Alexis Wallace

    My project is on how Nature (genetic diseases) and Nurture (environmental factors) is shown in medical dramas. I used the show Greys Anatomy because they introduce new patients every episode, so there is so many different diseases and illnesses. The three genres I composed were an infographic, a Twitter account, and a Facebook page. I chose to make an infographic because you can fit information on it while also making it appealing to look at. My infographic contains a list of genetic illnesses and non-genetic illnesses seen in Greys Anatomy. My Facebook page contains some facts and information on genetic diseases. I chose Facebook because I felt like that’s a good place to reach my audience. My audience is older people who may be starting to develop some of these genetic diseases like Alzheimer’s. I also used Twitter because most people who watch Greys Anatomy are young adults, and young adults use Twitter. My twitter contains tweets about the illnesses, both genetic and non-genetic, seen in Greys Anatomy.  My targeted audience could be people interested in genetic illnesses, people who may have family with a genetic illness, or Greys Anatomy fan.

      I included a couple of illnesses from Greys Anatomy in both my tweets and my infographic. Some of the genetic illnesses (nature) were Alzheimer’s, cancer, and heart conditions. Alzheimer’s is a disease that destroys a person’s memory.  In Greys Anatomy, Meredith’s mother has Alzheimer’s so she wonders if she should get tested. She eventually does get tested and finds out that she does in fact have an Alzheimer’s gene. Cristina and Izzie have a patient that dies unexpectedly so they ask the family if they can do an autopsy to find out what happened. The family says no but Cristina and Izzie decide to do the autopsy anyways. They find out that he died from a genetic heart condition so they warn the mother and daughter that the daughter could possibly have it too. A friend of Derek and Addison come to Seattle hoping to get a hysterectomy and radical mastectomy because she tested positive for a cancer gene. However, her husband is against it because he wants to have children. Izzie and Alex get into a fight over this because Izzie thinks she shouldn’t give up her chance to have children if she may not even have cancer and Alex agrees with having the surgery.

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     Some of the non-genetic illnesses (nurture) were bacteria, syphilis, and a train crash. A woman came into the hospital with a cut on her leg from hiking. They find out that she has a flesh-eating bacteria and she may need to get her leg amputated. George gets syphilis after having sex with a nurse, and he later finds out that she got syphilis from Alex. There then becomes a syphilis breakout at the hospital and everyone wants to get tested. After a train crash the hospital becomes full of victims, including two people impaled by the same pole. Unfortunately, to save one of the patients the other must die so they choose the patient with the less extensive injuries to save.

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     My project #2 was about how movies portray nature and nurture so instead of using movies I used a TV show for project #3. In my project #2 I used movies like Harry Potter, the Bad Seed, and Spider-man. These were not easy topics to talk about being that they are fictional.  I feel like using a TV show and sticking to one topic, medical illnesses, was easier than using movies and not really having a specific topic. Since I changed my topic a little I decided to use all new sources. The sources I used on this project were “the recurrence risk of genetic complex diseases”, “Desire for predictive testing for Alzheimer's disease and impact on advance care planning: a cross-sectional study”.

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     My promotional strategy went easier than I expected. For Twitter, I followed a bunch of Registered Nurses, people from my class, and Nature and Nurture pages. I got one of the Registered Nurses to follow me back and some of my friends. With the Facebook page, I shared the link on my personal Facebook and got fifty three likes. I promoted the infographic by posting it on both my Twitter and Facebook pages. I got a message on Facebook from one of my family members asking about my project. She was curious about her family that has addictions to smoking and drinking, and whether those are inherited from our DNA or if we pick those up. Although I seemed to get a decent amount of likes and followers on my pages, I don’t get much interaction with any of my posts. I get some likes on Twitter but I don’t get much on Facebook. I believe that with a couple more weeks of promoting I could’ve gotten a bit more interaction.

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      I believe that my project was effective because I got more attention than I thought I would. I got a Registered Nurse to follow me back on Twitter, a message from someone who was interested to know more about my project, and more likes on Facebook than I was expecting. The composing process was much easier for me. I’ve never been a huge fan of writing papers, even though with a research paper you are given most of the information. I like how we got to pick what genres we wanted to do and we got to decide how to put them together. Allowing us to be more in control of what we are producing not only makes it more fun, but it also helps us to do better. We know more information about the topics we chose so we have more to say about it.

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      Composing project #3 was much easier than project #2 because we already had most of the information. We just had to put it into new genres instead of a paper. I thought it was fun to create an infographic and to promote my Twitter and Facebook. While I’m not very creative I feel like I did a good job with creating my infographic. The only thing I wish I would’ve changed is being more prepared during project #2 so I wouldn’t have had to change my topic and start over. It would have been way easier to create my genres and promote if I would’ve known what my project was about earlier on.