Project 5 topic/media

*Was absent during this class period*

My essay talked about whether or not it is worth the time and money to send children to college. I argued that it was beneficial to work towards receiving a college degree because of the numerous benefits and advantages you receive after college. For this project I am either going to create a cartoon that exaggerates the student debt that students receive after college or create a website that will include arguments from different experts that are for a college education and against it. I'll also add pictures of cartoons that satirize college debt and add in graphs that show different percentages on employment and student debt. Lastly, I am going to look for any videos from the news that discuss college price rises and if it is still worth getting a degree.

We Robots

While I agree with Turkle's thoughts about how we are a technology driven society now, I disagree with her reasoning for why we are and what this has turned us into. For example, I agree that instead of writing letters we send emails or update social media, but I disagree that we do these things to ignore socializing. I think the reason we chose technology over original means of conversation is because it is simply more convenient and faster in a sense. Why send a letter that will take a few days to arrive when you can just send a text or email that gets there in seconds. This is also why I agree with her point about how society either views technology as a Utopia or Dystopia, there is never a in between perspective that just views it as a new asset in our life. My generation has grown up in a very technologically advanced world, and I personally don't view it as a Utopia or Dystopia but just as a new tool available to me, which is what Turkle points out in the final paragraph.

comics

Political comics are often found in the newspaper week after week discussing the weekly events that are going on in the political world. Authors often use comics to express their political ideas but in a more secretive manner. I found a few examples of political comics that were published several years ago during election time. I also found a more recent example of a comic artist trying to convey a message about how much President Obama borrows from the treasury and how much debt he is putting us in. The comic features Obama carry several metal buckets labeled "Insurance, Health Care, Banks, Autos" and he is running towards a cow that is deathly skinny looking and the cow has a label on its stomach saying U.S treasury. This comic is expressing the rising debt our country is gaining from too much borrowing with Obama's policies.
Many political comics express ideas that either support or mock the political leaders such as the President, senate, and House of Representatives. Comics were also used in the World War days to express patriotism and to get people to support their country in the war.
Comics have many uses and can often be a comical way of expressing a serious subject

The Importance of Every Single Sentence- Chapter 29

Chapter 29 covers everything from sentence structure to common sentence patterns, it explains how each sentence is important and plays a major role in your writing. Making a sentence memorable is important, but it's not always easy to craft a well written sentence after every period. My favorite example they used was the sentence that opened up a chapter in a dissertation, "Hazel Hernandez struck me as a honest thief". The book emphasizes what a great opening this is and how captivating it is. I couldn't agree more, the author contradicts himself by saying that a thief is "honest". This makes the reader want to continue reading to understand what exactly a "honest" thief is.
Chapter 29 taught me that each sentence matters or else you wouldn't have it in your writing. The hardest part is making the reader understand the point you are emphasizing in that sentence and this chapter lays out a few ways to emphasize that idea. There really is no such thing as a buffer sentence, because every sentence gets read by the reader, so every sentence is important to presenting your argument. After elementary school, the focus in english class switches more over to the overall paper and paragraphs rather than breaking it down sentence by sentence. This chapter reminded me how important every sentence is and how to set up every sentence properly. Also that just because it is a simple sentence, doesn't mean it isn't a great sentence and this is a problem I tend to have. I always think my sentences have to be more complex and that leads me to have more run on sentences in my papers.

Thesis for Research paper

A higher education is worth the time and money because it helps create connections for future jobs, it increases your chances of finding employment, and on average college graduates have a higher salary than people with only a high school diploma.

By going to college students widen the opportunities of jobs available to them, create connections for future careers and gain more experience in their desired career, which is why it is worth paying for a higher education.

However, in case I find more evidence leading me to change my opinion on college education:

A higher education is not worth thousands of dollars because of the poor job market limiting opportunities , it puts families in thousands of dollars of debt and students graduate in debt that they must pay off.

Chapter 26,27

It's important to "create your own look" as outlined in chapters 26 and 27. There are all different forms of writing, each piece should be unique or else it would just get boring to read. Without any differences in every authors writing, reading would just become repetitive and boring. Throughout high school i noticed that I would tend to write in a style that would impress my teachers and fit their requirements because I wanted that "A" paper. The problem with this is that my writing became to robotic and boring, I didn't express any of my thoughts in my own creative style. The article points out an important point that all writers should take note of; It says that, "It is not always better to be 'correct' than it is to be 'appropriate'". This means that you don't always have to follow the book word by word, you can take risks that don't exactly follow the rules and as long as they're appropriate, it works.

A stronger arguement

Arguing is human nature, everyday we get into disputes with peers, parents, siblings and maybe even teachers or bosses. There's vocal arguments that involve conversing back and forth, maybe yelling at some points and then there are written arguments, like the ones we write for school, work or maybe a newspaper. I've always considered myself a good arguer, but until reading this chapter I never focused on the strategies that make a good argument. In chapter 14, the book outlines specific strategies that can help strengthen an argument.
The three most important tools for arguing I found in this chapter were providing examples, reiterating your point and identifying a problem and delivering a solution. Examples help back up your argument, they give the other person evidence and show the audience that you have researched what you are arguing and know what you're talking about. Sometimes you can even provide an example with visuals, graphs, statistic charts and pictures can all contribute to your argument.
The chapter also talks about reiterating your point to provide emphasis on your argument. Lastly, stating the problem that you are arguing about is only one step of the process. Giving possible solutions is the next step, it helps show the audience that you have processed your argument and taken the time to come up with an idea on how to fix the problem.

Project Ideas?

Research papers, every college student has to do at least one throughout their college career. For me this will probably be one of many that I have to do. I haven't done a long research paper since freshman year of high school so I'm going to have to clear out the cobwebs. The first stage and honestly the hardest (for me at least) is choosing a topic. There are so many topics out there and variations of certain topics its hard to just narrow it down to one. There's also an added pressure of making the topic original so that the teacher doesn't find your paper boring to read because they already know so much about it.
So far, after taking the easy route of googling possible controversial issues to write on, I've come across four or five that stood out to me most.
"Do we pay to much for college education?"- this topic especially interests me because I'll be the one paying for my college debt in four years when i graduate and when my future kids go off to college, I'll be paying tens of thousands of dollars for their education too. So this really strikes the topic of is it worth paying a university 30-40 thousand dollars a year to attend their classes?
"Should we pay college athletes?"- Another topic that interests me. While I am not a varsity college athlete, I am a former athlete and still love playing sports. However, I don't think paying college athletes would be fair which is why researching this topic would interest me a lot.

From researching, I've also been able to eliminate some topics that I really couldn't care less about. For example, any topics related to politics or most of the environmental issues doesn't interest me as much. After running into some of these questions, I was able to eliminate them from my list of possible project ideas.

Work is a blessing

I recently read Russell Honore's story of part of his life titles "Work is a Blessing". He talks about growing up, working seven days a week as a boy, watching his father and grandfather work endless hours to make virtually no money. When he asks he father why he should work so many hours a week and receive only the bare minimum to survive his father tells him, "to work is a blessing". That stayed with Honore for the rest of his life, as he always kept in mind that it is better to have a job you don't like then to not have a job at all.
While I agree with this statement, I also believe that it is important to have a job that you enjoy. You want to be able to start a career in something you are passionate about and enjoy waking up for every morning, otherwise your life is not going to be enjoyable. Working is a necessity to survive, everyone needs to earn a income in some way so that they can afford the essentials to live. So while I agree that it is a blessing to work considering some have a lot of trouble finding jobs, I think that while you work, you should be looking for another job in a field that you enjoy, if you aren't currently working for that.
Like Russell's father, my father told me something similar. He told me that, "it is important to have a career in something that interests you, and that you enjoy. If you don't enjoy your job, then every morning is going to be miserable, and every night after work is going to be miserable". So while I agree it is a blessing to work, I also believe that you should look for a job that you truly enjoy.

speech

In all my years of writing I've never been able to speed through a speech with ease. I've always struggled to write speeches for school projects, but last year, being a senior in high school on the ice hockey team; we all had to deliver a speech at the end of the year banquet to all the parents and younger players about my four years playing on the team. However, opposed to a school speech, I was actually writing about something I was truly passionate about, something I knew a lot about and really cared about compared to writing a speech about why George Washington was the best president of the United States. First off, I had to recognize that my audience was different than the average school speech to a teacher. My audience was a bunch of high school kids, all of them my good friends, and their parents. So while I wanted to make my speech include four years worth of memories ranging from very inappropriate to just simple funny jokes, I needed to make sure parents would approve of some of the experiences that occurred. Thus began my eliminating process, I had to exclude many different stories that parents would find inappropriate. By the end of it, I had a five minute long speech full of funny stories.

Everybody's a author

What defines an author? This is the prompt we have been given for our first essay. A lot of people think only writers with published books are authors, but thats not really a fair definition of authorship. Could a music artist be an author? After all they are publishing their own song, sure they aren't writing a book but they're still writing something and adding beats and rhythms and what not. Could a video game artist be a author? They design a game, the idea, the story, the characters and plot, along with many other factors. Video games are published and sold to the public just like books, but many people don't think of a video game as a book. In my mind all of these people are authors, they create something based off their own idea.
For my topic I want to write about how a chef is a author. I think a chef's recipe is their own mini book, each ingredient serving as a character that adds to the flavor (or story). Chef's come up with their own recipes that they think of and they even do research to get the best recipe they can. They test out certain ingredients and see which one taste the best and based off this trial and error (research) they come up with a recipe that they then share with the public.

My sh**** first blog

After reading Anne Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts" essay, I was both inspired and surprised. Anne seems to have a few screws loose after she explains that writing drafts includes listening and ignoring the voices that appear in your head. She tells the audience to silence them by shooting them all in the head. But there were a few useful tips I took away from this piece. She taught me to just write and not pay attention to the voices in my head that are telling me to go back and revise the last sentence and maybe change "tells" to advises because thats just not the "AP" level word I was taught to use in high school. So thats what I'm doing for this blog right now, just writing whatever is on my mind pertaining to that article. I always used to let thoughts get in the way of my writing, which interfered with my writing process. I would lose my train of thought and sit there in a writers block trying to recall that brilliant idea I had a second ago. Anne tells her reader that if one character wants to address someone as "Mr. Poopy Pants" then you let that character do that. From now on I'm going to practice just writing and not letting myself go back and correct every sentence.

Reading 1

I never actually realized how almost every piece of writing we write is rhetoric. Our purpose is always to persuade our audience to accept the idea that we are trying to impose in our writing. The last year I've written quite a few rhetoric pieces, college essays, college personal statements, scholarship letters, all examples of writing pieces where I was trying to convince my audience that I was the best candidate.

Up until reading those chapters, I had never thought that we really do use persuasion in everything we write. Even a letter to a teacher about trying to bump up our grade, is a form of rhetoric writing because we are attempting to persuade the teacher to give us a boost in our grade and we usually state our reasons as to why we deserve it and why we want it.

There's also a whole process we have to go through before we start writing, you can't just sit down and and begin rambling on about whatever it is you're trying to talk about... Well you can, but you most likely will end up with a pretty bad essay. You first have to identify your audience, because writing to a person in authority is a lot different than writing to a group of elementary school students. You then have to try to connect with the audience and focus on what position you are taking of that idea.

It was interesting to see the writing process laid out in front of you, these few chapters really brought to my attention the importance of writing rhetorically and the process behind getting started in writing a rhetoric piece.