Posts

End of Semester

PRESS RELEASE: Here you’ll find a “compare two documents” version of what we sent MPR and what they sent back to us, along with 6 things I want to point out about the differences for you, since we can’t meet again for you to point them out to me. 🙂  If you cannot see the markups and comments, check your tracking panel in Word and let me know. Lots of lessons here: Think about how/what she’s done as you revise your own press release from early in the semester.

Which reminds me to EMPHASIZE to you that your PORTFOLIO (checklist link here) is not only a whole new (substantial) grade, it is also a representation of your BEST work–so I do expect to see changes to your documents if I or your colleagues made suggestions for revisions to you. And of course I expect to see nary a typo, misspelling, comma error, left out word, inconsistency, etc., in your resumes and cover letters, in particular.

Thanks again to you for a good semester. You’re a good group; I’ve appreciated getting to know you, and I am sure you’re ready to represent the university well and do some valuable work next semester.  Good luck with finals and papers, FILL OUT THE SEIs FOR ALL YOUR CLASSES (do it now!), and happiness in the holidays and over break.

See you in January,

Dr. Weiser

How to spend the break

How to spend the break

Final Class

Tomorrow is our final day for class work. You should have your products finished so that you can spend your time making sure everything is on your website (I’ll give you a checklist) and revised to be your best possible work.  This includes a resume and the cover letter draft to your internship site (you can make this latter your final Post for now).  This also means that if you have NOT submitted your Voices of Diversity paragraph to the group article, you are now a week late. Get it in NOW. Fit it in wherever in the piece it seems to fit best, of course, and use the formats others have already chosen. For the 3rd time, here’s the website link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KuB6HXrqptW-I94D1PIBIP_i50UJgr3Qa4OxAvUgD8M/edit. Emily asked about writing a longer article based on your interview–if you have enough info for a longer piece and would like to write one, this would be an excellent additional product, and one we can see about getting published, as well.  But you are not required to write one.

Know that you can include among the products in your portfolio other pieces you have written/designed/created that showcase your skills, and you WILL include at least one academic paper (two different kinds of papers is very good).  So you might want to think about what and bring it along with you tomorrow.  Okay? See you tomorrow!

The checklist for your portfolio (and eventually your e-portfolio) is in helpful links, here: CHECKLIST

Week 15

Welcome back from what I hope was a good Thanksgiving break!  Just a reminder to you all about our upcoming week + day:

On TUESDAY we will hear a bit more from Derek Thatcher, this time on cover letters that accompany those brilliant resumes you are writing. Then we will spend the rest of the time (1) discussing your resumes, and (2) discussing your cover letters to your internship site. Obviously, you need a resume and a cover letter in order to participate.  So that we can all see the resumes together (and I can comment as well, later), upload yours to the Carmen/Canvas dropbox for easy access. DO THIS BEFORE CLASS. You might want a hard copy to look at as we go over each one.  The cover letter we’ll look at in small groups, so just bring a hard copy to share.

On THURSDAY we will put together our story on Voices of Diversity on the Newark Campus.  Perhaps it is best to have a draft of all your work to begin the process of writing together. SO, before class Thursday upload to this Google Doc the best pieces of your interview: Voices of Diversity.  What are “best pieces”?  Quotes, of course–but not everything, just the good, striking phrases. Stories that you might paraphrase instead of quoting fully.  A description you write of your interviewee.  This is partially a profile, partially an article–the two other types of pieces we’ve worked on.  Recent examples: “All Syrians are Tired of this Absurd War: Voices from the Cease-Fire” http://nyti.ms/2cKdeOj ; “Trump Nation”  http://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/trump-nation/#/?_k=zzyetz ; “Mni Wiconi: The Stand at Standing Rock” https://youtu.be/4FDuqYld8C8.  We’ll talk about the ubiquity of videos in this format, and I’ll bring in a few to practice editing, as well.

The following Tuesday, Dec. 6, is our final class day and a work day to get your portfolios in order, revising pieces to include that become your best possible samples of your written work.

 

 

Week 14

Good work this week with the proposals, group! You talked to people in the community, studied materials, studied what your audience was looking for, and matched these in as clear and compelling a way as you could.  There was much to be impressed about.

Here is our time until Thanksgiving, in order:

  1. First, go to the new Google doc HERE and join the conversation while you still remember the proposals of what really worked, what did not. Feel free to talk across proposals to help illustrate your points–“x and y told similar moving stories at the end, but for me x’s was more persuasive–most likely because of _______.”   Indeed, it will be best if you can see the proposals again, I think, so HERE they are. I expect everyone to contribute at least two comments.  I know that it can be hard to have your work evaluated, but one of the biggest gifts you can give yourself as a writer is to separate from your writing after it’s on the page.  You are miraculous, wonderful human being; your writing is a bunch of text on a page that can always, always be made better–but it is NOT you. (Same thing for commenting–my goal with each cohort of minors is that you come to view each other as a supportive team. Your comments will help everyone to write better the next time that any one of you has the chance to ask for money for yourself or something you believe in.)
  2. Second, we need to send Marketing a press release, yes? You all read over last year’s this morning–now make it about OUR class and OUR vision (and OUR organizational winner).  The page is HERE.  You can use last year’s paragraphs as a model (think about why MPR put them in the order they did), but now you can make them better. Is this the best description of our class? The grant program? I hate my quote–write me a new one (yes really). Chelsea, as proposal winner it is your responsibility to add in the parts about MHA–what’s the grant going to support, and ideally include a quote from Jill (hers needs to be really from her!) I want to walk into class on Tuesday, pull up the document, and be able to send this off to Marketing. You are all jointly responsible for this happening. Contribute by writing or editing a part. At the very bottom say what you did (we’ll erase later.)
  3. On Monday, remember, as Katie read to us, there is a wonderful opportunity to listen to and speak your post-election thoughts. I plan to attend; I hope to see some of you there. I’d say it’s worth extra credit if that were helpful. Let me paste here the email, with thanks to Katie:

    Hello everyone! My name is Kwanda Brown, I am an student assistant in the Multicultural Affairs office here on campus. We have an event on Monday Nov 21, 2016 @11am-1pm in Hopewell #53 it is a student forum for election thoughts and concerns. Students are invited to have civil and honest conversations about their post-presidential election concerns.  In this student forum, students are encouraged to share their feelings, thoughts and fears involving the campus and community climates involving conduct, behaviors, and attitudes of other students, staff, faculty and the community.  This forum is not a debate but a session to voice concerns.  It will be moderated by one or more of our campus professionals.

    Just a warning: If you invite people to gather to share their fears & concerns, they will. Don’t expect a session of happy “yay campus” quotes. But this is precisely why we need to hear why–in the midst of talk of Muslim registries and racist and anti-Semitic cabinet appointments, and the pledge to immediately deport as many people as Obama deported in 8 years (and his numbers were an all-time high)–why something like a safe and comfortable diverse campus is important to people, on an emotional level. And–thinking some more about Jonathan’s argument that his white racist friends feel more alienated if they don’t get a chance to share their thoughts as well–I wonder if part of this goes back to American values again. Should not racists feel alienated from the American mainstream? Should they not understand that these views, which might be acceptable in their small circle, are in fact not acceptable to the rest of us?  I think about this in terms of Austin’s mom’s group, the Chamber of Commerce–if a local business leader were found to have been embezzling the bank or using slave labor, wouldn’t other business leaders want to exclude that person, want to make it clear to them that they are not upholding the values that the rest of the local community upholds? So listen to someone, and then we’ll interview each other (we’ll assume we’re the white mainstream) and then we’ll have a compelling story.

  4.  Finally on Tuesday Derek Thatcher, the Career Development Coordinator, will come in to conduct a session with us on preparing resumes and cover letters, finding jobs, other internships, etc., etc. This works best by far if you bring in a draft of a resume/cover letter and your questions regarding them. You’ll be sending both to mentors at the end of the semester, so start preparing now. SO, everyone who will be doing an internship, imagine you are writing for that organization (Jonathan, since you know St. Vincent’s I’m going to assign you to imagine yourself writing them). Obviously, instead of saying “I’m applying for a job” you can start your cover letter with “I’d like to thank you for this opportunity to serve an internship with you.” But the rest of it is the same: What skills do you already bring to the table? Why will they be glad to have you? It’s easy to think in terms of lack of experience, but think instead of what you already possess, and state it with confidence. That’s what I’ve done already to sell each of you to them, and it was easy to think of your strengths. You can do the same.  I have several readings you should look at (below) to help you learn to write excellent resumes/letters (in fact, this is a trick assignment–I will know if you read the main reading or not–see if you can guess why). The resume draft you might just bring to class, with questions; the cover letter, remember, is Post #8 on your website for now.
  5. So, readings to help you write a cover letter (repeating from last week) are these: 1)  Cover-letter-writing. 2) RESUME–The Cover Letter.

As for a resume, after looking at a lot of texts I think this one from the Business Writing Today is the very most helpful one I’ve seen, because it helps you to think about your audience even as you write about yourself–and this is key. Exactly like funding organizations, employers don’t care about what you want or how deserving you are–they care about what you can do for them. Your job in resume & cover letter is to tell them.

There is a good runner-up text, though, that you can look at from Writing that Works, and the pages are here:

Week 13

Sorry, folks–when we’re six people it seems a bit redundant to post!  I think we all know what we’re doing on THURSDAY of this week, now–determining our grant winner.  Just so you know what to expect, the “4150 Grant Proposal Evaluation Form” is HERE.  This is what you’ll fill out for each application, anonymously.  We will also write a class press release about the whole project. Last year this made it onto the Newark Advocate front page–you can see the article they wrote after receiving our release under “News” on my website, here: https://u.osu.edu/weiser.23/news/

On TUESDAY, then, we’ll do a few things:

  1. Discuss the President’s and Dean’s messages on campus climate, just out this weekend, and how we fit into that campaign for a campus climate of respect in our divided nation. We’re really doing something useful with what we’re now going to call the “listening to diversity” project. In fact, if this works, I’m thinking we could be a model as people around the university talk about what to do to improve climate for everyone.
  2. Check in on where your spring internship stands.  I’ve heard from most people and will write back the stragglers before class if necessary.
  3. Move into our final “project,” which we’ll continue into the spring but start now, which is your professional profile.  This will include eventually your resume, web e-portfolio of work, and a LinkedIn profile to start networking. Since we’ll look at resumes with our Career Development Specialist before Thanksgiving, I’ll have you read “resume stuff” over next weekend, so for tomorrow look at cover letters.  Link to some pages from the ever-helpful Writing that Works are here to read: RESUME–The Cover Letter.  If you did not take Business Writing, the pages from the even more helpful Business Writing Today are also very useful:cover-letter-writing. What would a cover letter to your internship site from you look like? I’ll have you write a POST for your blog site that drafts the letter–get started on it whenever you have time. We’ll look at drafts in class after Thanksgiving, most likely.