WRD 103: Composition & Rhetoric I: Winter Quarter 2014 Rotating Header Image

Portfolios FAQ

Where should our SoundCloud recording go? 

It depends: if you want to use it as part of your reflective, theorizing-myself-as-a-writer essay, you can embed it anywhere in the essay, which would be a really nice touch for the reader. Or, if it doesn’t play an obvious role in your reflective essay, you can include it as part of your Revised Essay & Process Description, probably at the top of that page, where readers can see it.

How do I embed my SoundCloud in Digication?

After you have your SoundCloud URL ready, you’ll have three options:

  • Embedded hyperlink
  • Large embedded player
  • Small embedded player

Read about your three options here.

Why am I recording an audio version of my persuasive essay?

I want to know if you hear anything interesting while listening to yourself while you read your work aloud. As many of you noticed when I read your work aloud in my office, I would sometimes elicit noises from you — “Oh.” “Oops.” “Jeez.” “Wait.” “Ugh.” “Huh.” “Hmmm.” “I didn’t mean it like that …” “I meant it exactly like that …” “Wrong tone. “Right tone.” 

What’s going on in those moments? What are you hearing? (You could conceivably milk that for a lot in your reflection, couldn’t you?)

Am I allowed to have a sense of humor while recording my essay?

Yes.

What information do I need to include in my Work Showcase? 

Not much. Maybe just a sentence that explains “I have included my final drafts here and link to them from my Reflective Essay. You can read about them there or review them here.”

How do I quote or cite the term “bullshit”?

“Her statement is grounded neither in a belief that it is true nor, as a lie must be, in a belief that it is not true. It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth — this indifference to how things really are — that I regard as of the essence of bullshit.” (p. 10)

“It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.” (p. 14)

Frankfurt, Harry G. On Bullshit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
<http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html>