A Letter to Myself

      When I was 14 years old, I got into a four wheeling accident while on a hunting trip up north with my dad. I was racing David, one of my friends that also had a cabin up there. A friendly competition turned into a very dangerous situation when we hit a sharp turn. He had a lot more experience than I did because he lives out in Armada and can ride ATVs all day. So when he hit the turn he was fine, but when I came up to it I didn’t give myself enough time to break and complete the turn so I crashed into an area with a bunch of little trees. It all happened so fast and I tried to brake as quickly as I could but I plowed straight into one of the bigger trees and knocked it completely over. The scariest part was that I had my other friend, Thomas, sitting in the four-wheeler with me. I really could have hurt both of us. I had scratched the area right between the inner corner of my eye and my nose. It was bleeding pretty badly. My dad came running over to us and asked if I was alright. I said that I was fine but he knew that I wasn’t. I was so upset that I had made such a horrible and dumb mistake. I couldn’t stop thinking of how much worse things could have been and it didn’t help when my dad took me inside to clean up my scrape because when I saw it I broke out into tears. I thought, “What have I done to myself?” and “I can’t go back to school looking like this, everyone will stare.” After my dad calmed me down and I talked to my mom I realized how thankful I was to have only gotten a scrape where I did, because I could have been blinded in that eye if it was just a little bit closer.

            If I could write myself a letter and read it right before I got on the four-wheeler, I would prepare myself for the accident, not try to stop it from happening. I try to live my life with no regrets and learn from my mistakes. When something bad happens or I do something wrong I try my best to learn a lesson and not let it happen again. Some things in life though, you have to learn the hard way in order to truly understand a lesson. This accident has made me a better and more cautious driver on the road in general and I wouldn’t change it. In my letter I would say,

First of all, you need be more careful and think before you do things so that you can make good decisions. Secondly, you are going to learn a very important lesson today, but learning it the hard way will help you in the future. Also, always appreciate all that you have because you never know when you’ll be just inches away from losing something that you take for granted. After what happens to you today, you need to be very positive and just be thankful that nothing worse happened. Don’t worry about the “what ifs” and what other people think, because that stuff doesn’t matter. Lastly, thank mom and dad for everything and being there for you, they will continue to love and support you a lot in the future.     

Advertisement Redesign Reflection

Going into the assignment, I thought that it might be a little difficult to analyze an advertisement and redesign it so thoroughly. Although I thought it may be a challenge, I knew that once I found a good advertisement to analyze I would be able to tackle the assignment. I chose this ad because I knew that it would be very easy to redesign for a new audience. I started off looking in Seventeen Magazine for advertisements and found myself having a difficult time thinking about who my new intended audience would be because all of the ads were very generic and girly. So I found an advertisement in Food Network Magazine for trips to Puerto Rico that would be easy to completely transform. 

For the redesign, I started off with a picture in my head of what the new advertisement would kind of look like. Then, I took apart the original ad and decided what I wanted to keep the same and what I would what to do differently for the new intended audience. I kept the format and color scheme the same. Since the original intended audience for my ad was couples in their 30’s I switched up the pictures to be off families. I also reworded the description of the ad that was below the pictures to be geared more towards families with young children. Overall, the actual redesign for a new audience came along pretty easily.

While writing the essay, I came across a few challenges. I had a little trouble expanding my essay when I tried making it a little longer so I added more detail to the redesign and also went into more depth of the analysis. Adding more details to each aspect of the paper helped a lot. I also had a little trouble citing my paper, so I went to the OWL site and it helped me a lot. For this essay, I went to the writing center for the first time. Everyone there was so nice and helpful. I sat down with Ashley, one of the students that help, and she read my paper aloud and she helped me to make any necessary changes that I missed. After that my paper sounded ten times better; this was especially beneficial to me because I didn’t have my draft for the peer review. I would definitely recommend this to anyone, even if you’re a good writer. Going to the writing center generally helped me with any challenges I had. 

I really enjoyed doing the actual redesign. Being able to actually transform and express my ideas into a new real ad was very cool. The fact that it was extra credit was just a plus. Once I actually redesigned the ad physically, I was able to add more detail to the paper because I could see everything that I had done differently. I also liked that we got to choose our own ad and the new audience. Being able to choose what I was going to redesign made it more comfortable and easier for me rather than picking from a couple.

I definitely have a better understanding of the media and how they use rhetorical appeals to target a specific audience after writing this essay. Knowing this will help me as a consumer and as a writer in how I can appeal more to a specific intended audience and write with a purpose, which are the two most important things to consider.

Honestly, I wouldn’t change a thing if I got to do this assignment again. I put 110% into it and I don’t think I could make it any better.