Letter to Cru.

Let's initiate some action!

Insert name here,
I wish to call to your attention a problem that I see in your organization. Many of your Outreach Team members come off as aggressive in their advertisement of Campus Crusade for Christ. I have noticed it myself rarely, but on a number of occasions my peers have complained about the same thing to me. The reason I bring this up, is because I have attended Cru before, and I thought it was fun and enjoyable place, and I want Cru to expand and flourish. Yet, when members present themselves by badgering other students, it dissuades prospective attendees, and it shows the organization in a very bad light. To me, this seems a completely unfair representation, because Cru is supposed to be an incredibly calm and relaxed atmosphere instead of a harsh, vindictive one.

The incidents where people feel threatened are usually in their dorms. I have never heard of a public display, but several people have told me that Cru’s outreach teams have loitered in the dorms’ hallways, not permitting anybody to pass until receiving some information about Campus Crusade for Christ. My friends view these acts as threatening because the dorms are supposed to be where they are safe and at home, and to take that safety away from them severely affects their comfort level, causing them to respond with hostility, which makes any later attempt of persuasion on them pointless.

I recommend that you correct this by the education of your Outreachers on how to persuade and argue effectively. There are several advertising consultants here in Blacksburg that I urge you to contact. They are listed in your Blacksburg Yellow Pages under “advertising consultant.” Alternatively, you could find a private tutor, hold some form of seminar, or send your people off to classes here at Virginia Tech. The most important thing to keep in mind through all of this is that if you can argue your points and persuade your audience properly, instead of inconveniencing and irritating them, your numbers should increase, because you won’t scare off anyone on the border-line of attending a Cru session. This is my honest hope, because I believe that your mission is a good one, and I want to see you reach as many people as you can at this institution.

Sincerely,
Conrad Pflasterer






These are the people who the letter could be mailed to.
Contact info
Jeff Highfield- Campus Directorjeff.highfield@uscm.org
Jordan Peace jordan.peace@uscm.org
Chris Luhrman chris.luhrman@uscm.org
Julie Harrisonjulie.harrison@uscm.org

Campus Crusade for Christ at Virginia Tech211 Draper Rd. NWBlacksburg, VA 24060phone:540.808.5040

http://www.vtcru.org/contact_us.html

Student Campus DirectorsChad Wilkins and Aicel Reyeswilkinsc@vt.eduadreyes@vt.edu
Outreach TeamJason Jenkins and Caroline Terryjason115@vt.educterry10@vt.edu

How to whine

A quick pile of stuff on how to write a complaint letter.

http://www.howtocomplain.com/info/cl-template.shtml#gen
This site is utterly worthless to me, except for its tips:
Try to make sure your letter is sent to the right person or department
Try and keep your letter shortBe polite as sarcasm or rudeness will not help your cause!
Say what you want for your complaint to be resolved
Give a reasonable timetable for action to be taken before you will consider other options
Keep a copy of letters you write

These appear to be all of the conventions of the genre, however, mine will be less of a general complaint as it will offer a solution to the problem. This field is usually frequented by whiners and dissatisfied consumers, because it is far more common to get a bad can of peaches than to be pestered by a college student. Freedoms: oh yes. Great success. As long as they understand that they have displeased people, you have accomplished your goal, but if they enact your strategy or suggestions... epic victory.

Nov 11 assn

Yeah, I'm just gonna put this here for now, that way I can keep an eye on it.

Audience: Cru’s advertisers? Anyone who is going to spread the word has to see this.
Purpose: To be more effective in persuading people.
Why?: A number of over aggressive Crumen psyche people out and give them the wrong idea.
Genre: Essay, it doesn’t take much time to read, and you don’t need special media to play it.

Topic

Wow, I'm cutting this one close as you can see by the time stamp. I didn't get a chance to speak with the higher ups in my community, but thankfully I got some good suggestions in class for what I should do, and I am NOT above any help.

In short, one of my classmates noted that some of the people beating the war drum for Cru can be a bit... aggressive? To say the least. My action will be directed towards my community and more specifically towards these individuals, in an attempt to get them to tone it down.

I plan to appeal to the reason and then the emotions (to a more limited extent) of the audience, slyly starting out with methods of persuasion, and their effectivness, moving on to a comparison of current methods to these, and then finally offering up a few suggestions for good measure.

Yeah, I guess that covers it. See you in class.

Essay Revision Letter

First, I'd like to thank Allison for her feed back on my essay. A lot of the suggestions are very helpful, because I had noticed most of them, but couldn't correct them... beeeecause I have the same view point as myself. Basically, it's nice to have someone see it from the outside to give you new ideas.

Essays

The readings about essays seemed to state that essays have no set form, as there are so many different kinds. What I thought was a little humorous about the writings was that the collection of quotations was so broad, about all they could agree on was that essays are not uniform. One thing I thought was interesting though, was in Encountering the Essay when he talks about the word root. Basically, "attempt, trial, or experiment." These all suggest that socially the role of the essay is to get a reaction or convince of a point. Or at least, that's what I take it to mean.

In my essay I attempt to persuade people to join my community. Shameless, I know. But in writing my essay and reading our assignments, I have drawn a new conclusion about essays. There are many, they are not long, and they express one or several points. They can be vauge, digressive, and meandering, or they can be consice, quick, and immediate. The content also may change from a simple presentation of facts or view-points to very personally oriented arguments.

For this class I think a more human essay is what is called for, as it seems the robotic presentation of facts is dull and makes poor subject matter. In this case, I'll need to paint better mental pictures and appeal more to the emotions of the reader instead of just stating facts and hoping they figure out the rest for themselves. So, yeah, I'll give that a shot then.

Sigh

This is the fourth time that I have completely erased the text box and started over. I keep trying to come up with something along the guidelines that GS layed out on the master blog, but it keeps looking the same. To summarize the last entries:

1) Satisfaction with my mid-term grade.

b) Wait a minute... no-

2) Unsatisfactory progress with my personal goals. I'm starting to learn how to write like a college student, but I think starting is a key word, and I should have started at the beginning of the semester, instead of halfway through. Oh well. I guess I'll just have to play catch-up. Really hardcore catch-up. It may also be because I'm a perfectionist, and I'll never be satisfied. Or it may be that I just ate half a box of Jujyfruits over the last half hour and am having trouble writing anything interesting or at least accurate.

The reason this is posted is because I refuse to spend another hour floundering with incoherent thoughts being spewed onto the page. This will do.

Revisions

Thank you for your feedback on my proposal. It's really the thing I needed to get me to narrow down my ramblings. Also the format should approach something of a research proposal. Thank you very much again for you help, Prof. Scott.

What makes an essay.

I believe the reading were essays for several reasons.

1) (Least importantly) Length. They all were reasonably short (about a chapter in a book).

2) Descriptive visualizations. I don't know if it's essays in general, but the three that we read seemed to paint very precise pictures.

"Stevenson always fought from an upright position, and he maintains that posture today. When people talk to him his eyes look downward, but his head remains high. The firm jaw of his oval-shaped head seems to locked at a right angle to his straight spined back."

It continues on in this way for some time, but you get the idea.

3) Most importantly, these all seem to detail some event. The stories range from growing up as a hispaninc american, an experience with a stunt pilot and stunt piloting, or a memory of meeting a prominent political figure with an even more prominent athelete; but they all are still stories of something.

News of the Weird

I didn't here if we were to post anything specific, so I'll run with this for a while. I just discovered an amazing site. It is www.newsoftheweird.com. The lead story this week was about an Indian museum dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi and more specifically a new exhibit. Direct quotation of the article:

The ashram-museum in Ahmedabad devoted to India's highly revered icon of freedom Mahatma Gandhi recently re-installed a replica of the spiritual leader's personal toilet, in that Gandhi's own hygiene-consciousness was such a part of his legacy. It is said that he cleaned the toilet daily and referred to it as his "temple," but ashram officials had removed it in the 1980s as somehow inappropriate, according to a September dispatch from New Delhi in London's Daily Telegraph. Gandhi had written that "a lavatory must be as clean as a drawing room." [Daily Telegraph, 9-12-08]

Wow. Thank you internet.

Review

Here is a review of one of my sources on some of the history of Christianity.

website is http://www.bibletruths.net/archives/BTARO65.htm

I should start by saying that the reason I am citing this article is because it does not express theology alone, but historical acts of the Christian faith.
In the first paragraph the author questions if the reader knows the true meaning of Christianity. He then defines it very broadly as "a conglomerate of all religions, regardless of how remotely they resemble the scriptures, that profess to believe in Jesus Christ." He continues (more briefly) that this can range from belief in a personal relationship to mere acknowledgement of Christ's existence.
In the following section he discusses the churches splintering into denominations, and points out that one of the oldest church (the Lutherans) are still 1500 years removed from the life of Christ. He goes further in saying that Catholicism was still not really a full grown and established church until 606 A.D. Even then, the article states, it still did not have many of the doctrines (such as celibacy) for hundreds of more years.
As he takes us back through time, we finally arrive at the first century, what some scholars refer to as "primitive Christianity". It is at this point, that the author loses impartiality. He soon idealizes the 1st century as the good old days, when religion was practiced only for faith, not for a preacher's money. He tells of a simple life of faith and devotion instead of lavish entertainments at congregations. But most of all he states that the word of god was the final reference then, whereas now it is the word of a man. This belief may be true. Or it may not. That is not the purpose of this summary.
In conclusion, the author of this article stated many facts, backed up by solid evidence. On the other hand, he lost his objectivity at the end, and starts to cite sources less and less. As a reference it is useful in referring to the bible, as it uses many passages in the bible to back up it's beliefs, but few outside sources. I guess that's it. Beyond this, I don't really understand what I'm supposed to write about.

My site visit:

I attended Cru last thursday. It seems like a very tight community, but not so tight that new faces aren't welcomed. That's the point after all. It is very active; with many athletic events, etc. and that activity is one of the main ways people hear about Cru. I interviewed a 4 year member of Cru, who's family has been involved for the past 26 years.

He said that the mission statment of Cru is to capture hearts, transform lives, and launch men and women into a life long relationship with Jesus Christ. When I asked what he belived makes a good christian, he said "Anyone who strives to be like Jesus Christ in everything they do everyday." He didn't mean blasphemy, or egomania. He explained further that following Christs example of perfection, of goodness is what allows people of the christian faith to better their lives.

He told me these things, and I asked him about our country, and what he thought mass religion would do to it. He replied that "Faith in Jesus and in his teachings are good personal guides, but religion is not a fix all," which I took to mean, you can use faith to better yourself, and many can use it to better themselves as a whole, but you cannot expect it to "magic" everything better. You have to use your morals and your cause to improve the physical world that you live in.

Here are my questions:

Cru Survey

1) Just for my records, what is your name, and position here at CRU?
2) How long have you been a member here?
3) How did you find out about CRU, and what made you want to join?
4) Can you describe the organization briefly for me? What are its’ goals? Why was it founded? When was it founded?
5) Where do you see CRU in five years?
6) Do you have a particular favorite parable? Why?
7) What do you think makes a good Christian?
8) What do you think of modern religion?
9) What do you think of our country currently, and do you think it could be improved by Christianity? How?
10) How do you think your organization plays into that?

My 1204 H goals:

1) I joined this course so I could learn how to talk good. Oh yeah-I know-adverb, talk goodly. There we go.

2) I joined this course because I was pretty sure that it would teach me how to write papers at a collegiate level. This, I am nearly positive, is true.

3) I joined this course because it was the harder option. I wanted a course that would challenge me to succeed, and this, I believe, it will do. Maybe not tomorrow, or next week, but I'm pretty sure when I have to actually start writing papers, I'm gonna get my money's worth.

Elephants

I'm not really sure what to write about. I've just read that an asian elephant scored an 87% on a math test. This leads scientists to believe elephants are one of the better animals when it comes to mathematical reasoning. I say it's because they can't fall back on using their fingers to count.

IT'S ALIVE

Yes, I have brought forth this unholy creation of twisted metal and... wait, what?