Week 8 What does my community need & why do I care?

You get home after class one night, absolutely starving. You decide to make your favorite treat. It is a recipe that others in your family or friends also enjoy. But it's just you tonight, so you gather all the ingredients and whip it together. You throw the food on a plate, plop down in front of the television or computer, and chow down. It's nothing fancy -- but, hey -- it's just you.

Now suppose you are making that favorite treat for a family dinner or to a potluck at your workplace. Maybe you've been asked by local media to contribute a recipe to a promotional cookbook that will be used to raise money for a charity you support.

We can use a similar scenario for fashion -- designing or styling an outfit for yourself versus creating one for a client -- or for landscape design -- creating a plan for your backyard versus creating one for a corporate client on a busy city thoroughfare.

My point is that who we are creating for makes a difference. It's not that we will do shoddy work if it is something that only we are going to taste, wear, or see. Who our audience is makes a difference in the choices we make. In writing, these are called "rhetorical" decisions: choices we make depending on the audience for our work.

Understanding your audience is a key consideration in the "This I Believe" essay. We talked last week about who might hear or see your TIB essay. This includes your classmates and me, the Dean of Academic Affairs, your program Academic Director, and the director of Career Services. But if you post your TIB essay on the website, that audience expands to family, friends, potential employers, co-workers, and even strangers who might find your essay just like you found one last week.

Suddenly, the essay is more than just something I am making you write. It has the potential to represent you, to tell the world what you believe, how you prioritize your life.

As you explore this idea, last week in class I asked you to complete a mind map of the communities to which you belong. One of the considerations for this week's revision is to think about what kinds of issues or concerns your communities have and if you want to affect any of these issues. Some of you already raised a few concerns in your earlier work such as the environment, health, sustainability, and education. How do these issues translate locally to the market in which you intend to work? This might require a little research on your part, perhaps doing a Google search of local media or trade journals.

You can write about these issues in your second version of Assignment C. Keep in mind that not everything you write may end up in the final version. You have to write longer in order to enough good ideas to be able to whittle them down to those really important ones.

Think of it as experimenting, just like you might with a recipe, a pattern, a landscape plan, or a design. The second version of Assignment C is the place where you can go wild and explore lots of different directions and ideas. Try a little crazy. Be avante garde. We are not using the rubric to grade yet. It's all about ideas right now.

Give me the pizza with everything, the outfit with all the bling, and the design that includes exotic plants.

Im ready to feast on them.