Carter Preserve Personal Experience4/23/2018 When I first visited the Francis C. Carter Memorial Preserve in Charlestown Rhode Island on April 1st 2018, I was taken about by the sheer size of it. Charlestown just so happens to be a town I am very familiar with, and somewhere I used to visit every weekend throughout my childhood. But somehow I had completely overlooked this massive, and beautiful, preserve not 20 minutes from my grandmothers house.
Without knowing exactly which entrance I had arrived at at the time, although there were more than enough posted signs telling me this, I simply grabbed a map went off on my way. The loop I ended up taking consisted of the Grassland Loop, Grassland Connector, and Narragansett Loop trails. This gave me a good look at all the different kinds of ecosystems resent within the preserve, and really gave me a good idea at what it had to offer visitors. When I went to visit the preserve, New England was in the middle of experiencing four intense storms back to back. Even with that in mind, the trails were in pristine condition. Throughout my hike I think I only ran into two or three down trees, and even these were of no issue and could easily be stepped over. The loop I walked took about 45 minutes to an hour to complete, at a nice stroll, and was not overly physically tasking. That being said, I am more than confident that no matter what activity level you are looking for, you can find it at the Carter Preserve. While the trails that delve deeper into the woods can become more of a “hiking” experience, those that run along the grasslands as well as run parallel to the Pawtucket River are much more level and easy for people of all ages. I personally feel that this ability to have various hiking experiences, is something that the Carter Preserve facilitates very well. With a multitude of different trails to explore with at least four different ecosystems, there is always something new to find or experience when going to the preserve.
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Final Project, First Draft4/12/2018 Please find Rhetorical Introduction and First Drafts at:
https://avamastrostefano.weebly.com/blog/nature-conservancy-first-draft Minor Assignment 104/8/2018 In “The March for Science Can’t Figure Out How to Handle Diversity” by Zuleyka Zevello, inspects how an organization who strive to keep science in the spot light, can still run into issues when it comes to diversity. A movement like March For Science, at first, appears to be a group who value science as a key part of our society, but through various mis-steps ends up being the focus in a diversity driven debate.
When considering how this case relates back to issues relevant to this course, a few things come to mind, but once in particular I want to touch on. I believe that the most important thing to learn from this case, that is also relevant to our course, is to always keep audience in mind when writing for the sciences. It quickly became apparent in the article that the March For Science group forgot that their organization was meant to reach people in all walks of life and began “reproducing gender stereotypes of science as part of its promotion of the march” (Zevello). While it should be obvious that stereotyping of any kind is never appropriate, it seems especially unadvised when trying to reach a broad audience. Through this, they immediately lose a group of people that could have potentially helped rocket their movement to the forefront of media. But instead, by negatively stereotyping this group they immediately lose their support, as well as anybody’s that do not agree with their expressed views. In relation to our class, we have talked about how science writing has such a niche audience already that it is imperative to retain any readers that you can. This is a topic that has often been touched upon as we discussed our final projects, given that many of them are meant to be read or used by the general public directly. With this in mind, many of our final projects have to be tailored to be understood and appreciated by all different groups of people. For example, for my final project specifically, I have to attempt to make my site description appealing to anybody who would want to visit the preserve. This could be anyone from hikers to runners to people with young children just looking for a place to take a walk. When thinking in this way it becomes imperative that I do not section off any of these groups and make them feel unwanted or incapable of visiting the preserve, as we have learned can easily be done through “The March for Science Can’t Figure Out How to Handle Diversity”. Minor Assignment 94/1/2018 In “Discourse Coalitions, Science Blogs, and the Global Debate Over Climate Change,” Graham Smart attempts to make sense out of the mess that is the debate over climate change. He does this by looking into the three different discourse coalitions that are most prevalent in this topic: Advocates, Skeptics, and Eco-Optimists. To give some quick background information, advocates are those that believe climate change is happening and is caused by human generated green house gases, skeptics are those that do not believe climate change is occurring, and eco-optimists are those that accept global warming is occurring, but it is a natural occurrence that will correct itself with time. With these three groups in mind, Smart begins to look at how the communicate their ideas, and how they interact with one another. He eventually introduces the idea of science blogs, and how they are used by the different groups. He demonstrates how blogs are often used as a medium where people with different ideas can argue with each other. A practice that, while reminiscent of the Greek forums where people could express their thoughts and disagreements, felt more petty than beneficial, and Smart comes to a very similar conclusion.
He concludes his thoughts by saying “the study shows that although each of the three discourse coalitions offer its pubic version of climate-science knowledge, these versions are incommensurate, with the consequence that individuals are denied the possibility of developing, through dialogue, greater scientific understanding” (174). Essentially, he’s arguing that by the different discourse coalitions focusing more on the debate than presenting facts, the public loses the ability to form opinions of their own. Especially when it comes to a topic like climate change that affects all of us, it is a shame when scientists are more focused on being right than helping the public generate informed opinions. While Smart’s work was an interesting look into how different groups of people interact, and how this affects the public, I do not believe that it is too relevant to my final project. I have come to this conclusion because I am not writing about anything too “fact based” that could be refuted by another individual. My final project focuses more on why a person should visit a certain preserve, not presenting them with a bunch of facts that they must accept as true or false. AuthorSophomore Marine Biology Major, Roger Williams University Archives
April 2018
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The purpose of these blogs were to serve as a mode to turn in minor assignments for my Professional Writing Class. Many are responses to reading we did, and a couple are first drafts of various major assignments. |