Joo's Blog
Hello my name is Jooho Choi, I am currently studying Economics, and Agricultural Consumer Economics in UIUC. To introduce myself simply, I am an internationaly student in America, and I've been an International student my whole life due to my father's occupation. I was born in UK, Birmingham, lived in Thailand for 3 years, lived in Turkey for 3 years and lived in France for 12 years and the rest in Korea, and US, Illinois. I like to talk, smoke, drink with people. My dream is to conquer the world! Not like Hitler or Genghis Khan, but more like Jesus of Nazareth, Gautama Buddha, Friedrich Nietzsche, Socrates, and Voltaire.
Week 1 to Week 3
In the beginning of the course, our professor talked about how the classical way of writing is dead, which explains why the title of this course “The End of Writing”. Throughout the course I as a student was able to understand that the conventional way, which is writing an essay, is becoming less and less useful. Rather the new and sometime thought of unorthodox writing is becoming more effective and affective to our lives.
Our first assignment for this course was writing and drawing a minicomic on how we write an essay. The comic was written so that other may see how we write our work when a writing assignment is given. My work is posted online if you click here.
At first, I didn’t know the purpose of making these minicomics rather than writing it, but after reading few others works, I realized that every each one of us have a unique style of writing. Furthermore, I came to realize how this links up to our class, “The End of Writing” because if we were to write this on a paper, it would be boring and not interesting but by showing this in images and a few sentences we were able to express our opinion easily and maybe with more impact than writing an essay.
Week 3 – 6
During this week we learned how to lure and mislead people with our word or forgery. During our class one example of forgery. This forgery example was the “Ireland Shakespeare forgeries where William Ireland forged Shakespeare play to make it look like a new script discovered by William himself. His forged article was believed by many others in the beginning bringing him fame, but was exposed. Our project was similar to William’s forgery, we were supposed to forge a document which consists of written word. My project was about forging the CIA classified document. Before beginning my work, I first did some research about the CIA classified documents. For instance, I learned how the word is written and what kind of a format they used. In the end of my research, I learned that the word in a CIA document is very direct and clear, so that recipient can understand it very well, using simple words. After reading couple of CIA documents, I began making my own, forging it to make it look like a real one. As a result, my forgery work consisted of the CIA documents, and supplements such as laboratory log, photo, and an interview transcript with a former KGB member which is also forged. If you want to look at my project please click here.
Week 6 – 8
During week 6 to 8 our main projects were clickbait, and phishing scam which is another form of deviant writings in today’s society. During clickbait project, I realized how clickbait is also a deviant writing. Most clickbait consists of 2 sentences and an image, and these 2 powerful sentences make people to actually click on them to see further information, which is usually fraud and redundant information where its only purpose is to attract as many visitors to their page for advertisement profit purpose. My clickbait consisted of how to get muscular fast which is every man’s dream to become one. Today we can see that online newspaper and other sort of article all has some interesting tittle which makes us want to read, clickbait also follows this rule but in an extreme way for profit purpose only. 2nd project that we’ve done during this week was phishing scam email. A phishing scam email is usually given to commit crime. We don’t see many phishing scams email a lot these days but if someone receives one it is usually for conning others to give personal information such as bank accounts. I created a phishing scam where a supposedly bank gives an urgent mail saying to sign up by clicking their link. If someone really press that link when they receive a real phishing scam email it would take them to a website that would look familiar with the official bank site. Overall these projects were fun because you get to research of each writing style in different emails in different kind of companies.
Spring Break - Week 10
During this week, we learned and analyzed a new writing call ‘review’. People would write stuff about the products, place, food almost everything you buy or consume is basically reviewed these days. Reviews can be categorized in 3 types. These 3 types are honest review, review with bad critics, and review that are just fun and witty. This was exciting because it was my first time ever writing a review on something. I could write something funny or something with bad critics because I just don’t have the heart for it, hence I decided to write something honest good review about Thailand specifically Bangkok and Phuket in Thailand. If you want to see my written review click here.
During the spring break, I visited New York City. The city itself was a bit disappointing when it is compared with Chicago. I found Chicago building and surrounding architecturally more beautiful than New York city. We visited almost all tourist attraction. The most memorable place in New York was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The most memorable piece of art was “The Death of Socrates”
Final Blog
Till this day we have been working on our final project and the podcast. The podcast was about equal right in the campus. There were 4 topics, which were animal rights, woman’s right, woman’s right in band, and right-wing movement. By discussing and talking with my group concerning different campus activities advocating for different rights I realized how active our university was. I’ve learned many things in the podcast for instance how there are a lot of program to encourage protection for animals. Furthermore, how there used to be a rich history of woman’s right in the university. It was exciting to know how there used to be no girl members in the band till the World War II. I also get to teach about my project about the right-wing movement in the UIUC. I did not talk about the Illini journal specifically but I talked about the right-wing movement and how we should also learn from this because they are all not fanatics who wants to bring back fascism in the world. Some right-wing movements are rational and intellectual like the Illini Journal. After the podcast I worked on my final project with the Illini Journal. The project was going smoothly. There was so many information in the newspaper, I hope that this would project ends well. Finally, I would like to thank you all who were reading my blog till now but this is the end and my final blog. Thank you all and good day to you and your future.
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