I’m majoring in public relations with minors in writing and media studies. I started taking my writing more seriously after I stepped away from the Xaver track team last year due to injuries. Since then I started my blog, DominicV.net, to create a platform for topics that teachers don’t address in the classroom. I’ve written about productivity, humility, books, religion and philosophy. My work has appeared on Thought Catalog and The Good Men Project as well as Laura Vanderkam’s personal website. In addition to this, I’ve interviewed best-selling authors and award-winning marketers and editors.
I think the worst thing a writer can do is lock himself in a room and pour his heart out via a keyboard. Go read and do interesting things instead, and let that shape your perspective – the writing takes care of itself.
A side note: once per month I send out a few book recommendations along with the writing I’ve done that month. Feel free to join it here.
What better way to kick off the class than by analyzing your favorite film? You can check out a nuanced take on Whiplash in my textual analysis: “Whiplash” is a Plea for You to Stop Being Soft
My advocacy post is an emotionally raw call for future college professors to take the initiative towards the reform of higher education. Check it out here: An Open Letter to a Future Teacher.
The best stories come from the heart, and this is about as personal as it gets from me. If reading about injuries doesn’t gross you out too much, take a look at my visual story: How a Metal Screw Secured My Tibia and My Future.
Most recently, I collaborated with two of my classmates to create a podcast titled “Anxiety and Art.” Here, the three of us discuss the role of uncertainty and discomfort in regards to the creative process and moving on with life as a whole. It was a demanding albeit rewarding project.
ENGL 339: Digital Writing 
Well I would say good job, but something tells me that wouldn’t be productive here. Whiplash is one of my favorite movies, and I think you hit this analysis perfectly. I also really like the layout of the post because I think it looks really professional and clean.
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Seeing the film myself i feel the argument you made was very well organized. And relating an outside source from another faction like basketball was a nice twist.
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I real like your post. Very well written.
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Very well-focused. It is clear that you knew what you wanted to argue. However, I think it is risky when you make statements about “today’s society.” While many of your claims are valid, such commentary should be treated with caution.
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yes, that phrase, “today’s society” is significantly overused and too diffuse. Everyone should note this and vow to excise it from their prose! Instead, be specific about both time and context (in a contemporary [bourgeois?] American culture that privileges self-esteem and trying hard, e.g.).
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I love this movie and that made me appreciate your driven analysis of it even more. I found it very compelling, and it definitely isn’t an easy argument to establish, but I think you managed it well. I also liked how you visited the concept of Charlie Parker, and your comment to how this thematic within the film relates to artistic fields and pursuits.
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I think that this analysis was very well thought out, even if it could be considered difficult to argue. There is a lot of relevance in your analysis, and your point could be read very clearly and concisely.
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the more I think about your piece, the more I agree with the points you make. I would work on formatting a bit to make the words demand to be read, as I feel you are onto something. You have a very clear voice and an unapologetic certainty about your tone. Appropriate, and in my opinion, effective.
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Fascinating comparison of the movie to larger cultural contexts, a very skilled analysis. With this in mind, I feel the need to ask from where you draw your generalizations about modern life and society. Are these generalizations obviously perceivable in society or did sources dictate your ideas about the present day and age? Your use of visual mediums is also streamlined an excellent, and particularly useful considering the subject of your article is a movie.
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I have heard of this movie, but I have yet to see it. Your analysis is very strong, and it looks at the issues people face when they strive for greatness. I like how you tied the movie to other examples such as Kobe Bryant and Charlie Parker; they really illustrated your overall argument.
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Your analysis of this movie is great, it is very well-written and easy to follow. I thought you did a great job of breaking up your paragraphs, there aren’t any huge chunks of text to deter readers. The structure of the whole essay flows well together and your pictures and video fit nicely. I’m also glad you included more than 2 hyperlinks, it makes your article more interactive!
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I like the flow of your analysis. The language you use really establishes your voice as a writer.
You wrote: “The point is that the next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged. ” but provide no background (or hyperlink) of who that is and why they are being mentioned in your analysis until much later. Also your page layout and site material look good!
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I don’t think you need background on Charlie Parker necessarily since you are presumably writing to an audience that is either 1) familiar with the movie or 2) familiar with jazz.
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You brought up a great point about people being too soft. It is a bold statement to say something like that. You did a great job of backing up your thesis with facts about famous athletes and musicians feeling the same way.
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Thesis: corrections=love. Very good on cultural significance and use of hyperlinks. I do think that your reference to the Brody article needs contextualization, though. Tell us who Brody is in case we don’t want to click on that hyperlink to find out. Watch issues mentioned about specificity re: society and culture. At one point, about mid way through the piece, you shift back to the movie after a more general discussion without a clear transition. So watch that. And there’s at least one proofreading issue. I’d like to see you go a bit deeper into the the ways in which the film conveys theme. For example, you provide the clip reel, but what’s the effect on viewers, in the aggregate? How does the film promote the notion that greatness only comes at great cost without losing viewers turned off by violence/abuse? Or can you perhaps read one scene very closely? Interpret the film’s construction more closely to uncover *its* greatness.
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I agree with what Sarah said in class that you should maybe focus on college since you talk about admissions and college courses. To me college professors and high school teachers are completely different entities because of what they deal with, so if you’re going to talk about both you should distinctly offer examples for both.
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The letter format is extremely effective. And in all honesty, I don’t think you need any pictures. Maybe just one at the beginning
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This letter was easy to read through and left a pretty big impact, at least for me anyway. I like the setup withou any pictures and I agree with making a distinction between college professors and high school/middle school teachers.
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I love the use of the letter format, and I think it was a bold but rewarding move in expressing your point. The seriousness of the issue works in conjunction with the letter format to really drive the message home.
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Your advocacy post is really cool! I especially like the quotation: “systemized regurgitation in exchange for validation.” :). I think it would be helpful to give even more examples of teachers that have inspired you and helped you to grow as a person. That may help to balance out all of the criticism you offer– there are many motivated professors and teachers who are really trying to engage students, I think. You do do this, but not until the end. You place a lot of responsibility on teachers, but I think it would be more effective if you spent more time noting the different factors that lead to something like high illiteracy, for example.
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I think the letter format works very well for the topic you write about. Your thesis is very strong, and I think it’s something a lot of future teachers would have concerns about. Because this is a letter, I would personally not include images. I feel like that would throw off the reader. Your introduction describes what many students experience, and I like that you add that kind of personal connection.
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I like that you wrote your post in the format of a letter, it makes it unique. Because it is a letter, I agree that it does not need photos. I think it would be a good idea to cite your source(s) on literacy rates in America, that will give you more credibility to your audience. Overall, nice job!
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I really liked this topic and letter a lot. I think this is something I have thought about as well, and I am also passionate towards. I thought your letter contained a nice balance of personal tone within the content. I think the use of questions is a powerful form of advocacy. Whether you use pictures is ultimately up to you, but I think it would be distracting, and I think making it seem more like a letter (design wise) is more powerful. Good job!
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I like how you style this as a letter and its such a unique topic.
I like the idea of using images, maybe just even images of school children. I also really like how you had these thought provoking questions throughout the piece to allow the reader to stop and reflect every so often. Great work!
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Advocacy post:
excellent style! As a non-educator I still found myself engaged with the topic and the ideas presented in it! I think that the one on one language serves to pull the reader in in a profound way. excellent!
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My good man that’s a fine letter you don’t need to spice it up with images as that would distract. I read something along the same lines as you did about how school is just teaching us how to take tests and we aren’t really learning. You could probably make an argument for the socratic method, maybe classes should be round table discussions instead of 75 minutes of lecture taking. There’s a couple ofr White Stripes lyrics from Black Math that are appropriate to your argument “I can’t tell you how proud I am, writing down things that I don’t understand.” Also “Is it the fingers or the brain that your teaching the lesson?” Both from the same song. God this is a long comment…sorry.
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I think this post would really benefit from some self-reflective or identifications of the source of your author’s thesis. You’ve done a good job of being convincing and speaking from authority, but to improve this, tell us where your speaker is coming from. It becomes evident that your speaker is a student whose “professors” could do more for him/her, but this could be more clear earlier on.
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I love that you chose to write an open letter with substance. Oftentimes these letters are clickbait-y and underdeveloped, but yours is highly effective. I don’t know how political you want to make your piece, but I know there are a lot of really awesome videos of students and teachers speaking out against Betsy DeVos, and I think maybe linking to something like that may be effective.
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I’m not your ideal target audience—*future* teacher—but be sure you do not alienate your audience with stereotypes or flip dismissals of educational practices by relying too heavily on your experience as a student, blaming teachers for the ills of our society, and repeating widely-circulated generalizations that are not backed up with solid evidence. You can change your tone in some places, be more precise with your language in others, and/or find some sources that provide the teacher’s point of view as well to address this concern.
For example, you should be preaching to the choir when you denounce standardized tests (I don’t know a single teacher —and I know A LOT of teachers, at every level) who really believes in the value of teaching to standardized tests. But we (teachers) all believe in the necessity of some form of assessment and thus a statement that characterizes multiple-choice exam questions as “arbitrarily selected” can be off-putting. Good teachers, earnest teachers, put serious prep time into crafting exams. Also, teachers are ultimately not responsible for the over-valuation of standardized tests in k-12 education or college admissions criteria. K-12 teachers have very little control over curriculum and college faculty have nothing to do with admissions.
In general, blaming the state of our education system on teachers seems ill-advised to me, especially if teachers are your target audience. Also, if you are trying to reach people who may disagree with you, I don’t think that is an effective way to do it. I think anger *can* be an effective tone, but you need to be very careful where you aim that anger if you don’t want to lose your readers. For example, when you turn to discussing college, you also begin to speak to things that put me more squarely in your implicit target audience. But you lose me when you denigrate certain areas of study and perpetuate caricatures of college professors as elitist snobs, as the Hedges quote implies. I don’t think that rhetoric works for either a targeted audience of teachers or a broad audience that includes anybody/everybody who has been schooled in the US. Every profession has insider knowledge and jargon, right? And conversations among professionals in any given field will commence in that language. I don’t imagine I would get much out of attending a convention of cardiothoracic surgeons. But the best heart doctor is the one who can both talk to her colleagues in the language most conducive to fomenting knowledge and expertise and then translate that language to a patient who also needs knowledge and care. Your ensuing example about professors with empathy who attempt to connect the ideas in the classroom with the world beyond fits this analogy, I think, but by then some of your earlier complaints may have already turned off a number of readers.
I agree with your peers who suggest that focusing on either K-12 schooling or higher education would be more effective than tackling both. At the end, you turn away from college back to the example of the primary and/or secondary school educator, which is jarring after the discussion of college education but allows you to include some more effective rhetorical flourishes, like closing with the reference to conferences. Where does your passion lie here? In critiquing your own recent educational experience or anticipating how the next generation will turn out?
Is that link to the Education journal study going to work for non-Xavier readers (i.e.. I think it’s behind a paywall and thus will not…). Instead, cite something from the study, document the citation, and put it in your required Works Cited. You need in-text citations for the statistics you cite as well. In general, I think this piece could use more logos.
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I’ve made a few changes, most notably the decision to make this an open letter to a future college professor, not teachers in general. I think this will tighten up the piece. Also, I’ll include footnotes at the end for sources (I think in-text citations would disrupt the letter format).
In regards to your critiques, I don’t see myself as alienating my audience, and to label the claims as stereotypes or flip dismissals undermines my personal college experience. I’m writing from a place of honesty, and my claims either actually happened or are my interpretation of the situation. I’m not blaming teachers for society’s problems. But we can safely assume that if students aren’t equipped to think critically and analyze complex situations in college, they’ll have trouble doing so after they graduate. Shouldn’t professors play a role in encouraging these practices?
As far as the subject of testing, here are two examples from this year alone. One professor didn’t let us take our multiple-choice exams home after completion because he said he reuses the same questions every year. Another professor issued an exam that had questions from Quizlet (which can be found for free online). I got over a 95% on both because I memorized the study guides, and today I don’t remember anything from them. This is a disgrace for any teacher or university that stands for higher education.
My portrayal of professors is harsh on purpose, and I think it echoes the thoughts of my peers. I’ve witnessed precisely what Hedges describes. I believe firmly that if skilled educators dedicated more time towards pressing issues, such as illiteracy, instead of academic journals that 99% of people don’t see, we’d be in a better position.
There are undoubtedly teachers with integrity – I’ve seen them and the reader knows they’re out there. But my goal with this letter wasn’t to weigh the options and waffle. Like the majority of online advocacy writing, this won’t cause substantial change, but it will start discussions and give a voice to students who feel the same way.
I don’t care if the audience agrees, disagrees, or quits reading this letter. I wrote from the heart about a problem that I see every day and offered my interpretation of it. I chose the letter format because it allowed for more relatable emotion and less heady analysis and I think my classmates appreciated it.
I’ll take a lower grade if it means I can keep the same tone and position.
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This piece stood out to me, since it is the only direct memoir style piece I have read so far. In this sense, your piece is particularly impact-full, in that it is particularly personal. Also, I like the nods you make toward larger medical, literary, and social dialogues.
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I really enjoy this piece. Taking an object that took a lot away from you and putting it in a positive light is truly astounding.
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You have a very interesting story, and your found object was clearly distinguished from the beginning. As a fellow injury prone person, I found it easy to identify with the parts about recovery and making the best out of your situation. The visuals you have really add to your overall story (I specifically like the picture of all the folded pages in the book), but I feel like you could incorporate even more images and videos since it is a visual story.
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Super interesting object and story. My favorite thing about your post is that the words are highlighted so you can click those instead of clicking the arrows by the pictures. That makes it flow so much better because your eye doesn’t have to move so far from the text.
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A really inspiring story, and I can feel the poignancy of it when I read it. I like the visuals, although, I found myself more caught up in the story rather than clicking through the images you had selected for each section. I don’t know if maybe there is a better way to integrate the imagery? But, I really enjoyed it overall!
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I like how you take this bad moment in your life and turn it into a positive, its very inspiring and motivational. I would like to see a more solid image of the screw at the beginning. I like how throughout the story some of your text is highlighted and draws your attention right to it. I also think incorporating some of the fun screw puns talked about in class would add some levity to your text.
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I love the athlete to writer progression of the story. Maybe you could foreground that even more; perhaps mentioning it as a subheading to your title (which is awesome, by the way). Something like: “My Journey from Athlete to Writer,” maybe?
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I really enjoy this piece as it really gives a clear look into who you ae and where you’ve come from. I think you utilize the fold format well, but I do feel like it limits you in a way with the size of its window (mainly because the surgery and x-ray photos are so small in it) I would probably look into playing around more with the format to see if you can find ways to really make those images pop.
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That was a fantastic visual story. I did not expect the turn at the end when you overcame injuries by applying your talents to writing. This was a great inspirational story.
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This is a very well-written story, very inspirational! I think it was already mentioned in class, but your header photo of the x-ray is a little difficult to see, so maybe change that to a photo of the screw or enlarge it (not sure if you can do this on Fold or not.)
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Very cool! I think using that screw as your object is really powerful. I would maybe write a little blurb about how/when your screw got removed, but the narrative is looking pretty good.
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This was a great story! I loved the transition between running to writing. However, I would add more visuals to this!
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I thought the story was great. The use of quote that was used I really liked and if the pictures were kind of cool. I can not believe that one person could go through that many broken bones and would still want to play a sport even though you did decide to retire and start writing. Good choice
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Dominic
The title is more suited to an academic article than a story. Try something more creative that uses or references your object and its multiple meanings.
Linguistic: “this screw exemplifies a message for me that transcends small talk.” Resist a not-quite-a-thesis approach here. A thesis would tell us exactly what that message is. A story should keep us guessing. How about “but this screw means so much more to me” or some such. Make us want to keep reading to figure out why it means so much.
Diction: expose. You mean exposé, but even that isn’t what you’re writing….
I like the paragraph where the story turns. It works well—the “I sat in bed and looked at the screw” paragraph.
I think the conclusion drags out just a bit—the turn to writing part could be tightened since it sounds like an intro to a new section as is.
Visual: I want to *see* more. Right now, you have a written story with some accompanying pictures. I’m not sure what tone you are going for here, but the visuals need to help with that. When I get to the second paragraph, I see several possibilities, for example: images of all of those broken bones (the gory pathos route), for example, or of the events that precipitated the breaks (menacing stairs, little football players, track pictures—the human child wistful nostalgia pathos route). Or you could include pictures of both (all the feels!).
I’m on the fence about that video. It seems
like a distraction since you define what an avulsion fracture is.
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This really is a nice, inspirational story! I liked the visuals that you provided, and I think you could take it further. Plus, your object is extremely interested and there are a number of fun puns that can be implemented in the story to make it a bit more lighthearted and feel more casual and personal.
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