Final Blog Post

I created the publication, Sports Writing in America: WRD 284, to house all of the weekly responses, short assignments and final projects in one collective group.

The weekly reading responses are analyses of the texts we read each week and how the author utilized specific writing techniques as rhetorical strategies. For instance, the Week 4 reading response touched on the topic of humor and how it can be used to convey a certain message (i.e. lighten the mood when talking about a serious subject, like losing your eyesight, to keep the audience’s attention).

The weekly entries also tackled the overarching themes of the readings; such as, racism, sexism, discrimination and politics. Additionally, the reading responses also discuss the overall culture of the sports community (i.e. tribalism, hero worship, sports as religion, and sports as an escape from the hardships of real life).

Aside from the weekly blog entries, three short assignments were also completed during this course: a sports column, a humor piece and an outline/proposal of the topic for the multimodal final project. These assignments, as well as the nonfiction piece, were extremely difficult for me.

I honestly took this class because it seemed more fun than business writing and I thought it would be easy — but I was way off. This was probably one of the most challenging classes I have taken at DePaul.

I have a hard time being creative and funny on the spot. So, this course really threw me way out of my comfort zone. I found it hard to connect to a subject that I am not very passionate about, unlike a lot of my classmates who follow sports VERY closely.

However, with each reading and discussion we broke through that barrier of stereotypical sports writing, consisting of game statistics and bullshit that no one really cares about, into the broader issues umbrellaing the sports world; which was really interesting and fun to debate — even the serious subjects.

Overall, this class was so challenging, but also so worth it. I broadened my writing skills, forced myself to try and write a humorous piece — which I never would have done on my own — and got to learn about issues that are not always talked about, but should be. Basically, this class was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be and I’m glad I got pushed to try new writing styles.