Hey guys! Today we’re going to talk about my final project in my LING305W summer session class. We had to choose a topic that was related to our major which was Linguistics and Graphic design for my teammate; we then had to choose two different genres to explain that topic to two types of audience.

We created our own association called The Pro Graffiti Project. The purpose of this association is to raise awareness about graffiti and why we should keep them in our cities. For our genres, we chose an opinion piece for a newspaper and a case study. The opinion piece was pretty easy to make because it was the most logical choice to introduce, explain and give our side on a topic.

We were able to add photos to explain in details what we were talking about. We highlighted the important words, just like an article online where the words in coloraturas are hyperlinks to more detailed articles. We described and gave definitions of the three different types of street art so that the article doesn’t target just one audience but, on the contrary, expands it.

Something that I really liked about the opinion piece is that we were able to create our own newspaper as well. I present to you The Artist Post, a newspaper for artists or people interested in Art and the different forms it takes.

The case study focuses on the problem of graffiti and gives solutions for the city to consider. The audience for study cases are usually a city council, or a school district for example. We were able to look the cases of different cities more in details and uses their solutions as examples of what we would like for our city.

I think the biggest challenge we met with this project was sticking to the deadlines. We both had other classes later at night and sometimes when one of the project parts was due the same night we usually couldn’t do it.

Finding relevant sources and information was a bit difficult too, and according to the information we would find, the purpose of our topic changed several times. But we settled on one topic and one purpose for our project.

It was a little bit different from other group project because we were only two in our group and it was put together according to our majors. It was easier in a way but also more difficult because we couldn’t really distribute the different tasks. It was also more difficult because we only had a week to write two genres and create a DOCS+V Analysis presentation, which is pretty short. We were lucky to be two hard workers so we did good on the presentation.

After using the DOCS+V Analysis for 6 intensive weeks I feel pretty confident about my skills in text analysis. I think I will use it again in all the classes that require writing essays.

I was a very inspiring summer session. I like creating projects so it was very interesting. This is my last post. I hope you enjoyed reading them!

Enjoy your summer!

Signing out

Hi everybody!

Today we are going to talk about résumés and cover letters! It’s summer and you’re lucky if you already found your job for the next two months, I unfortunately haven’t. So in class we had to find a job ad and write our résumé and a cover letter for it. It was interesting because I usually just searched small jobs to make some money during the summer or the holidays, but here we had to look for a job in our major that we would apply for after we graduate. So I found that company, Ezoic, that has a position opened for customer service and sales in French in London. They are looking for people to help companies figure out how the software works, so we need to be patient, persistent, calm, have empathy, etc. We also need to be bilingual in English and French, and I saw another ad for German. The search was easy. Writing the résumé a little less easy and writing the cover was even more complicated.

First things first, the résumé. I wrote mine a while back with my dad but I did not have all the experience I have today; so I was mostly concentrating on education.

See how the two differ? The first one includes the high school and the type of diploma I received, and the university in France and Mesa College in San Diego. I graduated from Mesa College since then so I could add this diploma and saying that I was studying at San Diego State University in the new one, and remove the high school and the french university. Also I put the schools in reversed chronological order. The section breathes a little bit more too, the bullet points are not glued to each other; I underlined the school because to me it is a sort of subsection.

Next, the work experience:

First you can see that I accumulated more experience since I did it with my dad. Second, I removed the volunteer work from the new one because it was taking space on the page and it was an internship that I had to do in middle school, so I did not really learn anything besides organising shelves. Instead of having bullet point for this section, I just underlined the companies names and stated my position underneath as well as describe my responsibilities. The date and place of the work are on two different lines instead of together.

Last but not least, skills:

As you can see, my skills changed a little bit too. I can manipulate more computer software and since I work in a restaurant I know how a POS works. For those of you who do not know what a POS is, it is the little computer servers are typing your order in; Aloha is one of many POS system available.

Now let us talk about the cover letter. I think for me it was one of the most difficult part. Let us face it, on a résumé we are just stating our experience and nothing more. A cover letter asks a little more to sell yourself. You have to state your skills and use examples to show how your skills are important. You have to show the company that you are valuable and that you can help them improving. I have a really hard time selling myself because I am still not sure what I am worth. I know I am a hard worker and a fast learner but that is about it. I also did not know where to start. I am not really great at engaging conversation to begin with, so catching the attention of the reader in a cover letter is even more complicated for me. I made it through though!

I hope you are enjoying your summer as much as I do!

Work hard, party hard beautiful people! ‘Til next time.

Signing out.

Hi everybody!

This week’s project was to interview a person in our field or who has the job we want to get after school, and make a profile about him/her. I thought that project was very interesting because I had the opportunity to talk to someone who was doing exactly what I want to do, and I was very excited!

I interviewed Marie-Pierre Lavoie, she is a translator in Canada. At first I was not sure who I was going to interview because I did not know anybody who was a translator. My former boss told me that his mom was a translator so I was going to interview her and she directed me to Marie-Pierre Lavoie because she retired a while ago and destroyed her résumé.

So, the first step was completed. The day of the interview came and the professor told us the interview should last 15 to 30 minutes. We talked for an hour! I was so excited that I asked more questions than the ones I wrote. It was very interesting to know more about the profession, I do not feel like professors gave me enough information about translation and the career I could have in the field. She told me about softwares, how it works when you are freelancing, and she gave me advice on how to enter the field but also on a translating program in Canada.

I was not expecting the profile to be so hard to write. It sounded very simple but I just could not figure out where to start. She said so many interesting things to me that I was not sure I could include it all. The hardest part was the introduction, I wanted to start on something powerful but I ended up describing her. The rest of the profile came pretty naturally and easily though. I tried to make it look like the profiles we saw in class and the ones I used to read in magazines when I was a teenager. So I tried to be as creative on the things surrounding the profile as possible. It was definitely a very type of writing compared to the ones I usually do in my other classes. I mostly write essays and they are pretty straight forward; you have to write about a text, state your claim and then analyse it. For the profile you have to describe someone, and it is harder than it sounds.

I think the easiest part in the profile was the quotation. I had a lot of fun writing the little boxes around the profile too, I included fun facts because not everybody would know or understand some facts stated in the profile; and I added a detailed career section on the side so that people can see her accomplishment even though I am not talking about all of them.

In the end, I learned a lot about my dream job and I am so glad I had the opportunity to talk to Marie-Pierre Lavoie. It got me even more excited and set up new goals for me.

If you want to read the profile, just click on the link below!

That’s all folks!

Signing out

I did not except Project to be like that. It was not easy but it was not too complicated either. I thought we were going to have to write an actual essay instead of bullet point paragraphes. It was better in the end because it helped me organise my thoughts a little clearer. I also thought it would be a little longer and not just two pages long. I still struggled with the length because of the type of text but I excepted an analysis to be three or four pages.

I had to analyse a text from the USDA about How To Handle Food Safely. It was a fact sheet that I already read when I was working in restaurant to get my Food Handlers Card. I liked it because it was very short and straight to the point but it definitely was not my favorite. I still learned a couple things about the the genre thanks to that DOCS+V analysis like the framing of a text with the colours and the logo are important even for a fact sheet. As you can see in the photo below, they even put a photo of a cart full of food so that you know the subject even without reading the title; also a classification and step-by-step method helps make the text clearer in that context because of the amount of data presented.

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I thought it was a little difficult using the DOCS+V analysis on this genre because I felt like we did not have much to work with. I repeated myself a lot in my paper and even in my presentation because to me the fonction of the fact sheet is to be short, clear, and straight to the point. Hopefully I will find more to say about the next genre and the next DOCS+V analysis and on the next project.

The presentation part of the project was interesting and I wish I was better prepared or had a little more to say. I felt like I lost my words and did not explain as much as I could. It is a little hard to do an analysis on a fact sheet and I probably would have had more to say on the other texts than on this one.

If you want to read more about the food industry and how to safely cook, buy, serve, and store food, check out the link below!

That’s all folks!

Signing out

Hi everybody, my name is Maryna (pronounced Marina), and I am from France! I have been in San Diego for three years and a half now and I am loving it! My family stayed in France so I am by myself here, like most international or exchange students. I am trying to go back home as much as possible. I used to go back every six months but I was stuck in San Diego for two years before going back last Christmas. It was hard at first but once I saw them again, everything was fine again!

Why San Diego you ask? Why it’s simple! The weather and the people! I came here for a month in the summer of 2015 and I fell in love with the city. People were so nice and I discovered so many things that it was like love at first sight.
So I started studying at San Diego Mesa College and I graduated with and Associate Degree in Spanish two years ago. There, I met my best friend who basically adopted me since we met! I worked for a year in two restaurants and it was an amazing experience. And I started my adventure at SDSU in August 2018; I have been enjoying every second of it, the campus is amazing! I will be graduating next May with a Bachelor in Linguistics, hopefully with a minor in Management.

Since I was little, I loved listening to music and watching a lot of movies (and I mean a LOT, I could just spend a day or two on my couch watching movies). I got very interested in languages in High School, I was taking German because my parents made, English because we did not have any other choice and Spanish because I wanted to challenge myself. I then studied Spanish and English at a university in Paris and I really liked it. I had translation classes and I thought, “this is great! I would love to do that but for movies!”.
So here I am, in California studying Linguistics and trying know where I am going next!

That’s all for me,
Signing out.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton