Reflection

After completing all three of my major assignments I have discovered that my number one problem is connecting the topics of leadership and community service. Severl times, I make the point of how leadership is derived from service learning, but then I don’t really go on to discuss the connection. Its sort of like there is a sudden disconnect within the essay. When I think about it it makes sense in my own mind, but I fail to realize that the audience doesnt even know what I'm talking about. I have realized that I need to logically walk my audience throughout my entire argument in order for it to make sense. Because I already know what I'm talking about I don't need to explain anything; however, for an outside spectator it is much different. I have realized that I must always assume they know nothing about the topic to begin with, and go on from there

Research Genre

After researching my genra online and seeing all the various community service groups that have been created I have come to the conclusion that anyone can perform community service. Anyone can write about it and anyone can have an opinion on it.

I found all types of ways which people have performed community service groups. Some of these include...

• Individually- where there are community service oppurtunities offered and students can sign up for them or just show up whenever they please. These are very flexible for those with a busy schedule. I found a list of these on the VT engage website. They range from helping out at animal shelters to tutoring other students.
• Groups with a common cause- I found the alumni association on the Virginia Tech website. Their mission is to "promote welfare of the university by cultivating a mutually beneficial relationship between Virginia Tech and its growing worldwide community of alumni". Evidently, they have a single purpose which their service is geared toward, and everyone has something in common, they are all Hokie alumni
• General Community service groups- These groups are made for the sole purpose of helping others. They help anyone in need of all age groups. These groups are usually more flexible in who they let in and are also larger.

Clearly, there are many types of different ways someone can perform community service, and it something that everyone can do.

INITIATING ACTION revised

I emailed the head of my prior community, Exploring Leadership at Tech Program, and requested whether or not I could advertise the projects we were work on in that specific program to the entire campus. She replied that I could; however, students needed to find their own form of transportation. As another aspect to my intiating action project, I have decided to put up flyers advertising the projects were perform in this group and other community service groups I am in order for other students to get a chance to become involved. I will advertise that any student can join, and I will even attempt to make a group out of those students that decided to become involved. Essentially, my job is going to be to organize community service projects and advertise them on campus through flyers or emails. Hopefully it will work.

My specific audience include those students on campus who want to get involved but don't know how. And my genre is community service for all students, not just those that are present in groups.

My Initiating Action

One consistant problem that I see with my community is the ability and outlet of getting involved. Although community service is a major part of Virginia Tech, many students find it hard to find things to get involved with. Usually they have to go through many websites and flyers until they can find oppurtunies to perform community service. The origin of this problem comes from two issues....

1) Many students want to perform community service, but in order to do so they usually must apply to a certain group. Additionally, most of these groups are closed and only accept a limited amount of people (not a majority of the students). This discourages people from joining.
2) As an individual it is hard to find big projects going on, unless you are involved with some sort of group.

My solution is to contact several different community service groups, as well as the listserv that sends out e-mails to all the students across campus, and ask them to advertise their community service projects that they perform and allow other students to join. I am also going to contact the coordinators of social groups across campus and suggest they publish a manual of some sort at the beginning of the year, which they hand out to all the students, to inform everyone of how to join clubs and become more involved. Hopefully, with more contact more students will want to get involved.

INITIATING ACTION

1) First I found the VT engage website, which encompassed all the major community service groups on campus. It provided information on them, how to join them, and what projects they were working on currently. It was very informative, and was more logos than anything else. It did not really appeal to the emotion of the audience, and was simply a list of links so it didn't really have an author's persona. It was very organzied and was very easy to maneuver. Ultimately it encouraged students to get involved in community service and provided outlets for that. Even if they wanted to do it individually, there were individual log in hours on the website as well.

2) The second thing i found was an excerpt from a magazine called techdirections. The article was titled "Linking Service to Learning". It provided a background of what service learning was and why students should get involved. It provided logo with statistics of undergraduates getting involved, and pathos through pictures.

Response to Final Draft Comments

The comments that Ms. Scott provided were very helpful. First of all they assured me that I was on the right track, which was a relief. They also brought to light some things that I hadn't thought of and that my peers have not commented on yet. They include....

1) The connotation of the word service-learning. When I referred to service-learning I meant to refer to service as a whole, not just in the classroom. Ms. Scott told me to use a broader term known as "servant leadership". I also have to work on actually defining and specifically stating my definition of service for this particular essay.

2) The generalization of my essay. After reading the comments I realized that my arguments were based on broad concepts and not on specific examples from the community. I think I need to work on taking specific instances to make my arguments stronger.

3) That my introduction and conclusions were sort of contradictory. I did not mean to establish a point of community and continue on to discuss the importance of one leader. I meant to describe the derivation of many leaders out of one community. I need to further explain this, again, with more examples.

Ultimately, I think I need to work on taking specific issues to support my arguments instead of basing them on broad generalizations.

Peer Revisions

The revisions for my essay really helped when working toward a final piece. They made me realize that I didn't have a clear point in my essay. I was jumping around between three different topics and I never really related them together. I just assumed that people could see the connection. I can fix this by working on my transitions between paragraphs. I need to explain myself more and how I get from one topic to the next.

Before I discussed that the risk I was taking was that the beginning of my essay was completely different from the end. I failed to correctly do this on final draft, but I now think I know what I have to do. I need to add cohesion to my essay by explaining the relationship of each and every one of my topics. Additionally, I also need to work on some grammitcal errors and specific structural issues in my sentences. I saw the some of them seemed completely illogical, but made sense while I was writing them.

Over all the advice was really helpful and I am using all of it!