MEMORANDUM

To: Professor Phifer-Byrne

From: Nina Dorman
Subject: Reflection
Date: 09/06/2017

Rhetorical Situation
Career / Letter of Resumes Professional Job Digital
Profession FAQ Recommendati Images Application Professional
on Request Letter Brand Plan
Audience(s) Anyone interested A supervisor, An employer Potential Potential The writer /
in a future in this mentor, co- or a human employers, employer or applicant,
career field. As this worker, or resource human human fellow
is an overview of a professor that employee resource resource students, and
career field, the has worked with
searching for managers, or manager. professor. All
audience probably you or has an in
has very little depth
qualified even people This person understand
background understanding of applicants researching knows what what can help
knowledge. your experience for a job portfolios to experience to or hurt the
and skill. opening. learn how to look for in an image of a
Someone who create a applicant. professional
knows enough to professional May be and what
write a letter to image. viewing things could
vouch for you as several other be done to
an employee. applications. improve your
image.
Author As a weather The person An applicant The person in The applicant The writer /
forecaster that requesting a looking for a the picture. researches applicant
oversaw junior letter. This job. Extensive This person what is most researches
forecasters coming person has done working carefully valued by the their current
into the career field, his/her research knowledge of chooses what company and image and
I understand what a on the company their skills. image they what what they can
person beginning in they are applying Researches want to experience is do to improve
the career field too and has a job openings portray based needed. They it now and in
would need or like deep to showcase upon the job have extensive the future.
to know. I also understanding of skills they they are trying working
researched basic how they qualify. have that to get. knowledge of
information that They carefully match a job their skillsets
would be useful for choose who listing they and what they
a person with little knows their work are interested can do .
knowledge of the the most. in.
career field.
Purpose To give basic To request a To appear To show The cover To develop a
information about a letter highlighting professional potential letter sets the plan to tailor
career field so that the qualifications and highlight employers a tone for the your personal
someone with little of the applicant. what photo of you resume. It image to what
knowledge on the To convince applicable that increases interests the you would
 subject can someone to experience your chance of reader, want others to
determine their vouch on their they have in a getting hired. appears see. To ensure
interest in pursuing behalf. career field. professional, you appear
that occupation. and further professional
highlights and
what most trustworthy to
qualifies you employers.
for the job.
Context Provide answers to Written to Depending on What your Different Although this is
important questions someone who where the photo shows cultures and a personal
people, from a wide knows you well applicant is depends audiences brand plan, it
variety of and understands willing to heavily on your value different will be viewed
backgrounds, may your level of skill. work, several career field things. by fellow
have about a Professional and resumes may and where you Researching students and
possible future well-written, this need to be want to work. what professor and
occupation. Provide letter is meant to created to Different personality needs to be
insightful, tailored highlight your highlight their cultures and and traits a professional.
information skills and provide skills/provide occupations company
conveying what is the person with personal hold different values will
most important easy access to information in standards of allow you to
about a career field. important a desirable professional- accurately
information, such way based ism and choose how to
as the job upon what an modesty. portray
posting. employer yourself in the
value. cover letter.
Genre This document Since this is a Resumes Images are Cover letters This document
follows a question letter, it typically follow several usually are in a letter can follow a
and answer format. follows a letter or different cropped short, or memo variety of
This requires a memo format. formats; appear format. The different
template that makes The recipients however, all professional, recipients templates.
each question stand name is at the are business- and recently name and Since I had a
out so that each top and it is like and easy taken. This business is at lot of
question is easily signed by the to read. All allows viewers the top and information to
identified and sender at the sections are to concentrate the letter share, I chose
separated from one bottom. Shot formatted to on your face, typically to tailor short
another. paragraphs make make them perceive you references the paragraphs
it more readable. easily as a attached with detailed
identified. professional, resume. descriptions of
and recognize my plan. Each
you upon section is
meeting. carefully
separated.
Media / This document is This is typically Resumes can Photos can be Cover letters This is to be
Delivery typically found sent in the mail be send in the included in the can be send in saved digitally
online, either on or e-mailed to the mail or mail upon the mail or and uploaded
sites dedicated to recipient. electronically request or digitally. This onto our UA
researching through e- added includes D2L website.
different mail. They can electronically. sending e-
occupations or on be posted to Digital photos mails or
an actual companys different job can be posting online.
website. For sites, business uploaded to
atmospheric webpages, or resumes,
 scientists. Typically on portfolios, or
done in a simple professional profiles.
format on Word portfolios.
document.

For this project, I created six different types of documents: Career/Profession FAQ, Letter of
Recommendation Request, Resumes (3), Professional Images (3), Job Application Letter, and a Digital
Professional Brand Plan. Although each of these had a different audience, author, purpose, context,
genre, and media, researching, developing, and revising these helped me understand how each one of
these aspects of a document could shape and impact one another. Researching and understanding who
my audience would be helped me decide what information, format, and context to choose. The
audiences background, both educational and cultural, determined when I could or couldnt use jargon
used in the meteorological career field. In the Career/Profession FAQ, the audience was likely to be
students or people without much meteorological background. This meant I needed to provide short,
tailored answers with terms easily understood by the public. In my resume, the reader was likely to be
an employer who is familiar with the more common meteorological terms.

My purpose for each of these documents helped shape the context, audience, genre, and
media. For instance, my purpose for the resume was to highlight my skills and qualifications for a job in
a professional manner that is appealing for future employers. To do this I needed to find out who my
audience was and what exact experience and skills they were looking for that I had. This helped me
tailor the information in my resume to what would be the most alluring for the employer. My purpose
for professional images was to portray an image of desirable employee. To accomplish this, I needed to
determine what media I would use to ensure my photos were seen. After posting my picture online, I
became more aware of my audience and how I felt about them seeing this photo as a visual
representation of me as a professional. This helped me determine what to change about the portrait
portion of my digital brand plan.

Lastly, the genre of each document was influenced by several other rhetorical elements. For the
Letter of Recommendation Request I needed to a formal letter that explained my purpose and
highlighted my applicable skills for a certain job. For this to be formal and relatively short, I needed to
choose a genre that would allow me to list all the information in a business-like manner but could still
contain sentences meant to persuade (purpose) the reader (audience) to write a letter for me. Likewise,
the cover letter follows a relatively similar genre, the letter, but contains different information and is
formatted differently to account for this. Understanding what my purpose is, what information the
audience needs, and what delivery method to use helped determine what genre the cover letter would
best fit in.

Project
This project was the most challenging I have had to complete to date. While I have had to tailor
other documents or paragraphs to only include the most relevant material, I was still able to keep
paragraphs of information. I am most proud of this project because it challenged my biggest weakness,
shortening sentences. I read each document multiple times to rewrite or combine sentences. I deleted
information in all documents, especially my resumes, to shorten bullet points or lengthy sentences. I
carefully read each section of the prompt while reading over every document, ensuring I met all the
requirements. Also, I am proud of this project because it showed me how I have grown as an individual.
Accepting criticisms in a healthy and productive way without taking things personally can be hard. Being
able to happily accept feedback from other professionals and make revisions that increase the
effectiveness of a document was enlightening about my own growth. This growth as a writer and a
person made this project one I am most proud of and encouraged by.

Although I am proud of this project, I wish I had more time to make more revisions. I am happy
with the outcome of my documents, however, having more time to research questions for my Career
FAQ would make it appear more professional. Also, while I revised and tailored each question and
answer several times, I still feel as if there are improvements that could be made. Further shortening the
longest answers, by combining sentences if possible, would increase the readability of each section and
support the purpose of capturing the audiences attention. If I had more time I believe I would have
started over with new questions so that I could choose between the questions / answers from each
document to determine which would be the most useful to my audience.

With any work, I tend to be my toughest critic but I still believe the professor will be able to tell
how much effort went into putting these documents together. I paid a lot of attention to lines,
formatting, and font throughout my documents, especially my resumes. I think the professor will see
professional formats and carefully tailored sentences throughout most of my work. I also believe the
professor will be able to tell where I made revisions based upon our assignments, as well as examples
from out textbooks. I took great care to make it easy for the professor to be able to spot where and
when I fulfilled tasks from the rubric or requirements from the prompt. Hopefully this was done in a way
that allows the professor to see the amount of care taken when putting these forms together. The only
thing I could see costing me points off my grade is the Career FAQ. The professor may think my answers
are too long for this genre or that the questions could have been adjusted slightly. I would agree with
this; however, I may be being too critical of my own work. I plan to use all the time allotted to make
adjustments so any discrepancies or inadequacies I find may be revised.

Process

To complete this project, I first read the chapters from the textbooks to understand what was
expected and what format to follow. I then searched for other examples of similar documents from
OWL, online templates, and job search sites. Afterward I completed a draft of each form and performed
research to better understand the audience, author, purpose, context, genre, and media/delivery.
Better understanding these helped me make my first round of revisions. Next the class completed peer
reviews. These peer reviews gave me a chance to see other examples of these documents and get more
familiar with the project requirements. Considering feedback from other students and the assigned
chapters from our textbooks, I made another round of revisions. Lastly, I compared my final copy of
each form against the project #1 prompt and the grading rubric to ensure I included everything that was
required.

The first round of revisions I made were due to better understanding the audience, author,
purpose, context, genre, and media/delivery of each document. By concentrating on each of these, I
could ensure I chose the right format, tone, level of formality, and amount / type of information to
include. Next, we had a few assignments that had us focus on different elements of our project such as
layout and design, lists and parallelism, and grammar and style. Focusing on each document, I found
multiple ways to make improvements. For the layout and design, I learned about spacing and using bold
to make topics or important information standout. I applied this for every form and ensured that the
biggest words were the most important to the reader. For lists and parallelism, I concentrated mostly on
parallelism. Most of my sentences that listed items were awkward or too lengthy because they did not
use parallelism. By ensuring that all items within a list matched each other, such as amount of words or
ending in -ing, I could improve the professional appearance of my documents. Lastly, for grammar and
style I concentrated on dangling or misplaced modifiers. In lengthy paragraphs, there were often
sentences that did not flow well. After further investigation, I noticed that the sentences were awkward
because of misplaced modifiers. By asking myself what is the modifier, what does it describe, and where
should it go, I was able to revise these awkward sentences so they had a clearer meaning.

While completing every document had its challenges, I found myself stuck when I had to consolidate
everything into one form. Exporting PDFs and copy and pasting forms into a Word document was
challenging because of all the different formats. I was unsure if I was even choosing the correct way to
condense the separate forms into one document. I overcame this by contacting the professor and
getting clarification about what was expected / acceptable. This was time consuming and stressful,
however, adjusting each element of the forms also taught me a lot about formats and genres.

Lastly, several course related readings and assignments aided me in completing this project.
There were four pieces of course related work that stood out as the most helpful: readings, peer-review,
required research, and the audience / author table. The peer-review was confusing in some respects
since the helpfulness of the review depended upon the reviewers understanding of the assignment,
professionalism, and experience. Of course, the peer-review was also immensely helpful in showing
other students examples of a form, helping me better understand the project requirements, and
receiving insightful feedback on how to improve my forms. The readings were a great first look at what
was expected of us so that I could put together a solid first draft. The required research we had to do
regarding our career fields helped me understand what was important to those in the career field when
it comes to experience, traits, and resumes. Also, the table we created to explore the audience and
author of each of our documents helped me get a better grasp of how I should format my forms based
upon the audiences needs and background, as well as the documents purpose.

Learning

Three of the Student Learning Outcomes I believe I worked towards with this project were
rhetoric, process, and genre. Understanding the rhetorical situation for all of my documents helped me
better understand who I was writing for, what the purpose was, and what information was needed. I
worked toward better under the SLO process by using several different methods in the revision process.
Researching other professionals, conducting peer reviews, and rereading my forms after an assignment
helped point out ways that my documents could be improved. Likewise, completing assignments,
researching genres, and understanding the rhetorical situation all helped me better understand the
different genres I used, as well as their purpose. Each document had its own format, tone, and
mechanics. Using the appropriate ones for each genre maximized the documents effectiveness.

Within the project I used a few different technologies. Online resume templates allowed me to
get a better understanding of different layouts, fonts, and formats so that I could see which portrayed
the image and level of professionalism I desired. PDF, Microsoft Word, and Google Drive were all used to
create and revise documents. Google Drive helped immensely by allowing other students to see and
comment on my work. By using so many different technologies I learned that it is important to explore
beyond what you are comfortable with. Finding other outlets or technologies to use when completing a
task could improve its appearance or effectiveness. While PDF allowed me to use my strengths in
formatting to create a visually appealing resume, once I exported the PDF to Microsoft Word I noticed
that I wasnt as comfortable with formatting. Knowing that I am more comfortable with the options,
layouts, and functions of PDF than I am with Microsoft Word makes me want to improve my ability to
format documents effectively across multiple technologies.