Introduction Draft-Scott Haraway

Over the course of this quarter and last in the WRIT sequence, I have developed a breadth of writing skills for a number of different situations and corresponding audiences. I can demonstrate this through four pieces of writing that I created: a text-based research paper, an ethnography, a Google Map, and a newspaper feature article. In these different pieces I appeal to ethos, logos, and pathos, in very different ways to appeal to both the reader and the academic community. Through the documents discussed below, I will show my growth in in-depth research and revision that has made me the better, more versatile writer that I am today.

The first paper I wrote was a text-based research paper. The assignment was to create an argument that had to do with an issue in the city of Denver or its surrounding area in some way, as all of our assignments for WRIT 1133 had to be, and to ground the argument in at least five previously written, peer-reviewed academic publications. Not a week before the paper was assigned, I read an article about how a man named Stan Kroenke had become the primary shareholder (owner) of Arsenal Football Club in England. This struck me as amazing, because I knew that Kroenke already owned the Colorado Avalanche, the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Rapids, the Colorado Mammoth, the St. Louis Rams, and the Pepsi Center where three of these teams call home and numerous concerts take place year round. Clearly this is an amazing empire in the sporting world, not to mention his wife is a Walmart child, and the so-called Denver sports monopoly interested me being a huge sports fan.

The purpose of this paper was to show how this sort of sports monopoly was a bad thing for Colorado sports. It was very difficult to find sources that had academic credibility, because it is an increasingly current topic and also a small scope of people geographically who would care about this man…

The next paper I wrote was an ethnography/study about why people go to coffee shops. The assignment was to write a qualitative study about why or how people do what they do, again in some way related to Denver. The main point of the project was to create our own research and that the research was qualitative as opposed to quantitative, number-based research. I chose to research what people do at coffee shops, because it is a place that my brother and I had always spent a lot of time and always observed people at. It always struck us as interested that most people, including us, visited a coffee with the cup of coffee they were purchasing as their last priority.

The purpose of the paper was to demonstrate exactly this point. So, I conducted my research through a series of four structured observations in which I used a checklist to systematically observe the patrons of two different coffee shops over an hour period of time. The checklist included almost every trait of physical appearance that you could think of as well as questions on what they purchased and what they did while they were there. In addition, I conducted eight short interviews with a sample of interviewees that I thought represented the coffee shop population very well. With the combination of these research interests I formulated conclusions based on the trends I began to see…

The third product produced in WRIT 1133 was a Google Map, which was a very unorthodox yet extremely fun research project. The assignment was to work with a group, in my case of four, to create an original Google Map that was almost a guide around some part of Denver, for example the DU campus itself or the Denver slam poetry scene. On this map we were supposed to place two to three “markers” each, which were places that we had gone to do firsthand observatory research on and later written a blurb about describing our experience and overall impressions of the place. We were encouraged to include videos, pictures, audio, etc. to enhance our map.

My group chose to do a map based on what DU students do off campus. The reason for this is because it had great personal resonation in that the four of us are always trying to find something fun to do in Denver and explore the city when our campus starts getting a little stale. We also wanted to create something that was very comprehensive and varied throughout the city both geographically and interest-wise. The purpose of that was that our map would then be able to help inform more students from different backgrounds. One critique we seemed to get that it didn’t seem to necessarily have a very focused theme, but that was exactly it. We wanted to provide at least one or two things for each student, no matter what their interests were. So someone could go to