Olivia Anton Introductory essay

In writing 1133 we composed three very different styles of writing, a text-based, qualitative paper, and a Google Maps. The purpose of these writings was to give us a broad range of styles we can draw from in order to succeed in the up coming years at the University of Denver. In the first assignment, creating a text-based paper, we were asked to expand our knowledge of writing and instead of creative writing techniques try a more educational stance. Our professor asked us to examine already written work in order to validate our claims, he stressed my peers and I to look at different ways to exam professionals work. I have always been interested in the science and spent most of my high school papers focused on scientific studies. At the time I did not know I was writing a text-based paper, drawing from outside sources to prove my thesis, I was just writing the way I had always been taught. I chose to try a new approach to this paper and instead of focusing on regurgitating facts I wanted to analyze and connect past research into a cohesive backing of my thesis. I have not had much experience with creative writing and chose to try and connect a broad set of lyrics that connected to my overall thesis. The introduction to this text based paper started off with a quote from Crosby, Nash, and Stills Clear Blue Skies:

Clear blue skies—not too much to ask for;
They were here before we came;
Will they be here when we're gone?
Clean water—not too much to hope for;
It's the basis of our lives,
And without it we are done.

It was meant to create a personal connection between the reader and the author that is not normally associated with scholarly writing. This was a new style that I was unsure how to conduct in an effective way, it resulted in a weak attempt to use pathos in order to invest the reader in the paper. Pathos was not obviously constructed and created an awkward pause in the paper that ran together with the other introductory parts. The second paper focused on Qualitative research, we were asked to construct our own testable thesis that we connected to our past project or an entirely new subject. We then had to find a subject group to test our thesis on and drawing from past research to support the claim we were attempting to make. This research looks at how much the students at the University of Denver understand the concept of environmental racism and whether they have a position on the topic. My question was prompted by my understanding of the term and the revelation that most people were unaware of its affects on our society and how our acceptance of this issue has caused a deeper level of inequality in our society. I need to focus on making connections with my findings rather than just reciting what I have found. This was the main critique. I also need to focus on my first few paragraphs and the stating my claim “clearly and concisely”. This paragraph is lacking in strength and purpose. To express the point of the paper I need to examine and clarify the purpose to myself as well, the easiest way to do this would be to read the paper to an outside participant that can ask questions to make clarifying points. Again the point that needs the most work is the qualitative section that compares my results to the bigger purpose and discusses the relationship between previous works on my topic, environmental racism, and connections I can draw to the results I found. Another point to revisit is making the source a credible one by introducing the author- also site how the example refers to the point I am making and how that is developing into a qualitative argument. For example instead of beginning with “Mero’s research used a geographical census survey “to examine individual-level racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in residential proximity to hazardous sites’” adding “Fallow up work in Richard Mero’s “Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities in Residential Proximity to Polluting Industrial Facilities” in the American Journal of Public Health constructed a study to determine if there was an unequal distribution of minorities or less fortunate that live in hazardous areas for your health” before the original sentence creates a the sense of a more credible source.

In the third piece of work, Google Maps, looks at a more interactive form of writing in order to influence a population greater than the DU campus. This was a group project were the individuals were connected by the groups theme. My personal goal of this Google maps document looked at the importance of culture and cuisine in Denver’s diverse society. The purpose of our map was to see the attributes that make restaurants popular and why diners come back. We look at the cuisine, location, and décors effect on the diners in the various types of restaurants we visited. Through these criteria we observed and analyzed what demographic were best represented in each restaurant. We also used different cuisines in order to see if different types attracted a different set of customers. We hoped the different restaurants would incise people into trying a new cuisine from our reviews. I enjoyed this writing because instead of using past studies to support our thesis we were constructed our own research once again and making our own conclusions from them. This project gave me a sense of freedom to try creative descriptive writing instead of scholarly. I was able to use writing like “This family run, authentic, lively restaurant is home to the traditional Middle Eastern cuisine that Americans have grown to love” to introduce the reader to the main subject. While my writing in this style is slightly strained in the descriptive images I enjoyed the change of pace this paper allowed. The writing can be seen as strained in the sentence structure, while some sentences were short and choppy others were long and contained lengthy details. The varying structures prohibited the flow and made the writing seem immature.