Know Your Audience Analysis

The "Know Your Audience" assignment was enjoyable. Why can't all of the assignments be based off games!? Several of the questions made me do a little research before answering, such as figuring out how colors correlate to attitudes or getting an updated list of who has announced their candidacy for the 2016' Presidential election.

Based on the responses to the "Super-power" and "Pet Peeves" questions, it seems that speed is a fairly common desire for a lot of the students in this class. I never opined on the pet peeves question, but I'd have to agree that slow/inconsiderate drivers are one of my biggest pet peeves. If I could ask a follow-up question for those that seem to have a "need for speed" - are you a punctual person? If the answer would be no, like it is for me, then that could tell a lot about a person.

Although there are definitely young students in this class, it surprised me how many non-traditional students there are. I knew OTC had more non-traditional students than a university like MSU, Evangel, or Drury. But I didn't expect half the class to be old like me! I think it's great that so many people are able to go back to school after years of being in the workforce or being a stay-at-home mom. I'm sure the fact that OTC is so inexpensive is a big part of why there are so many people in their 30's+ that are able to pursue their dreams. Half of the responses to the question why we're attending OTC included affordability.

Not surprisingly, based on the question of where we grew up, most of the students in the class are from the Springfield area, with a few from surrounding states. Then there's poor Linda, who couldn't stay in one place very long. But her 1200-acre country house sounds amazing!

The question about what time period we would visit was insightful. Although on the surface, the answers to the questions could seem pretty trivial, I think they could be very crucial to figuring out what is important to a person. Several people answered that they would have chosen to go back and help with the Civil Rights movement. Equality would appear to be very important to those people. Other people chose answers that would indicate knowledge, adventure, peace, or religious beliefs would be of great important to them. Obviously, no answer is better than any other. It's just interesting to see what each person finds important.

As several others have mentioned in their analysis, the "Know Your Audience" assignment helped humanize the other students in the class. The responses to blog posts and The Heart And The Fist posts had the same effect. All of my other classes have been in the maths or sciences, where there's not a lot of student interaction.

More than anything else, I think knowing more about my audience will help me to be free with my writing. It will feel less like I'm writing to a bunch of strangers, but more to acquaintances.