ENGL 120

S. Diaz

SPRING 2015

University of New Mexico

Part B: Creative Revisions to MWA 2

For my creative revision, I chose to revise MWA 2, the position paper. My MWA 2 is
titled Right to Live, Right to Die and I originally got a 95/100 total points. While that is a good
score, there is always room to improve. I revised this as a PSA on voluntary euthanasia in the
way I did because I wanted it to look both visually appealing, professional, clean, and to make
certain words/phrases pop.
For example, both the large and bold statement of My Life, My Choice and widower
Dan Diazs quote needed to be eye catching as it offers a unique perspective that I do not believe
gets broadcast nearly as much as the perspective of Diazs late wife or opponents. He is the
widower of Brittany Maynard, who was a prominent pro Death with Dignity figure, both
preceding and following her death. His quote, that he stated in an interview post Maynards
death, is thats the thing, you dont want to let go of your loved one[s], but to suggest that she
should suffer for me, for anyone? No. People viewing this PSA can connect with that want to
keep loved ones close, but as Diaz points out, no one wants to be the cause for a beloveds
suffering.
I chose my words and my title very carefully as one must be extremely deliberate in
wording controversial topics such as this. For example, more people will accept voluntary
euthanasia and the right to die compared to assisted suicide. One must consider all possible
stigmas and possible backlash when creating a PSA in order for it to be successful. Because this
is a PSA, I also had to include information regarding both sides of the voluntary euthanasia
argument as the purpose of a PSA is to inform my viewers. To only include one side is wrong
and only fuels human ignorance, which can ruin a topic such as this for multiple people. If I were
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ENGL 120
SPRING 2015

S. Diaz
University of New Mexico

to include only the pros on assisted suicide, my PSA would be weak. I did, however keep my
thesis/my opinion on the matter on the PSA and made it eye-catching it is the only thing
written in white. Also, in my heart, I did include positive statistics for voluntary euthanasia, such
as [o]ver 90% die in their home with family. However, I feel that it is fine to have my opinion
broadcast on my PSA as I have both sides of the argument included, so a viewer can feel free to
disagree. At least they would have been aware of both sides and not retain the possible belief that
their argument is indisputable as the other side has only weak points.
I decided to include a heart of words on voluntary euthanasia as it is something that is not
super depressing and to be honest, Ive always wanted to make one of these. It was actually
surprisingly difficult to get the right layout as the words were not all the same size and style as
some were bolded. For my centerpiece, the words were large enough that I needed to add text
boxes of words so my heart wouldnt appear to have voids along that row.
Throughout revising MWA 2, I learned some things about myself. I learned that when
revising, I need to wait to revise my piece until a while after Ive written it, as I will just mentally
fix my mistakes as I know what I want to say. So, I need to wait a good while to edit until the
paper is out of my thoughts. I have also learned that while I get argumentative essays such as the
MWA 2 done and get acceptable grades, they are not my strong suit. It takes me a while to draft
them and my wording on them is not the strongest. While it is nice to argue for something,
sometimes being required to draft it into an argumentative essay can overwhelm me and frustrate
me.
To conclude, I chose to creatively revise my MWA 2, titled Right to Live, Right to Die
as a PSA because the two different genres aligned so closely. Like the purpose of an
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ENGL 120
SPRING 2015

S. Diaz
University of New Mexico

argumentative essay is to inform as well as convince a reader to agree with your argument, the
purpose of a PSA is to inform, and in my case, make it a little biased toward my own argument.
Since the two were similar enough, the revision was only a matter of choosing to include
information that I already had and laying it out completely different.