Sommers

In Sommers' article, she explains a lot about her childhood early on in the writing and thoroughly got me to feel strongly about her views in doing so. By bringing up her past, I felt a strong sense of her attempting successfully at building pathos. She ties the pathos into her full writing and moves from her past hardships to how she feels every single writer should become fully involved with their paper and care passionately about it. They should be your thoughts completely and you shouldn't have to accept others opinions and beliefs into it. Sommers mentions in her writing about taking a break from your writing and taking a, "hot shower." This context refers to taking a break to freshen up on your writing. Simply because, your revisions of a paper should feel like a full on study of the topic again. You should go into as much detail as possible redefining each and every point so you take nearly, or maybe even more, time on the revisions as you did when planning out and writing the paper in the first place. I have had teachers in the past in which did not allow me to revise papers because they didn't believe in extra credit. I disagree because with revision, I feel a larger appreciation and understanding of my paper than if I were to just crank out a paper in a one night outing at the library and forget about it entirely. I think that revisions are a great thing and should be permitted to be practiced by everyone. I think that with revisions, as agreed with Sommers, you put your own thought and feelings into the paper other than what others opinions are on the matter. We need to move on from just copying what other wrote and be original with our work; put our own thoughts into our work: who knows, if everyone decided to do this and merely not revise the grammatical errors, but look back and pour their own minds into it, maybe papers will become more interesting to read.

drunk driving

Parties. That could possibly be a complete sentence all in one word. The marvelous drinking games, beer pong, ect. that most kids, whether in college, high school, or maybe even middle school enjoy doing. Parties and drinking can be used and enjoyed at someones' birthday or maybe even a get together just to see each other. They are very fun, but when alcohol is put into the picture, you need to see to precautions. Alcohol is brought up as a thing to get everyone relaxed, more self confident, and make even the ugly friend look good. Even with all the festivities, every party has its end. With the end, comes decisions. How am I going to get home? Do I wait 15 minutes at the bus stop and come back for my car in the morning, or do I just drive; it's not that far anyways. These challenges come to everyone after a party if they have a car. What this Ad Campaign demonstrates is not only good decisions on the drinker and drivers behalf, but instead the friends' fault just as much. "Friends don't let friends drive drunk." This quote by the Ad council really shows emotional appeal because the fact they draw friends and loved one's into the picture.
James Madison University does a good job at keeping our students safe. They provide what us students call, "the Drunk Bus." It runs on Friday and Saturday nights insuring students have a safe ride back to their residence, whether its at the dorms or at an off campus house. The campus is using the messages from these Ad Campaigns and insure that they will ultimately do the very best they can to follow these campaigns to reduce, not only drunk driving, but careless things that maybe you wouldn't do if you weren't to have drank.

yeppers

“Social Citizens” by Allison Fine
Respond in writing to the following:
1. What is Fine’s purpose in writing? What goal(s) does she have for this text? Who is her audience? Find a sentence/passage where she communicates the rhetorical situation and paste it below.
Her point is to teach us about social citizens and their passionate engagement with their communities and surroundings as well as helping with causes bigger than themselves. She addresses the unique characteristics of millennials who are equipped with technology and innovative tools and ideas that will change the future. A goal she has for the public is to inform them that millennials are “experience seekers.” They are not just laid back people who take advantage of the tools they have to make their lives easier, but instead use the tools to further that technology.




2. Fine makes many, many assertions about “millennials” in her text. What is one assertion? How does she support it? Is the support effective? In other words, does it build her logos effectively? Explain. Based on your experience as a member of the “millennial” generation, do you agree? Explain.
She states that older America looks at millennials as somewhat of lazy. They label them as a “Generation Q,” which stands for quiet, or another words inactive in the community. This is an assumption that America has labeled these millennials and Fine supports the fact that indeed they are actually the opposite. I agree with Fine and the fact this group of people are profound helpers in the community and help out the future in profound ways. The logos presented in this piece is effective hence the sentence above. I agree completely what Fine has stated. I feel like we are an age of technology and in fact could get extremely lazy, but instead, as of now, use our technological advances in positive ways more than negative.



3. How does Fine’s piece clarify some of the observations Spanier made in “Is Campus Activism Dead”? How does she account for millennials’ lack of interest in protesting?



4. What are some of the dangers/drawbacks of online activism, according to Fine’s text?



5. Overall, do you think online activism is an effective means to evoke social change? Explain.


6. What cause(s) are you considering for your class project? What makes these causes attractive to you?
To be honest, I have yet to find a topic that fits my interest.

Activism

This article really surprised me. I did agree completely with what Spainer mentioned about Activism with teens and college kids these days. I think that the average college student these days, opposed to back in the times around the Vietnam war, as mentioned by Spainer, are much more focused on what is known as 'popular culture' rather than what is worldwide. I feel as though kids like myself don't pay attention to what they actually should be, like what is occurring over seas in Iraq and Iran. We are very focused on what is happening in our lives and our surroundings and less likely to take a look at the grand scheme of what is more important. Spainer mentioned in his context that more people could decipher who was once an American Idol winner, Jordan Sparks over Supreme Court's Chief Justice John Roberts. This is sort of a big problem in society. I know that not knowing John Roberts, like I didn't might just be because he is one name you have never learned, but I feel like most of America's college students these days are very lazy and don't know and recognize a lot more than just Mr. Roberts.
In my opinion, I feel as if activism is not necessarily “dead” but instead taking a “nap.” I think that we have the power and abilities to change the way we act towards the world and what we find important and all isn't lost. We might be at a deficit right now in the world in the fact we are pretty much blind to world affairs compared to in the history, but I think we have the ability to change and all hope isn't lost. These topics might not be of interest to the modern day teen but I think that we have the ability to change this, even though it might not amuse us, and to stay updated on these points.

Said

I've always been taught about struggles and controversies in the Middle East. I have been told they occur, that they are serious and life threatening, and even affect countries neighboring the one's fighting. But never in any class I've been in, have I experienced what these conflicts the Palestinians are actually facing. Edward Saids’ article, "States," really brought up these points that I have never been shown before. They left my kind of shocked because of the mere fact that all of it was new instances, nothing I've heard of before. Take for example the quote I found in the article, “The colors of the Palestinian flag are outlawed by Israeli military law." To get arrested for merely having a Palestinian flag raised in your yard, or on your mailbox, left me thinking that these people really were trying to erase an entire population of people merely because their thoughts, beliefs, and traditions were conflicting. I don't feel this is the way to resolve culture conflicts, to merely erase it and make it illegal to represent it. I found the man who spoke at the conference in America who was kicked out of multiple countries already and is now exiled from his residing country to be almost too farfetched to believe, but in fact is true and just makes it that much harder to believe. The fact that these instances really do happen and occur makes me wonder why I have not heard of these instances earlier in my life. I am extremely happy to know that the reason, I feel, Said wrote this was to teach all of us that haven't been exposed to it about it. Although I know about what is now happening, I’m afraid to say, I still cannot think of a good way to solve the problem. Maybe it one that never really will be solved.

revision revisited

I will not lie, I'm going to be blatant and the fact of this article is extremely boring to read. I attempted doing so and found myself unable to finish the reading. What I got out of what I was able to read though was somewhat useful, or oftentimes helpful. I felt that Ian Mortimer, although extremely biased on his findings, pointed out that not all of the whole of society can be based and relied on what one individual in this case, George W. Bush, stated. He took his quote of, "Now there are some who would like to rewrite history – revisionist historians is what I like to call them..," and turned it to sound as if he was speaking for the whole in his talk about revisionism. This isn't true, you must put everyone's perspective into thought and by just taking a countries leader as the example is not a good way in demonstrating this. Taking this one example is also demonstrating to us that he doesn't have much support behind his efforts in arguing this.
Culture is brought into play, people's opinions are brought, even peoples surroundings are a cause of history and the past. It skews what actually occurred and by basing you country or feelings off of mere history is not intelligent to do. When people's feelings and opinions come into play, things are switched up and in doing so, aren't the complete truth of what happened. I feel like revising history could, ultimately be a good thing to do because, hell, we don't exactly know what all is the complete truth or what is based on beliefs. If we can find more support for the history known, who knows, maybe that will lead to us finding history that might have been lost in the past.

Tompkins aNd WhAt I Discovered

Although not necessarily a good thing to discover, I discovered, this past weekend, I am allergic to raisins. It was a very unfortunate night; a lot of it "went straight through me." I had never eaten raisins before in my life and my friend gave me a box of his after a long night on the town of Harrisonburg. I felt fine before consuming them, but after, I couldn't exactly say the same thing. The way I dealt with this was the only way to deal with it; a whole lot of toilet paper and much needed time on the "crapper."
I learned some very valuable lessons that night. First off, the basic, I learned I was allergic to raisins and that if indeed I ate them, they would make my digestive system go out of whack. More importantly though, I visited the hospital to receive allergy testing and also found out I am allergic to all sea food, and something that explains my extreme nose congestion in the fall, grass. With this discovery of being allergic to raisins, it helped me from maybe consuming a lobster, and breaking out in a fever and shortened breath, or rolling in the grass to receive the great gift of hives. With this little discovery, I am not taking allergy shots, and i now feel much better going outside without having to worry about bringing Kleenex's along the way. Something I could maybe offer to others thanks to this discovery, is to go see what exactly you are allergic to, before its too late and you get to enjoy reading all the graffiti on the inside of a public toilet stall.

Tompkins

I found the Tompkins' article on the relationship between European settlers and the Native Americans living there at the time. She described mainly on how each group was sort of shown in a negative light at first but also threw in some positives as well. I agree with the fact she brought up and I agree that history is based on the perception drawn from it. The Europeans, for example, were shown as harsh settlers pushing the Native Americans from their land, showing their ways of trickery to get the Indians to sign over the land which they later regretted. Like for example giving the Indians alcohol which sort of skews judgement as we all know. Yet Tompkins brings up the facts that Indians were not so innocent either. They have always been shown as a deceiving, harsh, group of people, for example: the story of the little girl. The Native Americans were shown burning the tip of her nose to wake her up until it was no more? How exactly does that show these are the people not at fault.

I think it's true people tend to make assumptions about things they feel strongly about, and I feel this is sometimes reflected on the history of, not only our country, but history as a whole. This being so, is the main reason why we find it so hard to retrace what is true and what are opinions of some historians. I feel that it might never be known the true relationship between these two groups of people, as well as other cases in history too. We need to watch out for putting our own perspective into it and instead use the hard facts and merely put those out there for people to decide on their own.

word war III

There are man good sources on the internet to get information from. You can go to the libraries website of your school for cerified sources, you can get online book, or you can go to a website most people use every so often liike myself, Wikipedia.
This is a website that was made to put up factual information on a subject and to keep it that way by having monitor on it making sure people keep the information free from opinions... not to argue over. The whole ordeal began with the wiki page of the Iranian Presidential candidate Ahmadinejad. I never knew that the mediation of a website would cause such drama and agrumentative cases on one's biography. The mediatiors would post back and forth changing as some would say what should be on the site. But getting onto the site to call Ahmadinejad a fascist is too much. It shouldn't be left to college students and bickering on the internet to decide what to believe about a presidential candidate. That power should belong to credited sites and doing such war on a website about a person is damaging to a career. He did speak some pretty controversial things when running, and yes controversy brings up arguing and not everyone agreeing, but seeing as to argue on Wikipedia for people to take information from shouldn't have happened and brought to that extent
I initially thought the article was going to tell me that Wikipedia is not a credible source, that it cannot be backed because it is just facts people put up; shared articles and what not. And now I know this fact to be true that even though one might think something is true they could be completely wrong in taking ideas from a site that ANYTHING on it can be monitored and changed. I guess this, in a way, opened a light on Wikipedia I need to look at more often than none, because this information seems less credible than ever as of now.

Sondra Perl Assignment

1.)
a.) As i looked for my original topic i wished to write about I noticed that many other things and ideas came into my head that I never would've thought about writing about if I hadn't have done this assignment, more interesting topics to say the least.
b.) I noticed that often times I would get extremely off track, or find myself "taking a different path" than expected. i would continue on these paths until they brought me to that road block or dead end, and from there I would either retrace myself back to the original thought street or make a new path off of my path I got lost on.
c.) basically what I did here was that I started writing, and didn't stop. Anything and everything that came to mind was put down on the sheet. Some thoughts were a bit ridiculous and I knew that I wouldn't be writing on them in anyway but I wrote everything down to keep everything sort of "flowing." If I were to monitor what I were to write down, I would start to concentrate too much and begin getting the road blocks more often which is exactly what I attempted to get away from.

2.)
a.) Before, I would think for about five minutes on what topic I could write the easiest about and stick with that even if I didnt really enjoy the topic; as long as it got done with the good grade and the fastest time, I would use it. With this form, where I would write them all down, it was different. By thinking about anything and everything to write, I foud that there are subjects and topics that I could write about that are both interesting to me and don't have to take as long. It made me sort of realize that not all writing should be done just to get it done but to instead sort of put some thought into it.
b.) Alot of the time I had some troubles with picking which topic was the best one to continue off of because of the amount of things I wrote down but I feel as if that only made my center of attention and gravity stronger than when it was before hand.
c.) I didn't feel much of a path myself. It gave me a bunch of different questions to ask myself which i used to its advantage and learned from them and narrowed by topic to the one word.

3.)
I enjoyed this form of writing a whole lot more than any other different way. I felt more connected to my topic and learned that by keeping the opinion open minded and knowing the topic could change at any second really helped me find the strongest thing to write about. I learned more about my writing by having the writing be more relaxing istead of a stressed thing I just had to get done before class. I approve.

revised

When going about doing a paper, writing a song, creating any sort of work for yourself, you must be sure that when doing so, you are not taking down what others have already stated and using it with your name, giving them no recognition. Plagiarism is a problem in the modern world today because people have their ideas stolen from them daily and published as someone else's. This loses the original owner recognition, and with some things like Malcolm Gladwell stated money. Take for example record companies. They create a song, show part of it to the world as a preview, and a bigger company finds this, puts it in their song, and it becomes famous in a week. The original owner of this piece receives no recognition for his work, and loses all profits that he could have received with the piece he made thanks to plagiarism. There are many instances that this happens Gladwell says, and it is a problem. People steal ideas and diminish the hopes of someone who actually came up with the idea beforehand. It should be something that should be taken more seriously because in modern times, people lose more than just time they put into it, and there should be harsher punishments in schools if students are caught doing so.

Although, can plagiarism really be pinpointed to be correct? The rule is seven consecutive words used in a row show that you took them from another piece of work. But then again what about, say for example, the Beatles from Gladwell’s piece. How can you justify a beat of a song, or lyrics? It doesn’t exactly have a defined line in between plagiarism and just borrowing an idea.

Some types of work being stolen is credited and allowed to happen though. Take Gladwell’s example of breast cancer. He said that let’s say you create a cure for cancer. This cure is allowed to be taken by a variety of different companies because it is, “in society’s interest to let as many people as possible copy your invention.” Some people might get upset that their invention was taken because they might’ve wanted to start a monopoly of some type but this cannot be credited because it’s in the good of the people. Plagiarism is bad, stealing someone’s work without asking is bad, but if in any way you can twist it into your own idea or product, I say this helps the community, and go for it.

something Borrowed

When going about doing a paper, writing a song, creating any sort of work for yourself, you must be sure that when doing so, you are not taking down what others have alreadys stated and using it with your name, giving them no recognition. Plagiarism is a problem in the modern world today beacuse people have their ideas stolen from them daily and published as someone else's. This loses the origional owner recognition, and with some things like Malcolm Gladwell stated, money. Take for example record companies. They create a song, show part of it to the world as a preview, and a bigger company finds this, puts it in their song, and it becomes famous in a week. the origional owner of this piece recieves no recognition for his work, and loses all profits that he could have recieved with the piece he made thanks to plagiarism. There are many instances that this happens Gladwell says, and it is a problem. People steal ideas and diminish the hopes of someone who actually came up with the idea before hand. It should be something that should be taken more seriously because in modern times, people lose more than just time they put into it, and there should be harsher punishments in schools if students are caught doing so.

Managing College

Cheating, in my life, has always been exemplified as a word that describes something that is un-loyal, is degrading, and should never be done. I felt differently toward it, and this article has gotten the same view as I myself do. In no way am I saying that cheating should be done and abused, but what I am saying is that if one doesn't understand the material distributed to them, there should be something in the students power to do in order to understand it. Cheating is a term that when used correctly, can describe how a student can get away without doing their own work merely because they forgot to or had no initiative to do it and decided it easier to just take the work of someone else and use that instead. But if you look at it in the form of where a student might not understand the subject and asks another student who does for assisstance in undersatanding of the subject doing the work together, that shouldn't be penalized. If a student needs help from someone who is taking the same class that understands the subject, it should be taken advantage of the situation and use the resources you have.

-Frogger

Writer's profile assignment/Frogger the Blogger

I, myself, don’t agree with the whole “making writing a class” thing. I feel that writing is an expression of your thoughts and if you are subject to a class to t=do that then instead of doing the writings as a personal want, it turns into a public need. You are forced to do them instead of wanting to do them on your own time, hence the reason why not many people pursue that field of study anymore, because they are forced to write.

I think that these feelings towards writing came to me after I wanted to be a writer as a child for the local newspaper. I went through elementary school wanting that and decided that that was the field of study I wanted to spend the rest of my life in. Then I hit middle school where those writing assignments turned from learning the letters and alphabet to composing it together in class and not as you pleased. The teachers gave you the topics to write about, and how long they had to be. There was structure to everything about it and that doesn’t really flow with me. I thought of writing as some sort of art; a way to express your feelings with no restraints. But now that we are forced to, the fun is now gone and I despise writing. I am not interested in it that much anymore. The fact that we are forced to do it merely to be better all around people is not a good enough reason. You shouldn’t be forced to do things that you don’t wish to do.

So all in all, I used to be a great supporter in writing and being creative but now that I am forced to do so I don’t find the need to do it. I am no longer a supporter of writing, only writing on your own time. I think writing is a necessity, it being a large part of our world and all, but the way they go at it, forcing you to, isn't my type.