Dear Members of Congress,
My name is Stephanie McQuillan and I am a freshman at the University of South Carolina. I am writing to you in hopes that you will support more legislation for Diabetes research, specifically for type one diabetes. I, along with my father and little sister, have to live with type one diabetes twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. We get no days off from this condition and are forced to balance insulin, diet and exercise to maintain good control. If you are not familiar with the disease, it is an autoimmune condition where the body does not produce any insulin. We did not get this condition from eating too much sugar; there was something in our body that triggered this condition. As of right now there is no cure for this condition, although they are finding new, state of the art ways of managing the condition. Although finding new ways of managing Diabetes is fantastic, what I and all of the other diabetics in the world are looking for is a cure. I am speaking on behalf of all the diabetics out there when I say that being a diabetic is no “walk in the park”, and it would be nice to live without constant finger pricks and insulin injections. If you were to support the funding of more research for a cure, such as stem cell research, then you would be helping the lives of many diabetic people in the world. Stem cell research would not only help conditions like diabetes, but countless other conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. I understand that stem cell research is controversial but I believe that it will bring more good than harm into this world by finding cures for numerous conditions. All that I ask is that the next time you come across something that supports diabetes research/stem cell research you say YES. It would be nice to be able to eat something and not constantly think about how many sugars and carbohydrates I have to account for with an insulin injection for it. Thank you and I appreciate the time you took to read this letter.
Sincerely,
Stephanie McQuillan
Reflection:
Stephanie McQuillan
Mr. Harmon
English 101
December 3, 2011
In English 101, the task of essay four was to translate one of the previous essays I had done to another medium. I chose to translate my third essay, which was a documentary, into a “campaign” for diabetes research. In my third essay, the main point was to show that diabetes does affect millions of people around the world. Diabetes is an invisible disease and someone would not know another person is a diabetic only by looking at them. To translate my message to essay four, I added a twist by advocating for type one diabetic research. Through the process of translating my message to a different medium, it was important to make sure that the message of both “essays” remained true to it’s original form.
I choose to make a campaign as my second essay because I am heavily involved with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. As a child, the JDRF would reach out to my sister and I to advocate for diabetes research by writing letters to congress about the issue. I aim to write to congressmen from Massachusetts (my home state), particularly William Keating who is my representative. I may also send my campaign to congressmen in South Carolina because it is where I will be living for the next four years. Then I hope to send my letters to the Congressional Diabetes Caucus because they deal with Diabetes and politics together, which is my main goal. If the reception goes well with congressmen, I wish to send my campaign along to other people in politics such as senators. When I was given the opportunity to “revise” an essay I choose essay three because the issue was so close to my heart. Instead of making a documentary about the class like many of my peers did, I decided it would be best to write about something that I was passionate about.
To translate my essay three into essay four, I choose to stay with my main idea of type one diabetes. However, instead of writing about the general information about diabetes and how diabetes is an invisible disease, I choose to go in a new direction by advocating for diabetes research. I feel that advocating for diabetes research through a campaign, containing a letter and a poster, is more effective than showing a movie about diabetes. The letter and poster provide a more serious background for the reader, which is a good thing because the audience for essay four is people with strong educational backgrounds. This is not to say that if a person from congress saw my documentary they would look down on it. But, essay three was also not meant for people with strong educational backgrounds but more for the general public. For both “essays”, I kept in the general information about diabetes. I introduced my “essays” with general information about the disease. However the “body” of the essay four is what differed the most from essay three. For essay four I took out most of the parts about how diabetes is a silent disease and how the public does not know a diabetic just by looking at them. Instead, I focused on the idea of diabetes rather than the person with diabetes. I felt that omitting the parts about how diabetes is a silent disease was appropriate for essay four. Congress people do not want to know about that aspect of diabetes. Instead they want to know how their vote on diabetic research will affect the diabetics in the world. I feel that by focusing more on advocating for research, I made my argument for government officials stronger because it is something that may need to hear about for work purposes.
When translating my essay three to essay four, I found that the visual element of the project that was present in essay three was lost in essay four. Using a visual for essay three brought a sense of creativeness to the project. This is deeply contrasted to essay four, which is rather dull and plain. The only visual element that was added to essay four was the poster. But, not adding as much visual element to essay four was an appropriate move for the audience it was meant for. Congressmen are used to reading many documents for their work, and so a letter goes along with the rest of the documents they are working with. Then, the poster adds just enough visual to make the argument a bit more interesting. The letter accompanied by the poster is the perfect combination for an audience of higher education, such as congress.
By writing a letter, I was able to articulate my ideas in a more formal and easier way to the reader. In a letter I can explain exactly what I want to get across in a straightforward way. To get a similar idea across in a documentary or movie is a bit harder because I personally could not get my idea across without using a good part of the movie’s time. Looking back, I could have used a voice over to explain all that I needed to. But at the time I used more of a PowerPoint method in my movie. By writing my ideas on paper I could easily explain what I needed to in about a page worth of writing. It would not take a congressman a long time to comprehend what I was trying to say through a letter. But, they would have to dig deeper to find a meaning in my documentary film.
Overall, translating my essay three into my essay four was not particularly difficult. I was able to keep the general idea of diabetes in the project, but I used a different approach/argument for essay four. It was proved easier for me to translate my thoughts into writing rather than trying to incorporate them into a movie or documentary. Although the original message was lost in essay three, the two essays were meant for different audiences. Making a campaign for diabetes research was a more sophisticated approach to talking about diabetes. Although most, if not all, of my peers did videos for their essay four, I believe that the campaign I made does my topic more justice than a video or movie would. Although, by adding the visual element of a poster I still managed to tap into the creative side that comes along with taking a documentary based class. Although essay three and essay four had different messages and different mediums, they still follow the same topic of type one diabetes and how it can affect people with the condition.
No comments:
Post a Comment