Team TRS

Joshua Baghdady. Adrian Epps. Andrew Runnion. Alex Wall. United at Clemson from across the southeast, these four students hope to achieve greatness in their final, magnum opus of English 103: the Multimedia Argument Project.
Dramatic enough? I hope so. You need to have something to spice up these otherwise-mundane blog assignments. Oh well. The end of the semester is approaching, and I can already almost smell that turkey. And cranberry sauce. And stuffing. And sweet potato casserole. And pumpkin pie. With whipped cream.
No! Stop! Focus, Baghdady, focus. Let's do this.
The assignment: 400-500 words discussing the group project so far and each member's participation. All right. I'll start with Adrian.
Adrian has been vital so far in creating the storyboard on our Google Doc. Today in class as we started putting together the things we've been brainstorming this past week, he helped to organize our topics in the Doc and integrated images from the internet that fit our ideas.
Andrew has been...Andrew. Infamous for sitting in class and giving everyone an apathetic stare, he has helped in the formulation of the ideas and flow of our topic and has been valuable in pointing out any needed changes.
Alex has worked alongside both Adrian and me in both creating and editing our storyboard. Her ideas and proposals have helped our entire group get on the right page with this project and have helped to give us needed direction and inspiration. (When I say "needed," I mean "absolutely necessary." Don't forget that this class is at nine in the morning. Without Alex, Andy and I would probably just sit sprawled over the chairs half asleep, while I practiced imitating Andy's famous apathetic stare. I'm pretty sure it's a skill I can attain. Anyway. Back to the project. What would this blog post be without me talking about me? Actually, don't answer that. It would be a normal blog post. But ignore that point for the moment and view the preceding question as purely rhetorical. Read on.)
As for myself, I concocted the topic (questioning the necessity and purpose of general engineering education courses) with Alex's help and gave it the title "Weed Out: It's Not What You Think." When we started storyboarding, I helped in formulating our major points and their arrangement in our planned video, while looking over and tweaking Alex's and Adrian's work on the Doc itself.
That's really it so far. We've only worked on this since Monday, so there's not much to go off of at this point. Have I reached 400 words yet? I hope so. Happy Thanksgiving!

The Clemson Writing Center (or, English Grad Students with Facial Hair)

Well that's a good sign. I'm actually able to open blogger and type into the "New Post" box. Let's hope this uploads when I'm done, or random passerby may soon see a MacBook Pro being thrown out of the third floor window of Sanders Hall.

You see, Google recently updated its entire system, meaning that we, the poor oafs of this reigning internet monarch, have been forced to adapt. The consequences of non-compliance? Separation from the modern world. Oh well. It's not the first time, and it definitely will not be the last. 

Anyway. As I typed the above paragraphs the blog title "English 103" stared out at me unblinkingly, as if knowing that so far this post has had absolutely nothing to do with Charlsie's class. But that, dear reader, is about to change. 

You see, this week was the due date of the rough drafts for our research assignment. But wait! There's more! (This is college you know.) Miss Charlsie, the benevolent, caring, watchful teacher that she is, assigned to us a project: Go to the Clemson Writing Center, take whatever you have so far of your draft, and proceed to review it with one of the graduate students there. Sounds good. I accordingly scheduled an appointment for Tuesday November 1 at 3 pm. In Daniel 305. With some guy named Samuel Fuller.
Samuel Fuller himself is a rather strange individual. He has this huge beard that he's always plucking on. Always. With really long hair. Glasses. Marginally socially awkward. I mean, who else would want to sit in a tiny cubicle and go over undergraduate papers all day when you could be out having a life, right? Hopefully he's getting some extra credit. He sure seems to know his stuff.
We went over my outline and the small amount of actual drafting I had accomplished. He was quite helpful. The biggest message I took away was to streamline my introduction, combine and erase unnecessary sentences and get to the thesis as quickly as possible. Don't confuse people with random facts and wordy sentences in the introduction that will take away from your thesis. Keep things short, sweet and to the point.
Another thing we discussed was the sheer size my paper could potentially reach given the massive amount of information I planned to cover. 2500 words really aren't that much when you're writing a dissertation. He suggested shortening and clipping some of the topics I had planned to cover in my outline and get to the meat of the paper as concisely as possible. That's what the reader is looking for anyway, right?