Trenton Novelli

1.25.17

Literacy Narrative/ Writing Prompt #1

When I was young, I struggled with reading and writing. I was always told that I was going to be held

back due to this issue. One teacher, instead of telling me that I was going to fail, took me aside outside

of class. This teacher, Mrs. Wooten was her name, took extra time out of her day and taught me how to

read. I slowly became more efficient in reading and got to the point where I was passing assignments.

Later in my early education, I started getting into classes where I would have to write imaginative

essays. Mrs. Wooten, once again came to my rescue, teaching me how to form better sentences and

getting me ready for 3rd grade, the grade I was in at the time. At this point I could write non-fiction

papers like they were nothing, but, then we got into fiction essays. Several times teachers would take

me out and take to me how I was going to fail my EOG or end of grade evaluations due to my lack in

writing skills. This was the point where Mrs. Wooten passed me onto another teacher, a 4 th grade

teacher who would later be my 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Johnston. She took me aside along with my mom

as they worked together to make me more confident in making up a story. I could always tell facts but I

was unable to make up my own. They eventually got me ready for my EOG. Where I got to the writing

portion, gave up, and threw out the paper. At this point my 3 rd grade teacher, Mrs. Rayno, came in and

grabbed the paper and worked though the prompt with me so that with 5 min left in the test I wrote an

essay, just squeezing within the period. I passed with the exact grade I needed. Then 4 th grade, I passed

with the exact grade that I needed to pass again. After that, I never had a problem with reading and

writing ever again. The reason that I think I never had the same problems that I had when I was young

was not just learning the skills, but also the motivation. When I was five, a moment that always stuck
with me was my grandmother telling me, You would make a great engineer. Although I struggled with

reading or writing, I could always do math. That quote by my grandmother did not strike me right away.

In forth grade I was getting extremely frustrated with not being able to write. My teacher just kept

telling me, find something you enjoy, write about that. Then it hit me like a truck, I always enjoyed

math, and I knew I would make a great engineer. At that moment, I wrote my first paper that I was

proud of. The prompt, what do you want to do when you grow up. Finding that, helped me find a

reason to write, a reason to strive to learn, and after that, I never looked back.
Trenton Novelli
1.31.2017

Writing Prompt Two

When I was a freshman in high school, I thought that books were uncool and not fun

because of the fact that they took up a ton of time from other activities that I enjoyed doing. I

spent all my time outside of school, besides for homework, playing lacrosse or spending my time

doing another activity sports related. I was the only freshman that made varsity that year and I

wanted to fit in and be one with the team. This caused a huge problem for me. I was always one

of the kids who worked really hard in school and although I did not always love to read the

books that were presented to me, I would take the time to read the novels and get any

schoolwork that I had done to the best of my ability. But in high school, I had less time overall

because of playing on a varsity lacrosse team, and the fact that I wanted to hang out with my

teammates and the new friends that I made, books got placed back on the shelves.

This hit me hard in my first semester. In my classes I stopped reading the books and

textbooks that were presented to me for the class. This made school very hard for me as an

entering freshman. Two of my teachers, one knowing me prior to taking his class, noticed this

problem that was starting to occur. The first teacher to notice was my English One professor,

Mrs. Florea. She brought me outside the classroom one day because she noticed a steady decline

in my grades throughout the semester and we had a meeting to discuss what was going on. She

noticed how I was not taking the time to read the books, which is what caused my work to be

turned in at a subpar level. She talked with me and we found a time that I would come into her

classroom and just sit in a quiet environment and read and redo some of the assignments that I

turned in that were subpar. The second teacher to notice, Mr. Jupena, was a pre-calculus teacher
at the school and had a son that was a lacrosse player. He pulled me outside of his class and

discussed with me on how I was not even attempting his homework. We discussed that I was not

taking the time to read the chapters of the books and learn the material or do the problems at the

end. And he gave me a chance to turn in my homework that I have not been doing.

This all affected my literacy narrative by getting me to realize how important reading.

Without reading, I learned that I was making school a whole lot tougher because I was not going

the extra step to learn the material. This helped me work harder, and get back into reading, for

importance, and also for fun. Without those two teachers correcting me early as a freshman, I

probably would not be where I am today.

Trenton Novelli

Professor Raymond

2.6.2017

Writing Prompt 3
 From being young to growing older, my literacy narrative has changed a lot. When I was

younger, I did not have a phone to quickly search up words or to help give ideas. At my school,

all the papers were also required to be hand written. This influenced my literacy narrative by

making me focus more on spelling and grammar to make sure the sentence was correct and

sounded good before writing it down and moving on. I had to take my time writing to make sure

that the paper would flow correctly and convey the image that I wanted to convey. Another

important factor of my literacy narrative was the writing of many different drafts. Writing more

than one rough draft, an almost final paper, then finally writing the final paper and submitting

that final copy for one paper. While now, I sit here on my computer, typing away, with a

document that tells me whenever I make any sort of mistake.

Texting has also made an significant impact on my literacy narrative. Texting has made

what I am writing get more to the point with short sentences. Instead of elaborating, I find myself

just telling what it is and the facts that the audience that I am writing to needs to know, not

delving into the depths of a subject. This has always been a factor in my writing due to my very

analytical mind, but it is progressively becoming increasingly of a factor. Which leads to another

problem that I face while writing, overcompensating. Because I have noticed that I write very

analytically for every paper, I tend to focus on not being so analytical which causes me to write

run-on sentences and go on a tangent in my writings. I constantly find myself half an hour into

my writing taking about something that is completely off topic and that has nothing to do with

what I am writing about.

E-mails have also affected my literacy narrative. Throughout high school and college, I

would have to submit many assignments online and contact teachers through email. This has

caused my literacy narrative to change due to the fact I am not just writing, but I am addressing a
particular person. This can have caused me to write in a more personal way instead of just

writing to write.
Trenton Novelli
UWRT 1104-010
2.13.2017

Writing Prompt 4
 When asked about my family regarding my genealogy project and my family tree, I have

one colorful member of my family that I will use as a source frequently throughout the project.

My crazy aunt, Cynthia Chadwick.

Aunt Cyn is my grandmothers sister from my dads side of the family. She Lives in Port

Clyde, Maine, a small little town that contains approximately thirty to forty people. The town is

better known by the lighthouse that Forrest Gump ran to, or to me as the lighthouse where my

dad proposed to my mom, with lot of the houses there have been or are right now owned by my

family. Aunt Cyns physical appearance resembles a short woman, will be sixty-eight on the

twenty-third of February, short autumn colored hair, and wrinkly skin. She is very upbeat and

enthusiastic about everything she does.

Aunt Cyn is regarded as a crazy person throughout my family due to her house and

business. My aunt is what is known as a horder, she gathers anything she can that she thinks is

cool or thinks that she can sell and holds on to it tight. My favorite memory from my childhood

with her comes from her life obtaining and objects. In her bedroom, there are three trunks, but

not normal trunks, these trunks are pirate chests, whether they are authentic or not, no one really

knows. But anyway, these chests, they do not hold all this pirate treasure, but they hold a special

treasure to her, hats. Hate and hats and hats, everywhere her house is full of random hats. Big

hats, small hats, Indian headdresses, Mexican sombreros, any type of hat you can think of, you

can find it. As a kid, every time I visited I would find a new hat to wear for the trip and I would

act like whatever hat I was wearing the whole time. It was such a blast.

This transferred to her business. Aunt Cyn is the proud owner of what is referred as a

garage sale store. My aunt takes you call it trash, but I call it treasure to a whole new meaning.
She takes what people do not want, and she sells it to other people for cheap. I have seen things

from books, to a caterpillar digger, to an item that changed my life, my first lacrosse stick.

With her antics, she has gathered the knowledge over the years of all my family members

and is going to be a great source to communicate with during my genealogy project. Although

Most likely I will be communicating with my aunt over the phone, because of the fact that she

lives in Maine, I am working on trying to drive up and see her sometime in the spring. If I do end

up getting there, I will definitely bring some crazy hats for my project.
Trenton Novelli

UWRT 1104

2.21.2017

Writing prompt 5

Names
 My family has had a couple of trends throughout naming the children through the linage

of family, and a few things that are new to my name. Starting with my first middle name, John.

This link is consistent between both my moms side of the family and my dads side of the

family. Throughout the history of my moms legal guardians, or her adoption parents, John has

been a name that has been either used as a middle name, or in my grandfathers case, as his first

name. While on my dads side, the name John has always been a middle name, which is what

spurs my first middle name. John is a name that is used through several cultures due to its

common appearances in religion, being shown as coming from Hebrew heritage from the old

testaments, being transferred to Greek, Latin, and then immerging as an English name. Although

no one knows when we adapted the name John into our family culture, I believe it is from

religious ancestors and just became a tradition over time to have the middle name of our family

John.

This moves me into a trend that is shown throughout my dads side of the family, but,

was ended when I was born. Prior to I, Richard was the name that all members of my family

have shared for a while, although it is spread throughout the tree more sideways than throughout

time, there are about five different Richards in my family, which has seemed to be ended when

hitting my generation. The name Richard is an English name mostly, coming from German
decent, so my theory behind it was that it was just a name that the parents decided for there kid

and that it was just a popular name at the time, but there is not a correlation back through time to

any particular point.

Now something that has started in my generation and that I would like to keep going, is

giving the child a middle name, based upon their birthplace. Although some will not stand out

like mine, that is something that I really like about my name and I would like to continue. I was

born in Honolulu, Hawaii in the military base on the island. Because of that, I was given the

middle name, Kekoa, which means ferocious warrior in the Hawaiian language. This is

something that I have always found special to my name, at one point, thinking it was so cool, I

actually had people call me that over my first name. I always thought it was really cool to have a

Hawaiian middle name, and it is fun to say so when I was young, I thought it was cool and to this

day, there are still people that call me Kekoa instead of Trenton.
Trenton Novelli
UWRT 1104-010
3.1.2017
Writing Prompt 6

From asking around my family, I have found that my ancestors are from a few different

places in Europe, with most of my family being Italian, and a small percentage being Irish and

English. But, due to almost all my family being of Italian decent, I have chosen to pursue that

nationality farther.

In Italys history, there always has been a code of arms but it never had an official

unification causing there to be no official flag. Inspired by the French, Italy began to unify their

government and military groups causing an official flag to be decided on. The official flag of

Italy consists of three colors, green red and white and it first flew in 1797. The colors were

mostly thought to be chosen from the uniform of the militia. The process of deciding on a flag

did not start until there was an Italian uprising, causing the country to become unstable. The

development and transition of the flag was during a time period in Italy where they were still

trying to unite themselves. The Italian flag has changed vastly throughout its history, each time

there was a new ruler the color sequence or the flag shape would change. The first Italian flag

was designed as a military flag, the next flag had the code of arms displayed on it. The tricolor

design was adopted in 1797 Cispadane and the Transpadane Republics were united into the

Cisalpine Republic. During 1802 a new flag was created based off of the Napoleon military flag.

The last and final flag in 1946, the simple tricolor flag became the official standing flag of Italy.

The Italian National Anthem is has three names, Il Canto degli Italiani' which means the

song of the Italians. 'Inno di Mameli' - Mameli's hymn, named after the man who wrote the

words; and its most well-known name - the most popular name with the Italian people - 'Fratelli
d'Italia' - 'Brothers of Italy' - which is its first line.The song was composed to remind people of

the Italians fight for freedom, even though it was a lively song it was written during a dark time

of war. It was composed by Goffredo Mameli, the song was written in 1847 but only chosen to

be the national anthem in 1946 and only written into law as recently as 2005. Mameli, who only

had one hit which was this song, died two years after it was written. Even though Mameli wrote

it it was put into music by a different artist known by the name of Michele Novaro. The first

manuscript of the song written by Mameli was written in nervous and uncertain hand writing but

then was sent to Novaro and the hand writing began to come more steady. Once the song became

official it became extremely popular with the Italian people.

Before the year 1861 there were no official Italian citizens but it was not unified. Any

child born to an Italian parent was officially a citizen, besides that becoming a citizen was an

extremely detailed process. You can become an Italian citizen by marriage, citizen or

naturalization.
Trenton Novelli
UWRT 1104-010
3.20.2017

Writing prompt #7
 I have used rhetorical knowledge in my semester long project has helped me

tremendously over the duration of the project. I have been studying engineering here at UNC

Charlotte as well as when I attended Hoggard High School. The rhetorical knowledge that I have

gained has allowed me know many facts, that like the genealogy project, has spurred other

questions and interests to pursue about the topic. Having rhetorical knowledge has also helped

me with enjoyment of the project and the work and has given me a sense of pride about my

work. I care a lot about engineering as how it as developed over time for many reasons. By

knowing the past within engineering, I know what engineering is and that is how I know that it is

something that I will enjoy. Also, knowing about the past of engineering with my rhetorical

knowledge, along with the knowledge I will gain through this project will help be predict where

engineering is going and how it will help me be a better employee. In summary, having the

knowledge before starting the project allows for me to dig deeper into engineering and get a

plethora of useful engineering by knowing where to look. Having rhetorical knowledge is a huge

benefit to working on the project.

The daily writing, writing prompts, class discussions, and other projects that have

happened in this class did not have a big influence on me and my urge to find out more upon my

topic. I have always wanted to know more about my profession and this is the perfect way.

Therefore, the more that I grow in love with engineering, the more that I will want to know about

engineering, and the more information I will want to dig up for our semester long project. Other

projects, along with class discussions have affected my work in the semester long project, just

not from this class. My pride and my want to learn more has been gained through my

engineering classes here at UNC Charlotte.

 Culture is a topic that I have has to put a lot of time and effort researching. Although I

enjoy the way that people think, culture has always been a problem for me to understand. This

has forced me not just to look into the culture of engineering, but also culture in general and how

culture is formed. The positive to this is that I am in a sociology class right now which has

allowed me to learn about culture very easily to push the semester long project forward at a good

pace.

The sources that have challenged me the most over the semester long project are the

sources that are written by professors or individuals in the field. Most of the time, these articles

are written by an individual that has worked in the engineering field all their lives, this causes the

individual to use terms that are above the average population. As in outsider trying to learn about

the topic, these words and phrases are hard to understand. I have had to use critical thinking and

context clues to decipher what the individuals have written and turn it into information that I can

use in the semester long project.

Trenton Novelli
UWRT 1104-010
3.27.2017

Writing Prompt #8
Fig 1: "Ancient Rome - Crystalinks." Ancient Rome - Crystalinks. Accessed March 27, 2017.
http://www.crystalinks.com/rome.html.
The photo above shows the beginning of the engineering times. Engineering was more
than just building a structurally sound building, engineering was an art. The occupation at the
time was a privileged occupation and was looked upon with the upmost respect. It was an
occupation that people would become famous for, it shaped the land. A good engineer showed
the wealth of the nations that it was a part of, which was a big factor. All countries wanted to
look big and bad to the other countries, and this was done by looks, something engineers gave
the land.
Fig 2: Charlotte Chamber Follow. "UNC Charlotte Economic Development." LinkedIn
SlideShare. September 27, 2012. Accessed March 27, 2017.
https://www.slideshare.net/cltchamber/phil-dubois-presentation.
The photo above links the ancient Rome to the current standard for the engineering
profession. This building shows the grace behind the building, there is a big difference
though. For the most part, the design aspect is handled by the architect, with the structural
stability being handled by the engineer.
Fig 3: Zaharia, Madalina. "You'll have to choose sooner than you think: Basic Income or
Dystopian Slavery." Pinterest. March 03, 2016. Accessed March 27, 2017.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/211387776238232254/.
This photo explains the main catalyst for change in engineering, the development in
technology. Technology has changed engineering in many ways, it allows engineers to do more
and design more, hence the exponential graph. Technology is the catalyst for many things,
engineering is no exception. Engineering is a catalyst to technology and technology in term does
the same for engineering.
Trenton Novelli

URWT 1104-010

4.3.2017

Writing Prompt 9
 For the ninth writing prompt, I had a conversation with my girlfriend about my topic of

culture change in engineering. Some questions that I asked during my conversation was; do you

know what engineering is, where she replied, yes, of course dummy, you are in it, where I moved

on to how do you feel it has changed over the past couple of years. She replied with, I do not

know much, but I know that more women are entering the engineering field. Our conversation

went on for quite some time before moving back to my next big question, where I asked, how do

you think it has changed sense the beginning. Thats where I realized, no one really knows that

answer among the general public. Although this was a shock to me, it got my gears turning. Most

people know about the time period where engineering was a big phenomenon, but no one

realizes that it was engineering at work. Due to the common knowledge of the differences of

architecture and engineering, the public assumes that the beautiful buildings built by the Greeks

and the Romans were designed by architects, however, that is not the case. This is where I

informed her of the past and how at one point, engineering and architecture were one in the

same. This also spurred me to research farther into the transfer of engineering in a series of small

timetables, instead of one big one. This will allow me to be more specific in certain areas and I

will be able to gather more knowledge on what people do not know as much about. This

conversation has played a big part in my project and I will definitely use the knowledge that I

learned to shape the project.

Trenton Novelli

UWRT 1004-010

4.10.2017

Writing Prompt 10

We have taken a detour from our initial proposal by the time period we decided

originally. Originally we decided to go from the 1900s to the present and lead into a little bit

about what the trends were leading to for the future. After researching our topic, we have decided

to go farther back in time, to the Greek and Roman periods. We have gone back to that time

frame to go more in depth on the original definition of engineering, this will allow for the

foundation to be set for when we talk about how the culture of engineering has changed over

time. We are also using this time period to go more in depth on engineering and the culture of

what engineering was at that time so we have more information to show the change of. We also

made some changes from our proposal by looking more into the history of engineering than the

culture. We found that by looking more at the history and searching up the history of engineering

that it led us to evidence that showed changes in culture through the progress of engineering in

history. One area of my research that surprised me was the main factors that have changed

engineering over time. I previously thought that engineering changed by the customers and

money that flowed through the field of engineering, but as it turns out, engineering is changed

the most by engineering, it is a circle, engineers design stuff, this stuff then makes engineers able

to design more and better stuff, and the circle continues. Technology is the biggest factor in the

change in engineering. By looking at critical reflection, I have found that by changing my focus

in what I was looking for, it has really benefitted my project and how I find my information. I
have also learned that by using books and online databases, it is way easier to find more valuable

information than by using the search engines, like google.