Process Narrative:
The rhetorical situation of this project was to tell the story of a certain thing (in my case Dr. Michael Gottlieb) over the course of the AIDS epidemic. The audience is anyone who is interested in the subject, which means it could be anyone from young students to college professors or even someone with a non-academic interest. My original timeline evolved over the course of the project as I was originally going to do my timeline on early reporting of AIDS. However, I found that to be much too broad of a subject matter so I switched to Dr. Gottlieb’s role over the course of the AIDS epidemic. This led me to have to replace several of my original points with ones more central to his story. This project (and the other projects we’ve worked on this semester) have helped me to realize the massive role technology has in communication. The first news about AIDS was very slow trickled out, whereas nowadays it could reach the farthest corners of the globe in a matter of hours. I also learned more about how different modes can work together, support, and enhance one another. For example, in my timeline most of my slides consist of an image supported by background info in the text. If separated, they would be either pointless or bland, but together they work very well.
This exhibit is the one I revised most heavily for display in the portfolio. My original timeline was very good, but had a few simple yet quite detrimental errors. The largest of these was that while I included good context and information with each slide, I did not include the sources where I got the information, which greatly detracted from its credibility. Therefore, my largest revision was simply going back and documenting all of my sources on each slide. The other large error I had was using a dull (and frankly ugly) beige/ pale yellow background on slides where I did not have a background image (view slide 5 in the original for an example of this). Most of my other slides were black and white or either colors with sharp contrast, which evoked a somber, serious, and academic feeling. The beige background color did not go along with this and was a very poor design choice so I made sure to correct it for this final version. Other revisions I made consisted of mostly simple proofreading and improving grammar or clarifying in spots where I was vague or needed more detail.
Click here to view original timeline!
Click here to view revised timeline full-screen!
My dad used to tell me when I was younger that when he was coming up, that most people truly believed that only homosexuals and drug addicts were able to contract this disease. This may be where that rumor started since the only people at the time that were known to have this disease were homosexual men. It is to my understanding that this disease was not taken seriously until Magic Johnson contracted HIV in 1991. He was able to break the stereotype of HIV/AIDS being a gay mans disease. I hope that we will be able to find a cure for this disease as many Americans go on living their lives without even knowing if they possess it or not. That is why everyone should at least practice safe sex and get tested every six months. You have to be careful who you have relations with these days as you may never know what the person has contracted.