ENG 2150 Assignments

Distraction/Attention worksheet

Describe your overall ability to pay attention when it comes to school work (<100 words) On a scale of 1 – 10, indicate how addicted you are to your phones

Overall, I somewhat struggle being able to pay attention when it comes to schoolwork. I can fully focus when the schoolwork I’m doing is short or due soon, if it’s long, I tend to get distracted and extend the time the schoolwork should take.On a scale of 1-10, I am at 7 in terms of addicted to my phone.

While reading “My Distraction Sickness” please note how long it takes you to get through the piece (Google says it’s a 45 min read); also, count the number of times you get distracted (for whatever reason) and tally them at the end.

Despite Google saying that it’s a 45 min read, I noted how long it took me and it took me an hour and 9 minutes to read. I also counted the number of times I got distracted which was 13.

Describe the tone of all three articles, how do they differ? (<100 words)

“My Distraction Sickness” has a story telling yet informative tone to it, the author shares with us his experience of quitting using social media while at the same time provides us with other research that was done by others on how much the internet affects our lives with a little bit of history events mentioned.Sam Anderson’s paper has an informative yet persuasive tone to it. As he references other pieces of work and informs us about focusing and distractions, at the same time he tries to convince us that being “distracted” is a good thing in this new age of technology.The Distracted Student Mind by Larry D. Rosen also has an informative tone but with a helpful aspect to it as well. The authors provided many research project that were conducted on how technology affects students’ lives yet towards the end they begin to recommend changes that we can begin to implement into our lives to help us free ourselves from our addiction to technology.

What are Sam Anderson’s primary arguments in defense of distraction? (see part III of In Defense of Distraction) Do you find them convincing? Why or why not (<150 words)

Sam Anderson’s primary arguments in defense of distraction are that being focused and distracted are linked together and that function together in a good way. The internet has made us able to multitasks something that in the past was seen as impossible, this multitasking has the potential for new generations that work efficiently and produce many new creative ideas that could potentially help us all.

After reading all three articles, what are your thoughts on this “epidemic of distraction”? (<50 words)

I believe that this is real as I have experienced being distracted often by my cellphone and it is an issue that must be more talked about. While change should be made, I don’t think it will ever truly happen and instead get worse because of money hungry companies and it would really come down to the individual choosing to set themselves free from their addiction to their phones.

Please annotate “My Distraction Sickness” – highlight at least three instances for each of the following rhetoric concepts: Invention Style, Memory, Pathos, Ethos

Invention/Memory:“Think of how rarely you now use the phone to speak to someone. A text is far easier, quicker, less burdensome.” (A Comparison) “Remember when you left voice-mail messages – or actually listened to one? Emojis now suffice.” (A Comparison) “When we enter a coffee shop in which everyone is engrossed in their private online worlds, we respond by creating one of our own. When someone next to you answers the phone and starts talking loudly as if you didn’t exist, you realize that, in her private zone, you don’t. And slowly, the whole concept of a public space – where we meet and engage and learn from our fellow citizens – evaporates.” (Example, Cause and Effect, Relationships) Style/Pathos: “But I was also escaping a home where my mother had collapsed with bipolar disorder after the birth of my younger brother and had never really recovered. She was in and out of hospitals for much of my youth and adolescence, and her condition made it hard for her to hide her pain and suffering from her sensitive oldest son. I absorbed a lot of her agony, I came to realize later, hearing her screams of frustration and misery in constant, terrifying fights with my father, and never knowing how to stop it or to help. I remember watching her dissolve in tears in the car picking me up from elementary school at the thought of returning to a home she clearly dreaded, or holding her as she poured her heart out to me, through sobs and whispers, about her dead-end life in a small town where she was utterly dependent on a spouse. She was taken away from me several times in my childhood, starting when I was 4, and even now I can recall the corridors and rooms of the institutions she was treated in when we went to visit. I knew the scar tissue from this formative trauma was still in my soul. I had spent two decades in therapy, untangling and exploring it, learning how it had made intimacy with others so frightening, how it had made my own spasms of adolescent depression even more acute, how living with that kind of pain from the most powerful source of love in my life had made me the profoundly broken vessel I am. But I had never felt it so vividly since the very years it had first engulfed and defined me. It was as if, having slowly and progressively removed every distraction from my life, I was suddenly faced with what I had been distracting myself from. Resting for a moment against the trunk of a tree, I stopped, and suddenly found myself bent over, convulsed with the newly present pain, sobbing. “ (Author talks to the audience about a personal period of their life.)  Pathos:“And imagine if more secular places responded in kind: restaurants where smartphones must be surrendered upon entering, or coffee shops that marketed their non-Wi-Fi safe space? Or, more practical: more meals where we agree to put our gadgets in a box while we talk to one another? Or lunch where the first person to use their phone pays the whole bill? We can, if we want, re- create a digital Sabbath each week — just one day in which we live for 24 hours without checking our phones.” (Thought inducing questions for the audience.)“I haven’t given up, even as, each day, at various moments, I find myself giving in. There are books to be read; landscapes to be walked; friends to be with; life to be fully lived. And I realize that this is, in some ways, just another tale in the vast book of human frailty. But this new epidemic of distraction is our civilization’s specific weakness. And its threat is not so much to our minds, even as they shape-shift under the pressure. The threat is to our souls. At this rate, if the noise does not relent, we might even forget we have any.” (Author speaks to us about making changes to our lives or it might be too late, induces emotions.) “We absorb this “content” (as writing or video or photography is now called) no longer primarily by buying a magazine or paper, by bookmarking our favorite website, or by actively choosing to read or watch. We are instead guided to these info-nuggets by myriad little interruptions on social media, all cascading at us with individually tailored relevance and accuracy. Do not flatter yourself in thinking that you have much control over which temptations you click on. Silicon Valley’s technologists and their ever-perfecting algorithms have discovered the form of bait that will have you jumping like a witless minnow. No information technology ever had this depth of knowledge of its consumers — or greater capacity to tweak their synapses to keep them engaged.” (Author here makes us question if we truly have control over our interaction with social media, emotion inducing.)    Ethos:“In his survey of how the modern West lost widespread religious practice, A Secular Age, the philosopher Charles Taylor used a term to describe the way we think of our societies. He called it a “social imaginary” — a set of interlocking beliefs and practices that can undermine or subtly marginalize other kinds of belief. We didn’t go from faith to secularism in one fell swoop, he argues. Certain ideas and practices made others not so much false as less vibrant or relevant. And so modernity slowly weakened spirituality, by design and accident, in favor of commerce; it downplayed silence and mere being in favor of noise and constant action. The reason we live in a culture increasingly without faith is not because science has somehow disproved the unprovable, but because the white noise of secularism has removed the very stillness in which it might endure or be reborn. “ (References another piece of work.)“I arrived at the meditation retreat center a few months after I’d quit the web, throwing my life and career up in the air. I figured it would be the ultimate detox.” (Author is credible as he engaged in trying to stop using social media as much.)“I was, in other words, a very early adopter of what we might now call living-in-the-web.” (Author is credible, talks about how he “lived in the internet”, knows what it’s like to be addicted to the internet.)

Structure Of Arguments

Baldwin begins his argument discussing how the question for debate and the answer comes down to the person itself, perspective. He then proceeds to talk about how the system created in the West has destroyed the senses of reality of many African Americans and whites, how low African Americans are considered and how “superior” whites are. He states that it is a system that is like a trap with no escape that affects one self and future generations. This system has been so deeply set that it completely contradicts the fact that African Americans built the countries wealth and status and yet they are not receiving any freedom, citizenship, rights and instead are being treated badly.

Buckley’s argument is a response towards Baldwins argument. He acknowledges the hardships that African Americans face in America, but points out other issues that could be worked on. Buckley states that African Americans are given opportunities which most haven’t taken. African Americans would rather focus on their hardships and in a way call for change in a way to benefit themselves. This shouldn’t be the case, instead as a society it should be brought to attention to make changes towards these hardships that are faced not to benefit a single race but everyone. Everyone must be equal and no single race should feel the need to be entitled to something because of past actions.

James Baldwin’s Uses Of Pathos, Ethos, and Logos

Pathos Example: “By that time you have begun to see it happening in your daughter, your son or your niece or your nephew. You are 30 by now and nothing you have done has helped you to escape the trap.” James Baldwin

Analysis: Despite the audience present consisting of mostly whites, those that are exceptions and audience outside of the debate area are being called out in a way by James Baldwin in this example. Baldwin in a sense uses Pathos trying to get his audience to imagine how it would feel to be trapped in a system with no escape that not only affected you, but your children.

Ethos Example: “From a very literal point of view, the harbors and the ports and the railroads of the country… could not conceivably be what they are if it had not been for cheap labor… I picked cotton, I carried it to the market, I built the railroads under someone else’s whip for nothing.” James Baldwin

Analysis:James Baldwin in this part of his speech uses ethos to ensure credibility on what he speaks about, although he himself hasn’t partaken in this kind of labor. To me, Baldwin tries to represents all those who have spent majority of their lifetime partaking in cheap labor and suffered. Hence there is some sort of credibility established since he’s talking about the experience of those who did that he may have known.

Logos Example: “The American soil is full of the corpses of my ancestors through 400 years and at least three wars. Why is my freedom, my citizenship, in question now? What one begs the American people to do, for all our sakes, is simply to accept our history.”

Analysis: James Baldwin in this part of his speech uses logos to back up how illogical it is that African Americans are being treated. The system that has been created in America based on skin color has destroyed the perspectives of everyone and completely ignores the fact that African American had suffered for a long period of time and yet haven’t been treated properly at all, illogical.

William Buckley’s Uses Of Pathos, Ethos, and Logos

Pathos Example: “We know that there was more blood shed trying to emancipate the Irish here in the British Isles than has been shed by 10 times the number of people who have been lynched as a result of the delirium of race consciousness, race supremacy, in the United States.”

Analysis: Buckley’s use of this example suggests a sort of use of pathos since it compares two events that include violence. He states that what had happened in the British Isles was far worse than the lynchings that have occurred in America which can be controversial and possibly anger some people.

Logos Example: “It is the case that seven tenths of the average white’s income in the United States is equal to the entire income of the average Negro. But my great-grandparents worked hard.”

Analysis: Buckley in this part of his argument uses a statistic to compare the difference in quantity of money earned between both whites and African Americans. Although this contradicts his argument in a way, he also stated that this is because of his ancestors who worked hard for it.

Ethos Example:  “I urge those of you who have an actual interest in the problem to read “Beyond the Melting Pot,” by Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan. They say that in 1900 there were 3,500 Negro doctors in America. In 1960 there were 3,900, an increase of 400.”

Analysis: Buckley here makes a reference to a book here to back up his general point that African Americans aren’t taking the opportunities they are given and instead put their energy out towards something else. This also demonstrates that Buckley knows what he is talking about since he’s done some sort of background research.

It’s been four years, four years since the pandemic, lockdown, and wearing masks whenever we went outside. It was the first time for most experiencing something like that and it definitely changed us one form or another.

Rough patches became the new normal and the overall wellbeing of everyone declined. But among everyone lies outliers, those who actually benefited from this significant event and changed for the better. I was one of them.

It all began halfway through my freshman year of high school, being given the news of two weeks off sounded great until we went on lockdown. Both of my parents had jobs at specific locations, but had to stay home which limited the amount of income we had. This exact factor had forced us to be completely reliant on cheap food which leaned towards an unhealthy lifestyle. 

Having to stay at home and having little to no physical activity led to boredom which led to compulsive eating; compulsive eating does not go well with junk food. There were days where a normal person would eat three meals, I’d eat six. And just as the amount of days on lockdown increased, so did the numbers on the weight scale. 

When we began to switch back to normal with a few exceptions that is when I realized that a change needed to happen. I began to do the only thing that I needed to make this change, exercise. It started off with cardio for a while, I would use about an hour of the day to just do jumping jacks with little resting time. Then it transitioned to calisthenics and weightlifting. I began from block one with the lightest weights and low number of repetitions using my own body weight, but in no time as my strength increased, so did the weights and repetitions.

Looking back onto this small journey, I realized that I had made one mistake, not being patient. I was so concerned with the way I looked that I took the fast route, doing more cardio than muscle training which in the long run was not as beneficial as it would have been to balance cardio and muscle training since the beginning. On top of that I looked at others my age who have had more time training than me and looked better, this sparked a feeling of jealousy and desperation needing to be like one of them as quickly as I could.

It’s been like this up until now, having slightly more experience and looking differently. There are times where comparisons take place between others and me, but patience has saved me from those kinds of thoughts. 

Today many factors have influenced my ability to train such as college, taking care of my sibling, and helping my mother cook everyday. Despite these challenges, I try to remain as consistent as I can. Of course there are times where training just isn’t possible with the little time I had, but I know that if I continue even if it’s just a little less and slower eventually it will compound and work out in the long run. Being patient has helped me realize this and that I shouldn’t compare myself to others since everyone has different circumstances in which they live. There isn’t an end goal for me since it’s more of a lifestyle now, it’s about how I go about each day and how I can do better than yesterday. As the saying goes, the man who enjoys walking will go farther than the man who likes the destination.