Proposal:

For my last project, I looked at the NCAA and how they could potentially allow student athletes to benefit off compensation for their added revenue to programs. While I understand I can not just keep using the same topic for each project, I would like to get opinions from Division One athletes. My research question would be “Why specific advantages are there for paying student athletes? Personally, I am not too sure if this question is a good enough research question. 

As I have a friend on the Women’s Hockey team here, and my girlfriend plays soccer for the University of Minnesota, I believe I will be able to network and observe the practices of each sport. I can not rely on this, so I might just observe the Wisconsin Spring game for football which is open to the public. As I observe, I would like to see the environment to which they practice in. They sacrifice so much time for each practice, so I need to know what aspects of practice play into their motivation to get better.

I am not too sure how I will be structuring my writing for this project, but I think making a podcast would be rather interesting. With their exact words, it will add to my project. I have to think about this more when I finish my research. 

The best way to answer my research question is by receiving multiple different opinions from Division One athletes. While just one opinion will help my research, it is not fair to assume they speak for the entire student athlete population. This needs to be done promptly. My research must be done during spring break, otherwise it will be hard to receive opinions for the athletes. Schedules are busy, so this will open up my time to talk with them. 

Questions:

1. What is the level of commitment for Division One sports?
2. What benefits are there to receiving a paycheck rather than scholarship?
3. Define amateurism.
4. Why do student athletes need compensation with scholarship?
5. During your recruiting process, would your interests change to receiving the most compensation instead of what is best for you?
6. Will education be affected?
7. Should athletes be allowed to negotiate their compensation? 

Recruitment Script:

Hello,

I am performing research for my Writing and Money course at UW-Madison. I would like to know if I have permission to use your words for research. Nothing will be used against you. 

If interested, I would like to interview you during spring break. 

My topic is compensation for student athletes. 

If you would like, I can use your name anonymously to not risk any chance of the NCAA finding out your interests.

Thank you, 

Sam Eberhardt 

Interview Question for TV Writer

How do you determine what makes the cut and what doesn’t? Follow Up: Does streaming ever impact the storyline? -Technology is everywhere, how do you catch peoples attention right away since it is rather easy to lose peoples attention now with technology?

Lisa Nakamura writes about social media labor and the unplanned labor associated with the platforms. Throughout the reading, she gives examples of women who perform rather important tasks, but are not fairly compensated for it. Women are exploited because males unfortunately feel as though they can get away with paying them less than males in return for the same quality work. 

Moving to a more prominent theme, social media creates labor which is usually overlooked as just regular activity. This reading really brought awareness to the economic outlook of social media; while also tying sexism into the argument. Knowing that most social media posts/tweets are counted as labor raises a new way to look at content creators that I never imagined before. 

From this reading, I became more aware of almost all types of labor associated with social media. Many times, I do not think of scrolling through different hashtags, for example, as labor. But from each hashtag or movement, someone has to be at the forefront—as the leader of the intended movement. I use Twitter most of the time out of any social media platform for mainly sports news and updates. I follow many different reporters who Tweet breaking news immediately. For me, I never really understood the commitment it takes to always breaking the news. Your phone must always be close to you. From an economic viewpoint, oftentimes the opportunity cost of that is sacrificing your free time for your job. I am certain most of the reporters want free time, but they would be sacrificing their job of breaking the news.

This past summer, I interned at a local Madison company which sold industrial equipment to construction companies. While I do not see myself at this company for the future, I helped the sales team complete transactions. This role I see myself in after graduation. Looking at the writing aspects of this job, I primarily used email. For meetings, I envision myself using Powerpoint to help my presentation. As far as Brandt writing, I believe all places I envision myself in for the future contain some aspect of writing.

Writing for a Living by Deborah Brandt of the University of Wisconsin explores the relationship between writers and their writings. For this reading, Deborah Brandt interviews 12 individuals who write for their careers. Throughout these interviews, it is evident that 12 workers are asked about all sorts of different questions—but particularly the importance of texts/readings in the workplace. All 12 of the interviews were employed for writing based positions. Brandt noted they worked in ‘knowledge making’ and ‘knowledge selling’ fields. During the reading, it was stated that regulations and organization can create a certain guideline they must follow. 

When I was reading about the concern, I immediately thought of The Office. During one of the episodes, there was a scene where Michael had to do a counseling session with Toby of Human Resources. During the scene, Michael wanted Toby to sign off on the counseling session so he could be down. Toby obviously follows the guidelines in everything, so he would not allow that to happen. I was drawn to this example because of the importance of regulations in the workplace. Often times, I believe employees feel as though they do not need to know certain rules—they just want to know relevant laws for their position. As a writer, it is important that you state everything for which needs to be heard pretty straightforward, otherwise there’s a fairly good chance it can be confused. From this reading, a takeaway that I will have is that being direct is often the most safe option.

Because I am looking at student athletes being paid, I would like my audience to be those interested in sports. While non-sports interested people could benefit by hearing the analysis of this topic, I do not think they could relate to the information being communicated. With that in mind, I will be using social media for my composition choice. Sports is all over social media, so the use of Twitter or Facebook would benefit my project and reach larger audiences; those who are interested in sports.

Jia Tolentino uses ethos in her rhetoric when analyzing the ‘#MeToo movement’. She brings up the Brett Kavanaugh case as a way to support her idea that men use their power to avoid the truth; or support their case. Tolentino mentions that Kavanaugh acted as if he was guilty during the testimony. Ethos provides the readers with a sense of the environment and culture surrounded by the ‘#MeToo Movement’. This allows for the reader to be more familiar with the public perception around the movement.

As I go to a different college than my girlfriend, we FaceTime every night for a little bit to talk about our days. Usually the conversations are productive. We do not see each other much, so being able to communicate effectively is a huge part of our relationship. Brittney, my girlfriend, goes to the University of Minnesota. Wisconsin plays Minnesota soon for basketball and I said Wisconsin is going to win by a million when they play each other. Brittney, being her self, hung up on me and acted as if I hurt her feelings. I tried calling her back twice, until she finally answered. While talking smack about our college is not a big deal, I think she was just fed up with Wisconsin beating Minnesota in everything. So, Brittney’s act of not answering my FaceTime calls were a passive aggressive note to me that she is jealous of the University of Wisconsin being good at everything.

Melissa Gregg looks into the implications of working from home compared to a workplace. This passage looked at two different jobs of people and compared their experiences of working from home. While working from home can seem like a benefit, this passage suggests equipment can have a large impact on the ease of working from home. It was made clear by Gregg that certain jobs are easier than others to work from home. An example of this is from the Journalist. The Journalist was able to transition well because he usually had to do his work in hotels; away from an office.

Throughout this reading, I was thinking of people I knew who worked from home for a while before wanting to back to a workplace environment. My father worked from home for 3 months. As he was able to get settled at home, he found it rather annoying to have 3 sons always fighting when they were home from school (my brothers and I;)) For my brothers and I, as we were younger, we thought that since our dad was home, we could talk to him and ask for him to play with us. Because we were little, I do not think it processed in our minds that he had work to do throughout the day. This created a conflict because we did not realize work for him meant being on his own schedule throughout the day–where we thought we could just do stuff with him whenever we wanted.

As sports is popular on social media, I would like to make a thread on Twitter or post on FaceBook. Most athletes use social media today, and the main reason I have social media is to stay updated on sports news. I can use this to my advantage because it will be direct and reach an audience. This will help my project because it relates to common news seen on social media about sports.