to reflect on what I had learned from the whole experience of sharing my written work with others. It seemed to me that even though at first I was happy with what it was I had written, the opinion and analysis of others improved my work and helped me see different ways of presenting my opinion than I had ever thought of before. I used to not put much effort into thinking about who it was that was going to read my paper because it has always been a teacher or some one of that stature. It wasn’t until this semester that I actually had to analyze who my audience was and how it was that I was going to present my opinion. Overall, it has been a great learning experience in that I was able to realize that there is a lot more to writing that originally thought.

"Publishing My Op Ed"

I learned a very important lesson from "publishing" my Op Ed. When we had to analyze a professional paper and compare it to ours, I found that mine was 5 long paragraphs and the professional one was about 15 little paragraphs. I liked the format of the professional one better than my own, so I decided to change mine to look more like it. When I say change mine, I simply mean breaking up my paragraphs into smaller ones by using the "Enter" key on the keyboard. What is the problem with this? I didn't write my essay for this format. My essay was written for a 5 paragraph, one intro, one conclusion, and a body type of essay. If I really wanted my paper to look like the professional one I should have taken a bit more care in breaking up my paragraphs and making sure that they all had a topic sentence and that they support and progress my thesis.
My audience thought that my paragraph divisions were sometimes awkward (this is the reason for the first paragraph) but overall they thought my argument was strong, and in some cases, even said that it could be stronger. Additionally, they thought was topic was relevant and was an issue that needed to be addressed.