MY POSITION SHIFTJacob Young

Content Overview• My Shift:

• The Before• The Shift• The After

• The Rhetorical Situation• Topic, Purpose, and Audience• Medium and Context

• Rhetorical Strategy• Description• Narrative• Compare and Contrast• Rhetorical Strategy

• How I Would Tweak It• Who’s the Audience?

• Summary

“If you’re going through hell, keep going”

(Winston Churchill)

THE SHIFTThe Before, The Shift, The After

The Before• Friends

• Hanging out with the wrong crowd• Lost touch with a lot of people

• School• Grades were slipping• Wasn’t trying

• Lifestyle• Lived a relatively unhealthy lifestyle• Overweight

• Outlook on Life• Why bother?

The Shift• The Realization

• I don’t have to live like this• My friends and family deserve better• I need to focus on school

• What I decided to do• Lose weight• Became more outgoing• Focus on school• Get my act together

The After• Lifestyle

• Lost 50-60 pounds• Living a healthier lifestyle

• School• Finished junior year with a 3.8 GPA• Finished senior year with a 4.2 GPA

• Friends• Became better friends with people from grade school• Met new people• God accepted into UK’s College of Engineering

• Life is good

RHETORICAL SITUATIONTopic, Purpose, Audience, Medium, and Context

Topic, Audience, Purpose• Topic

• Why did I go with this topic?

• Audience• Other college students• College professor

• Purpose• To get people to think about if they’re happy or not• Not happy? Make a change• Encourage others• Provide an example to show other’s its possible to change

Medium and Context• Medium

• Podcast Transcript• Translating it from transcript to blog• Could not see the response of the audience

• Context• Time limits• Podcast• Put it out there for everybody to listen to• Had to balance telling a story and persuading my point

RHETORICAL STRATEGYDescription, Narrative, Compare and Contrast, Tone and Diction

Description• What I did

• Went in depth of who I was• Talked about what I went through• Described my feelings• Described some of my thought process

• Why?• Room full of strangers• Felt if people got a better idea of who I was, it would be more

meaningful• To relate to others

Narrative/Compare and Contrast• Narrative

• The whole thing was a story• Stories within the main story• High school, surgery, change, etc.

• Why did I decide to tell it like this?• More personal• Less formal

• Compare and Contrast• The whole podcast

• Before vs. After – large scale• Unhappy vs. Happy

• Before vs. After – small scale• Individual stories and comparison

• Why did I choose to do it this way?• Clear points• You can see shift easily• Easier to stay on topic

Tone and Diction• Tone

• My tone was very easy going• More like I was talking to you, than giving a speech

• Diction• Diction was a balance of formal and informal• Word choice wasn’t super serious

• Why?• More relatable• Less like I was lecturing

HOW WOULD I TWEAK IT?The Audience

How Would I Tweak It?• The main way I would tweak this is based on who the

audience is

• Family/Friends:• Focus less on who I am• Not worry about giving such a back story• Focus more on why relationships were strained with them

• High School students:• Focus more on how I felt through high school• Focus more on why it was important that I changed• Focus more on improving grades for college

SUMMARYMain Points

Main Points• Purpose

• Encourage others to change their lives if they were unhappy

• Rhetorical Situation• Context• Medium• Audience

• I used many rhetorical strategies• Narrative• Description• Tone/Diction

Works Cited• "If You're Going Through Hell, Keep Going" Winston

Churchill." Forbes. 09 May 2012: n. page. Web. 9 Oct. 2012. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffloftus/2012/05/09/if-youre-going-through-hell-keep-going-winston-churchill/>.