Goal 3

Goal 3: Demonstrate excellence in verbal and written communication

Outcome 1: Present ideas logically and effectively – verbally

When I taught my Honors 264H class for a half day I decided to talk about

houseplants. In this presentation I talked about benefits of plants, what to look for and

think about when choosing a plant, and planting or repotting it. I do believe that I

presented all this information in an effective and logical way. I think everything in my

presentation is very straightforward and easy to comprehend. I do find some flaws in the

formatting in the slides, but I don’t believe that takes away from the presentation itself.

Outcome 2: Present ideas logically and effectively – written 

The topic for my English 121H Research paper was food consumption changes from the 20th

century to the 21st. In this paper I looked at how changes to product availability and the

been spread throughout each respective country. George Orwell was in the middle of the

Spanish Civil War where he actually joined the militia. His book details the various flags

and graffiti that were used as propaganda. Anchee Min wrote about Jiang Ching, aka

introduction of new stores impacted the way that consumers shopped. WWI caused many food

consumption changes in civilians to help the war effort. Regulations were put in place and

propaganda was spread to push the changes. I was able to research how the U.S. government

pushed propaganda to make people feel like it was their duty to conserve food. During this time,

American diets changed, and slowly larger consumer opportunities emerged. I was able to

connect the war changes to the rise of chain stores, which began emerging in the 1920s. At the

time, many people didn’t like chain stores because they caused many small businesses and

family-owned stores to close. But the convenience of going to one store and it having everything

was like a dream come true. This convenience paved way for modern shopping. Now, chain

stores are so common that we don’t think about a store not carrying what we need. The addition

of online shopping really cemented the convenience that shopping is. Throughout this paper I

was able to find a path that consumerism followed through the 1900s into the 2000s. The

chronological order of events causes a very linear timeline to follow so that a reader is able to see

what is happening without knowing super in-depth information about the subject.

I also believe that I was able to effectively push ideas in a paper I wrote for Hist 215H.

In this paper I talked about propaganda and the differences that were exhibited in the books

Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell, and Becoming Madame Mao, by Anchee Min.

Both of these books talk about revolutions and have mentions to the propaganda that have

Madame Mao or Mao Tse-tung’s wife. The propaganda in China was spread through word

of mouth or newspapers, but Jiang Ching is also able to use musicals as propaganda. By

looking at these two different forms of propaganda I was able to see how propaganda was

received and how it changed depending on if you were inside of the political party or outside

of it.