Exploration 4

There are TWO steps to Exploration 4:

STEP 1: Do a reverse outline of your project 1. What is a reverse outline?
Just as you make an outline (sometimes) to write a paper, create one of this
piece after its been written. You will identify the main topic/purpose of the
paragraph and the important supporting features. For example, lets look at
the first two paragraphs from “Buried Answers”:

When Dr. Alan Schiller's 87-year-old mother died in January, ''it took some convincing,'' Schiller
says, to get his siblings to agree to an autopsy. ''They said: 'She had Alzheimer's. Let her rest.'
But I told them: 'No, something seems funny to me. An autopsy is the only way to be sure.'''
Schiller prevailed. A tanned, quick-minded, gregarious man in his 60's, he is naturally
persuasive, and as chairman of pathology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, he
carries a certain authority regarding autopsies. The word ''autopsy,'' he reminded his siblings,
means to ''see for oneself,'' and they should see what happened to their mother. Schiller's
mother died in Miami, so he called his friend Dr. Robert Poppiti Jr., chairman of pathology at
Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach. She was on the table the next morning.

In a living patient, Alzheimer's is a diagnosis of exclusion, one that should ideally be reached
only by eliminating all testable causes of fading memory and mind. Confirming it requires
directly examining the brain. The definitive markers are the tiny protein plaques and fibrous
tangles that appear under the microscope in stained sections. But a good pathologist can spot
advanced Alzheimer's just by looking at the whole brain. The brain will be shorter, front to
back, and more squarish than normal -- a reflection of Alzheimer's neuronal decimation, which
shrinks the brain up to 15 percent. This would presumably have been the case with Mrs.
Schiller. But the autopsist found her brain of normal shape and size. Dissecting it, he
discovered a half-dozen cystlike lesions scattered throughout -- areas darker, softer and less
elastic than the buff-colored parts surrounding them.

In a reverse outline, you would document these paragraphs like this:

I. Introduction through personal story
A. establish doctor’s authority
B. illustrate resistance to autopsy

II. Description of Alzheimer’s

A. show that diagnosis didn’t match what was found

STEP 2: After you have done this outline, you will then spend a half to a full
page (Single-spaced!!!) discussing what you’ve learned from this exercise.
What are some of the particular writerly moves, rhetorical decisions,
constraints, and impacts your examination revealed? From this examination,
what might you want to do more of, less of, or differently in your writing of
this essay—and where, how, why?

You will turn in both the outline and analysis-- they should be in one
document.

PROJECT 3:
Guided by what you’ve learned through the rhetoric unit and your work on
exploration 4, revise Project 1. Your revision may arise from a complete re-
envisioning of your first essay’s purpose, theme, audience, tone, or form, or
your revision may deepen and develop the aims and ideas of your first essay.
Either way, Project 3 should involve substantial revision work which shows
that you’ve analyzed your piece and thought about the ways in which your
writing can shift to better express your ideas.