December 9

Today I was able to get another page written on my paper. I am finding that I will probably need to do some more research in order to have the correct length, but I am not worried about finding that information. I went to the library tonight and found a print source so I will be able to get some more information from that. Also, I asked a few more people about their feelings on year round school to see how people in general feel about it. Tomorrow I will work more on writing the paper and hopefully be at three and a half pages by tomorrow night so I can edit Thursday night. 

December 8

I worked quite a bit on my paper today. During study hall I did more research and talked to a couple of people about their feelings on year round school. I will need to talk to more people to get their opinions on it because it will be important in proving my point for the final paper. I was also able to get about a page and a half written and I still feel like I have plenty of information to finish the paper. I will work on it more tomorrow night and go to the library to get my print source. I feel like I have a pretty good start so far. 

December 5

I didn’t have a lot of time to work on the paper this weekend like I originally thought, so I focused on getting my ideas together and doing some research. I will work on the paper some tomorrow in study hall and tomorrow night. It has helped to look over my proposal to see what I need to do to keep my paper focused and make sure that I include everything needed. I am still feeling very positive about my paper and I don’t think I will have a hard time getting enough information for it.  

December 4

I am starting to think about what I am going to do for my expository essay. I tried to download the outline for what the paper needs to contain, but my computer wasn’t working so I couldn’t download it. So in the meantime, I am going to start thinking about where I am going to go with my paper and start researching some studies to back up my point. Tomorrow I will see if I can download the document and then I can write most of the paper this weekend. 

December 2

I have finished my proposal! I edited it tonight and added a few last minute details. I feel that I have a good basis for writing the second two papers. There are so many studies and interesting sites about year round school. I am getting so many ideas on where I should go with my paper. Tomorrow or Thursday I will start looking at the next paper and begin my first draft. I hope to have at least half a page to a page of the second paper done by Friday, so I have an idea of how long the rest will take me. I am going to try and evenly spread out my paper so I am not waiting until the last minute to finish it. 

December 1

My topic for the Inquiry Contract is year round school. I worked a lot on my paper over the weekend to make sure that I was going to have enough information to write all three papers. I am doing very well on my first paper. I still need to write one or two more paragraphs and then edit it. I should be done tonight or tomorrow night and then I can start thinking about the next paper. I have been reading some studies done about year round school. They are very interesting and will help me prove my point in the paper. I feel that I have started in the right direction for my papers!

November 24

I read the first sample essay. I thought that the presentation of the ideas were in a good order. By the end of the essay, I was agreeing that the hosts should be getting part of the servers’ tips. The examples of other people getting part of the waiters’ tips also helped persuade me into feeling that the hosts should get more money. The description of what a host actually does helped because I had no idea that they did so many things to help the restaurant and the servers.

The calculation of money was probably the most effective part of the article. When the author suggested that 1% of the tips should go to the host, I thought that seemed like a lot of money, but once the calculations were made I was able to see that it didn’t make that much difference for the servers. What it really did was help the hosts out a lot. The difference in overall amount of money that a server got versus the host was amazing. The entire article grabbed my attention and persuaded me very quickly, so I would say that the article was very effective. 

November 18

C.P. Ellis’s story does give a credible example of overcoming hatreds. The fact that he was a Klansman, a very severe group of people, and then changed his views is extraordinary. It seems like an example that people should follow because it was a slow process but eventually he realized that he was wrong and was able to shift his views. I do think that exposing people to other ideas like Ellis did would help people change their views on different topics. It would be possible to do it on a large scale because once one person starts to change their views, it can be contagious and people would start discussing the issues. That would lead to either more people changing their beliefs or at least having a better understanding of them. The idea that information and people could slowly influence other people would definitely help people change their views. 

November 17

Yoshino means that there is not really mainstream, it is the belief of people that someone can have the ability to be mainstream or normal. It is more of a belief now than it used to be. His reasoning is very persuasive because of his definition for mainstream. He says, “because human beings hold many identities the mainstream is shifting coalition, and none of us are entirely within it” (Yoshino, 605). This definition is very easy to put with his reasoning because it shows that there is not a true mainstream, because everyone is different, making the idea of it being a myth correct. His argument is also persuasive in the fact that he says that no one is normal, making it hard to have mainstream when there is not an example to follow off of. I would describe mainstream as something that encompasses the general public. It can’t include everyone, so I would describe it as the most common of traits or characteristics in a population. 

November 13

The life that Linda had wanted in the North was not the same one that she ended up having. She encountered many problems one of them being racism and having to run from the people that owned her in the South. Linda finally gets her freedom when Mrs. Bruce bargains with Mr. Dodge to buy Linda and allow her children to be free. Mrs. Bruce pays three hundred dollars for her, but gives Linda her freedom. Linda is happy to be free, but she doesn’t feel it was right that someone had to pay for her freedom. Mr. Dodge didn’t technically own her; Mrs. Dodge did, so the money really shouldn’t have been given to him. Linda also did not fully agree with it because she didn’t think that people should be bought since it was treating them like animals even if it did give her freedom. 

November 10

The passage that I picked described how Dr. Flint beat Linda when he found out that she was pregnant with Ellen. The description of Linda’s hair being cut off was hard to read. The way the author describes her hair, it seems that it is one thing in her life that she likes, and the way that Dr. Flint just walks in and cuts it off made it seem like he was cutting off a part of her. The author also refers back to abuse in the past, the look back in time shows that the physical abuse is not something new, so it causes the reader to feel even worse about the situation. The quote from the doctor saying that he will not hurt Linda again is also an appeal to emotions because I want to believe it so badly, but from her past experience I know that it will continue to happen. The author makes the abuse seem so real that the reader can only begin to imagine the pain that Linda was going through. 

November 6

The reason for using truth in the book is to make it heavy and make the reader feel the emotions that the author had. It would be harder to take the book seriously if I knew that everything that was happening was made up. The fact that these are true stories shows all the terrible things that she went through and makes me as the reader get a true idea of what she went through. It is important that the language is not clear because it shows that slaves did not get an education and lacked many of the things that we take for granted. The content adds to the idea of truth, if the information was not given exactly how it happened, it wouldn’t have the impact on the reader that it does. The fact that she went through these terrible things shouldn’t be hidden because otherwise, we will never know the pain she was put through as a slave. 

November 4

I watched the presidential elections on CNN from about 8 to 12:30. I remember parts of the elections from 2004, but it was nowhere near as exciting or as interesting to me as yesterday’s election. It was very interesting to hear what CNN was saying and then flip to another channel to compare what the other channel was saying. Since CNN is usually more Democratic than other stations, they always had Obama winning more electoral votes. It was interesting that the stations would project who got each state and although it wasn’t official the candidates spoke after the projected winner was announced. It seemed weird to me that they were able to celebrate their victory or mourn their defeat before it was officially announced.  Many of the projections were made with only a few percent of the precincts, which seemed that the results wouldn’t be accurate but in the end, the projections were correct. It was amazing to watch Obama’s speech and know that it was a major turning point in our history.  

November 3

One confrontation about race I have seen many times is one that happens while standing in the security line at the airport. Every time I go through the line, I see people that look Middle Eastern being searched and wanded down more than every other white person in the line. The Middle Easterner never puts up a fight or says anything but they know why they are being searched instead of someone else. I am sure that the experience was frustrating for the person, but it was also frustrating to me because I felt that if they were going to search one person they should search everyone. I am not sure if I understand this experience any differently. I see where the book is coming from, but I also see it as inconvenience for the person. 

October 31

According to Vincent Parrillo, the socialization process is the process where a child picks up the beliefs and ideas of their parents. He says that since they are our parents, we accept their idea without realizing it and it changes the way we act in our adult lives. I agree that beliefs are formed this way. It is very obvious in some cases where the children believe the exact same thing as their parents even if they don’t think it’s because of their parents. A great example of this is with politics, every child when they are little “supports” the same candidate as their parents because they don’t know any differently. There are beliefs that I have gotten from my parents because of this process. Religion would be a very strong example of where my parents directly influenced my ideas without me noticing, until I was old enough, to realize I believed the same things as them. 

October 30

Apologies, investigations and restitution all play a role in how a group of people view the government. If there is nothing done to solve a problem and the people are left to take care of themselves, then the people aren’t going to trust or respect the government making two distinct groups of people. The groups would be the group of people that was hurt in some way and the other would be the government. It would not be very successful if the country were split into two groups because of one incident involving two groups of people. This process is important because it shows that everyone has equal rights. By investigating, the Government is acknowledging that something happened and that they are going to take the steps necessary to fix the problem. It also shows that they care enough to continue to work with the people and help to keep them safe.  

October 22

Cora Tucker and Willy Loman are complete opposites. They have the same idea of being successful, but the way they approach and accept it are totally different. Cora is a hardworking lady that works to benefit other people that won’t stand up for themselves. She is successful in a different way than Willy. Willy is just working to help himself and his kids when all he is doing is living a lie and putting pressure on his kids. Cora succeeds because she is selfless and works to better the lives of others while benefiting from it. Willy goes wrong because he only thinks about himself and his family and not how others succeed. He believes that because he made money for his family, that his sons will be even more successful than him, not to mention more successful than every other kid in the area. Willy has unrealistic dreams because of his position while Cora has dreams that can be achieved that not only benefit herself. 

October 21

Willy Loman thinks that everyone can be successful because he was successful. He believed that his kids had more opportunity than others because he was so influential in the New England area. Willy Loman thought that some people had more opportunity than others, which is why he believed that his sons would be so successful and that Bernard wouldn’t be. There is one part in the book where Bif is throwing a football around and Bernard comes into the room and says that Bif is going to fail because he is not studying. Willy goes on to say that Bernard is never going to accomplish anything because he is not as successful as Bif. In the end, Bernard is very successful in his career and Bif doesn’t even have a steady job.

Arthur Miller thinks that individual opportunity comes from hard work. He shows this by making Bernard successful because he was always working hard and studying when Bif was showing off and not working. 

October 21

Why did Willy believe that Bif and Happy had more potential to be successful than any other kid, when Willy was not around to see them?

October 14

The speeches again today were very interesting and influential. It was hard not to feel obligated to donate to each organization because they all seemed so worthwhile. The appeal to pathos today was amazing. I felt like each organization was a great cause and that I should do something to help after I heard about all of the great things they had already done. Maddie’s speech was very well thought out and I liked that she used so many interesting facts. I liked that Daniel didn’t use the podium; it was a nice change during the speeches to have someone walking around the room. Elise was very powerful with her story and the presentation of the story. It grabbed my attention right away. Overall, the entire project was very interesting. I didn’t realize that there were so many influential organizations in our community that did such a wide variety of things. 

October 13

Today’s presentations were very interesting and very persuasive. I found myself being drawn to all of the organizations. The appeal to pathos was amazing, Amy especially appealed to pathos. Her stories were very emotional and I could tell that they really impacted her. Andrew’s speech was the most persuasive of all of them and my favorite! He had obviously thought about what he was going to say and he gave just the right amount of information for it to be persuasive but not overwhelming. I also liked how he made his speech focused around a story; it made for a good introduction and conclusion. All of the people that gave their presentations today did a great job and it opened my eyes to all of the organizations that are in Indianapolis that I didn’t know about. I am really looking forward to the presentations tomorrow because I know that there will be many other great speeches and organizations to learn about. 

October 7

Dress for Success is turning out to be a great organization for me to represent. Their website has stories of people that have been successful because of the work that the people at Dress for Success have done. It is great information to use for my grounds because it really appeals to pathos. I also found a website that had a study showing that the way a woman dresses influences the job she will get especially when applying for a management position. This as well is great information to back up my claim. I am a little bit worried about my qualifier because I feel that it may go too far in going against my original argument. I think that I am on the right track to having a successful argument because I truly believe that nice attire influences the confidence of a person and can help make women more successful in life. 

October 6

When choosing an organization, I wanted to choose one that I was interested in and passionate about. I decided on promoting Dress for Success. It is a very good organization that helps women get jobs and help them dress the part needed to have a successful job. I want to promote this organization because I feel that it is very important that people have good jobs and are dressed appropriately to help influence their confidence in a job meeting or interview. It helps people get jobs, but it also makes them feel better and more confident about themselves. I want to support an organization that can do that for people. I am planning on appealing to pathos with the idea that we have nice clothes and we take them for granted. The audience should know how it feels to go to a job interview wearing normal clothes instead of suits or nice clothes.  

October 3

Emerson is saying that it takes honesty, virtue and the ability to not conform to something that makes someone successful. A person that is honest with their thoughts and ideas and is considered to be a good person has a very high chance of being successful. The ability to not conform to something makes that person unique making their life different from the lives of everyone else in the world. It is an advantage for them because they may get opportunities that others are not lucky enough to get. I don’t think that this is everything that it takes to be successful. These three ideas play a role in somebody’s ability to be successful. I feel that hard work, determination and luck also play a major role. I don’t think that it is as easy as Emerson says. There is more to a person than honesty and the ability to be an individual. 

October 1

The article does not specifically say that the rich are benefiting from the poor, it just implies that this is happening. It states that the people born into wealth are more likely to be wealthy than those born into poverty. From this, I take that the rich benefit from the poor because they are taking all of the available jobs that the lower class would need to become part of the middle class. The information could also be interpreted that being in the upper class is bad. It could be said that people would be much better off if they were all closer to middle class than having extremes. The idea of bad health care for the lower classes could be eliminated to some degree if there was not an elite upper class that can afford advanced medical care. The elite upper class ruins most of the chances that the lower class has to succeed, so eliminating them, the lower class would be able to become part of the middle class with less of a challenge.  

September 29

Cruz’s story shows that if luck doesn’t happen, then finding the American dream is very hard. Cruz contrasts the idea of the American dream by giving examples of not being able to rise to the top because of racial stereotypes. The main character gets jobs that have a good pay but it is mainly because he is different from all of the other applicants because he is Mexican. Once he gets the jobs, he realizes that there is not much room for him to succeed in the business because the higher ups said he needed to learn the business. It showed that Dick was just very lucky in getting a job where he could start at the bottom and get to the top. Most jobs do not work out as well as that one did for Dick. The two stories were similar in the fact that they both displayed the ability for a person at a lower class can get a job and become part of the middle or upper class. 

September 26

The author is making the implicit argument that luck is the key to success. Luck is what allows many people to change their lives without planning out every step of the way. Most people can’t plan on being successful because everything depends on the circumstances around them. People can dream about being successful, but in the end they can’t make it happen by themselves. Making good decisions can also aid in the luck to influence their success. Dick didn’t jump into the water to save the boy because he thought it would make him successful, he did it because he was a kind and caring person. This unexpected event brought him success when all he had hoped to do was be successful at some point in his life.  The success of someone can be as unknown as being in the right place at the right time because no one knows when they will be lucky. 

September 19

Visual arguments can be more persuasive than other arguments depending on what the author is trying to argue. The explicit and implicit arguments were good examples of how the pictures and visuals can be taken the wrong way. A visual argument would hit people on more of an emotional level because they can see what the author is trying to convey.The reader could misinterpret the argument and then the author is not passing on the information they were hoping to give to others. Our society uses more visual arguments now than they used to, but it can be hard to figure out exactly what the author wants the reader to gain from the argument.  The advantage of another type of argument is that it can be fleshed out better and tell the reader exactly what the author wants them to know about the argument at hand. 

September 18

In Writing Arguments, it says that the writers responsibility with ethos is to get the audience to trust what he or she is saying. In order to prove their point, they need the audience to believe that their arguement is true whether they use facts or personal stories. With pathos, the author has to get the audience to connect emotionally with the topic. It needs to be written in a way that the audience feels an emotional attachment to the topic so they side with the author. Our government and media do not usually live up the expectations of ethos and pathos. Many times they distort the facts so they make the audience have more confidence in them. The media and the government also discuss topics that are especially important in the lives of many people on an every day basis and then try to change their views with ethos. The media is very good about using ethos and pathos in their favor instead of in favor of the audience. 

September 16

David Langley uses evidence by giving personal experience and comparing skateboarding to other larger world issues. The personal story at the beginning grabbed my attention and made me start to feel sorry for him and lean towards his side of the argument. The fact that he was almost fined for skateboarding when the sign said that holidays were legal, made it seem unreasonable that the police stopped him. His personal story was very convincing. The way he brought world issues into the story also helped him prove his point. World issues effect everyone, not just certain people, so it was easier to sympathize with him since he said that skateboarding was better for the environment than many other forms of transportation and other sports. He almost slipped the information into the reading so the next thing I knew, I was agreeing with him. Langley also brings up the point that skateboarders can’t skate when there is trash everywhere, making them even better for the environment. It was a very smart point to add because it is something I would have never thought of. If skateboarders were allowed everywhere, maybe pollution wouldn’t be such a problem. 

September 15

A pseudo-argument I have encountered is one that most people come across in their lives. Does math really help you in the real world? I think that this is a question that almost every kid has asked their math teacher at least once. The math teacher always says that the problem can be related to real life and that it will be used every day especially in certain professions. Then the kids always reply that their jobs will not require math so why do they need to learn it? An English teacher doesn’t use most of the math that is taught in high school math, it’s a fact. There will always be opposing arguments on this, and there has never been a conclusion. Both sides have their own ideas and they stick with it never allowing a conclusion to take place. The student in this case is the fanatical skeptic because they won’t believe the math teacher no matter what they say to convince them otherwise. 

September 11

Pathos is a very influential rhetorical device because it deals directly with the emotions of the reader. It is what is going to influence whether the reader agrees or disagrees with the writers’ argument. The writer wants to target the feelings of the reader and by doing that they are working on pathos. It is what makes or breaks the piece of writing for an author, if the reader doesn’t like it, then the argument was not worth arguing in the first place.  Without the idea of pathos, the writer would not be able to focus their emotions in the piece. The writer is able to decide whom they want the piece to be focused on and then they use pathos to target the audience that they want. It makes the reader imagine what the writer is talking about as well. It helps the reader visual and make decisions on the argument at hand. 

September 8

At first thought, I agreed with the article. It seemed perfectly reasonable to torture someone who was guilty of something if it saved the life of an innocent person. The author was very good at persuading us to see it his way. As we got to discussing the article, my ideas started to change. I still feel that the article has some true parts, but I feel like the author is not giving us the whole truth. The idea that the person being tortured might not for example say where the bomb really is makes it difficult because then everyone dies. I am now leaning more towards torture is not the answer. It does not necessarily change anything because the person being tortured is probably not going be honest, which means that the person is being tortured for nothing. It makes me wonder whether its worth torturing one person to potentially save more people or whether it’s not worth hurting someone to save people that may not be able to be saved. 

September 5

The biotech food debate is one that until now was never something I thought about. There has been lots of research done by scientists, so now biotech foods are easily accessed in our everyday lives. I feel that science is too far along to stop the production of biotech foods. I am not necessarily one that wants to eat the biotech foods, but I don’t feel that the production should be stopped. The FDA has not stopped the production yet, so in some aspects, it may not be as bad as everyone thinks. Since there is some concern over health value with these foods, it should be required that each food is labeled biotech or not. Having each food labeled, allows each consumer to make the decision for his or her self and it puts no one at risk for eating biotech foods that may harm him or her in some way.  

September 2

The genres help make these two arguments. Both of the arguments use the visual argument to display their ideas. If there wasn’t genre then there would not be a focus to the cartoon or ad and then they would not have any influence over the reader. The cartoon on page 1 is largely influenced by the text underneath and the captions. This argument would not be as easy to understand or as effective if the words were not there to guide the reader to understand the picture. Once again, in the ad, the words make the argument. If they were not there, the blank nutritional facts would not make any sense to the reader; they could take it as the food being too caloric instead of genetically changed. It would be easy to mistake it for the wrong argument. 

August 29

Explicit and implicit arguments are very different from each other, but both argue a point for or against an idea. An implicit argument is an argument that is displayed in the form of art or a nontraditional method. It can be a poem, a picture, a painting or any other art form that can be used to prove a point. The picture and poem on page five and six display how an implicit argument can be worked into two different art forms, but still have two different arguments. They both display war but one shows the happier side of war and the other a more gruesome side. An explicit argument is an argument that is written out and developed. It is usually one where the person has done research and has fleshed out their ideas into an argument with many points supporting it. 

August 28

I left my Dad at security, and Sarah and I walked into the line. It was the worst feeling to walk away from my Dad and know I wouldn’t see him for a week. I had always been an uneasy traveler and this trip was no exception. Sarah and I were taking our first trip together without our parents. We were going to Seattle to visit our Aunt and Uncle. As we boarded the plane I started to get really nervous. Sarah was wondering why she agreed to go on this trip with me: the worst traveler in the family.

The first flight was uneventful and I made it to Phoenix without passing out. When we got to Phoenix I walked out of the plane with a huge sense of freedom. I had never been anywhere without my parents and it was so liberating to think that I could make all of my own decisions. On the next plane ride, there was excessive turbulence and the flight attendants were told to sit down. I thought the plane was going to crash. I pulled out my knitting as I always did and hoped for the best. The more nervous I got, the faster I knitted. I made it to Seattle with not only my sense of freedom and achievement on making my first trip alone but also with two new scarves to show for it.

August 26

Overall, I have really enjoyed the readings we have done so far. My favorite would be “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” I loved the way that she incorporated Spanish into the text. I felt that it kept the writing exciting and moving even though many people felt like it talked in circles. I could see how she was moving in circles, but I liked it because I felt like I picked up more from reading it multiple times. The Hampl readings have been interesting as well but they have been harder for me to understand. Her way of writing is not as clear as the other author, so I have a harder time keeping myself engaged and focused in the readings.  The one reading I didn’t enjoy was the one by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was very confusing and I didn’t understand much of what was going on. I think his writing style was what threw me off the most. 

August 25

Yes, I feel that language does evolve. It is evolving all of the time. There is evidence from the past that Latin evolved into English and Spanish as well as other languages, so I have no doubt that our language is still changing now. I don’t feel that in our life we will ever notice the changes of language evolution because they will be so slight that we will start using them without thinking about it. People make up words all of the time that become part of our everyday vocabulary which can change the way we speak. For example, someone might “google” something to look it up, it’s now a term that everyone uses, although it’s not in the dictionary, it is a commonly understood word. With small changes like these, I feel that our language is changing slowing but years from now I don’t think that it will be anything like it is today.   

August 22

I can't recall a specific person telling me something that really moved me, but i know someone with a story that did. Joan Benoit Samuelson is an Olympic gold medalist in the women's marathon. Before she was a gold medalist, she was injured. She broke her femur while skiing and had to switch sports to running. While I didn't change sports, I have had to deal with many injuries that changed my ability to do what I wanted. Samuelson has been my inspiration through all of my injuries. Talking to her, you get a sense of strength and determination. Although she has never told me her story, she displays characteristics of them and has become stronger from it; I want to be just like that. Her story and her ability to move past her injuries has pushed me to become a better person and hopefully a more successful athlete. 

August 22

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