A Walk In My Life
by kaiserjr18 on Oct.27, 2014, under Essays
The walk down the isle was a heart pounding moment. As soon as I crossed the threshold of the door that led into the auditorium, and was able to hear the sound of graduation music as me and my Partner strolled in perfect cadence through a crowd of smiling yet teary-eyed parents as they snapped photos of us in our maroon gowns. As we neared the stage I heard the sound of my name being called over the speaker and it made my stomach weak to know that I was finally going to graduate after twelve years of grade, middle, and high school. When I arrived to my chair and look out into the crowd all I saw were dozens of flashes as parents tried to capture the moment for their kids as well. The ceremony itself was long and tedious our school kept a very traditional graduation. They didn’t allow anything that was fun be it beach balls, air horns, or noise makers. I was not only sweating bullets because of the intense lights that were shinning down on to me in my thick gown, but also I was hoping they would not see the can of silly string that I had concealed in my sock. After about an hour of sitting and listening to a bunch of speeches that I honestly didn’t care about, because all I was focused on was getting out of there, It was finally time to receive my diploma. My stomach once again crept up my throat as I heard my name called once more and the response of the crowd as they heard “Jon Kaiser, Son of Troy and Tamorah Kaiser, Majoring in Civil Engineering with a Minor in Leadership at Virginia Military Institute.” Being from a small town in Wisconsin almost nobody knew what VMI was, and so the response in hearing this was one of both awe and questioning. As I approached my Principal and Superintendent I never had such a feeling of accomplishment come over my body as I shook their hand and received my diploma. Soon after I took my seat and so did everybody else It was time to depart. We left the same as we entered, in an orderly and formal fashion, but as soon as we once again crossed the threshold of the auditorium and exited our school for the first time as Alumni of Jefferson High School, for lack of better words, all Hell broke loose. All 162 of my fellow classmates broke out into a simultaneous cheer and I was finally able to take out my silly string and cause havoc with it, it was impossible to see who had it now. After a night of partying the next day brought the realization that a new chapter in my life was about to start. My Ratline and possible Cadet-ship at VMI was about to start soon. The significance of this event is that to me it marked the official end of my childhood and the beginning of my life as an adult. From them on I would be responsible for the rest of my life and able to make my own decisions. This both excited me and scared me at the same time.
Communication within the Jazz Band
by kaiserjr18 on Oct.06, 2014, under Jazz Band
There are many genres of communication within the Jazz Band. Most of these, due to the fact that I am a Rat, I have not seen or been apart of. These genres include emails, texts, flyers, and information put online. I myself have only participated with communication dealing with email. Email is a semi-formal to formal way for the members of the band to communicate with each other and with our conductor, Colonel Brodie. Emails between members tend to be semi-formal and are used to relay information about practice for that week. On the other hand emails between members and Colonel Brodie are more formal because he is a superior officer and is given the respect he deserves. Even though i haven’t seen texts first hand that pertain to communication in the Jazz Band. I have an idea what they would be like. Because this genre is used between members and that texts have limited characters this genre will more than likely be informal and lack a good sentence or grammar structure. Another assumption I have about the Jazz Band’s communication is that communication with the public would be very formal as to make the Jazz Band look appealing to others. I hope to able to analyze these genres of communication more as I study the Jazz Band as a Discourse community, but as of now I have a very limited knowledge of communication within the Jazz Band.
Interview of Patrick Shahverdian
by kaiserjr18 on Oct.03, 2014, under Interview
Patrick Shahverdian is a fellow classmate here at Virginia Military Institute. An interesting fact about him that would confuse allot of people as to why he is attending VMI is that he does not plan on commissioning. One may ask, “Why would you attend a military school if you did not plan on commissioning”, or “What is different about you that you don’t want to commission”. In our interview I analyzed what makes him different from a fellow Brother Rat.
Patrick is from Corona California. A small city located near Los Angels. Here he enjoys fishing, weight lifting, and designing cars with his free time. This sounds very similar to the activities of other Brother Rats; so it must be something else. His Parents are originally from Armenia (a country near Russia and Iran) and has one brother. Once again a similar story from some of our other Brother Rats. So what does make Patrick different from other Brother Rats?
The answer is that He isn’t different from other Brother Rats at all. In fact he has the same reason as to why He is going to VMI as all our other Brother Rats. He wanted no ordinary College and a degree that means something. The fact that VMI has a regimental system clouds peoples thoughts of this place so that they think all Cadets that attend here want to Commission. When in fact the reason we come here is to give us the skills to succeed in our goals be it military or in the case of Patrick attending Law School. Patrick Shaverdian is no different then any other Brother Rat. It is clear to see that we are all almost the same.
Interview Questions:
Where are you from?
What is your family like?
Did you have a job?
What are your hobbies?
What is your Major?
Are you Commissioning? If not why VMI?
Rhetorical Situation
by kaiserjr18 on Sep.15, 2014, under ERH 101
My email is an article from my daily life that showcases the aspects of the rhetorical situation. When I type an email it includes text, audience, and a communicator. The intended audience from this email is the Corps of Cadets. This is apparent because of the use of statements in the email that would appeal to the Corps of Cadets such as, “Join us for lunch in the PX(Pizza and drinks)…”, because the Corps loves free pizza and drinks. Also by the use of stressing the idea that joining this club gives members a fulfilling feeling by helping kids, which looks good on resumes as well as fulfilling the human soul. The communicator in this text is Chap Park. He is trying to inform the Corps of Cadets about the Character Counts club, and to possibly get some Cadets to join the club. I believe that this rhetorical situation was effective because I myself was interested in this club and attended the meeting, and the number of people who attended the meeting greatly outnumbered the number of people that Chap Park estimated would come.
Characteristics of a discourse community
by kaiserjr18 on Sep.08, 2014, under Discourse Communities
There are six characteristics of a discourse community according to John Swales. In this blog I’ll be defining these six characteristics and finding examples of each from my own discourse community experience. The discourse community my examples will be coming from my milsim (Military Simulation) team that I was in during high school.
The first characteristic of a discourse community is that they have a set of public goals that may be formally agreed upon or more of an implied goal among the discourse community. The public goal of our team was to develop skills that could be applied both to the sport and in civilian defense as well as to educate the public of what milsim is by the use of a team website.
The second characteristic of a discourse community is that they have a communication system of some kind that connects all members. On our team we had a private forum on line that all members could use to communicate with each other to organize practices or announce upcoming events.
The third characteristic of a discourse community is that all members of a discourse community must participate in order to be considered part of the discourse community. In our team if you did not check the forum you were unaware of team practices and events, so without this participation our team couldn’t exist and we wouldn’t have a discourse community.
The fourth characteristic of a discourse community is that they needed at least one form of written communication in order to complete their goals. In order to complete our goals of making our team better and educating the public about our sport we used a forum to notify members of practices and had a website to help educate the public about us. Using these to forms of written communication helped us complete our goal.
The fifth characteristic of a discourse community is that they need to contain lexical items, such as abbreviations, that are unique to the group and that outsiders don’t understand. In the milsim community there are many lexicons that we use to describe things that the public wouldn’t understand. Examples include AEG (Automatic Electric Gun) and GBB (Gas Blow Back) which are terms specific and unique to the milsim community.
The six characteristic of a discourse community is that they must contain a reasonable ratio of novice and expert members. On our team to make training successful we needed enough experienced players (gained through being a member for awhile or having prior military experience) to train the novice members. As well as enough novice members to keep the team running after the experienced players stop. If we didn’t have enough experienced members the novice members could be trained properly, and if we didn’t have enough novice members the team is in jeopardy of becoming nonexistent if too many experienced members leave the team.
A discourse community needs to include all of the following characteristics to function properly and to be know as a discourse community. If one characteristic is missing it affects all other characteristics and the discourse community fails due to how interdependent each characteristic is with the others.