Chima, W17, WP3 1

The academic peer review article I chose to translate is in the discourse community of

psychological research, and is titled Depression Symptoms and Stressful Life Events Among

College Students in Puerto Rico. What the research concluded was that the students at this

Puerto Rican college that were showing symptoms of depression, either from hereditary origins

or triggered by negative life events, breakups listed as one of the top triggering life events, were

suffering in terms of their academic careers as a result. The author concluded the article with a

plea for increased staff in mental health services at colleges to aid struggling students.

I chose to translate this article into the new genre of an online blog post by a fictional

UCSB student named Lucy Belton, whose following includes young adults, high school to

college age, that are also struggling with mental illnesses like her and feeling frustrated with their

failure to maintain a good academic record at the same time. Her blog acts as a support

community where everyone can suggest helpful resources as well as vent. How this relates to the

academic peer review journal article is that Lucy fits exactly the type of person that would be

examined for the psychology research experiment previously mentioned, with her story perfectly

supporting the researchers call to action. The research article itself showed disturbing results, but

I felt translating that into a very realistic viewpoint to show up close and personal how much

college students can be struggling with heartbreak and depression, as an example, and how easily

they can not be getting the help they need and failing classes as a result, makes the need for

increased college psychological services even more dire.

When translating the article into the new genre of the online blog post, authorial voice

was key. First off, the title of the blog post, which is Day #185 of Lucys Documented Miserable

Existence, gives Lucy voice as well as makes what her blog post category is very clear. Then, I

included bits of disturbing suicidal or clearly mentally unstable thoughts in the narration, such as
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Ugh overthinking, kill me now right? Lol. Please do. Really and Till next time! If there is one

LOL. By following up concerning thoughts like these with abbreviations like lol, I am

showing that this blogger and her followers are used to saying cries for help like these, not being

heard, and then laughing them off. I also used improper phrases, like ahh-mazing and ugh gr8

for example, along with cursing, to give off an extremely improper and casual tone of voice, as is

the convention of unprofessional personal online blogging.

A big part of the translation however was presenting the connection between how her

depression and heartbreak was impacting her academics. This was done by incorporating it into

the storyline of the post. For instance, she mentions how she missed a math quiz and is going to

have to take the F, since she had gotten dumped a couple of hours before and didnt have [her]

shit together in time for it. This shows how a breakup impacted her academics. Also, she goes

on to say she questions how [she could] productively function as a student when feeling

literally incapacitated by her self-diagnosed Broken Heart Syndrome. But anxiety also plays a

part, impairing her from getting the UCSB tutoring help in her math classes, as she says

regarding it that whenever shes going to go, anxietys always like yeah um no were not doing

that lol. On top of all of this, she is also dealing with deep rooted depression and suicidal

thoughts. This is shown by her feeling hopeless towards her future by saying No matter...what

degree I get out of this hellhole with...IM ALWAYS GOING TO BE UNHAPPY, as in she feels

her depression is dooming her to a lifetime of misery. And the closing statement of Maybe all of

those sunken ships knew what they were doing after all demonstrates her suicidal thoughts, and

leaves the reader concerned for her well-being.

Also, towards the middle of the blog post, she recounts on a time when she had found the

courage to actually call CAPS, UCSBs mental health services, only to find the next free
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appointment was in two months. Yeaaaa. Im not gonna be calling again. Understaffed is an

understatement haha, is her closing statement on it, thus relating back to the researchers call to

action on making mental health among college students a priority so that students like Lucy are

not left feeling even more hopeless after reaching out and getting turned away.

McClouds Writing with Pictures, specifically his piece on choice of word, I found

useful, especially with the shortened page limit. It really helped advise me on which quotes were

best to use out of the countless conceivable options I had to pick from, especially in the fourth

paragraph, where I discussed how I introduced her mental illnesses and its relevance to the

research article with primarily quotes. In addition, Elbows Two Kinds of Thinking aided in

reassuring me that editing is supposed to be hard. I really struggled with condensing my WP3

and understanding what to cut. But I put my second-order thinking cap on and tried my best to

zone in on the parts of the prompt I was lacking in. For example, I did not use nearly enough

quoted evidence in the last draft, whereas this time I used an abundance of it in almost every

paragraph.

In terms of the success of my genre translation, I think in my case it was a perfect match.

Taking an experiment and turning it into a first person point of view experience through a blog

worked really well in making the issue at hand more real and urgent. Genre theory, although

made up and the conventions of which can and should be creatively stretched when it is effective

to do so, is an extremely helpful way in categorizing the different medias we have at our

disposal and generates communities in which people can identify and find comfort in as a result.

Works Cited

Bernal, Guillermo. Depression Symptoms and Stressful Life Events Among College Students in
Puerto Rico. Journal of Affective Disorders. N.p., n.d. Web. 01. Mar. 2017.
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