The most important aspect of a proposal is to call the attention of the reader to the problem. I believe this is the most important because it is the most difficult idea to communicate to the reader. In my own experiences, I have been very defensive and unwilling to listen to others’ opinion and theories as soon as they tell me that my way of doing things is wrong. I have also been on the other side of the spectrum. Take for instance the white paper project, I was having a very hard time convincing other groups that their designs and context could be edited and improved. Yet, I was never successful persuading these groups’ material could be improved. I believe this is the most difficult duty of a proposal, and it will be the most difficult thing to do during the service learning project. I think this will be especially difficult for our group because, to the best of our knowledge, our client is not aware of the problem that we believe exists. For our group, introducing the proposed the problem will require the most focus and energy. I think we may have to “butter our client up” before we tell him of the inadequacies of the department. Luckily, the proposed problems and solutions are not department-altering, we just believe that there could be some small improvements. We also think that these small improvements could yield large and advantageous results.

Another aspect of the proposal that I learned in “The Rhetoric of Proposals” dealt establishing credibility. In our unique case, this will be difficult to achieve. Being only students, we do not have the experience and expertise that our client does have. This may be very detrimental to our cause. However, if we explained to our client that we are the ones that use their product/system, we could easily convince them of our importance and credibility.