03/31/16

Research-Based Argument Proposal

I plan to look at the value of a college degree and whether or not it is worth pursuing.  Parents often look at education as being the only way to make a good living because that is what they were brought up on.  With college being as expensive as it has ever been and with so many opportunities to pursue something without a college degree, it might just not be worth pursuing a degree.  Much of the material they actually teach can be learned through other means at a cheaper price.  It’s basically just paying for the experience and having a degree to say “I graduated from college.”  My audience will be those people who are debating whether or not to attend college as well as those who firmly believe a college degree is the way to go.  While I understand the reasoning behind people wanting to pursue high levels of education, I want people to understand that investing if you were to invest that same amount of money and time into yourself, you can come out just as well if not better than those who end up getting their degrees.

03/24/16

Literary Narrative

My family has always been one that put education above everything else.  To this day, my parents believe that an education is the key to being successful.  Having come from China with next to nothing, they had to work long hours to put my brother and I through school.  Both of us were good students, but we were never really that invested into our schoolwork.  We looked to make our parent’s lives easier by making money on our own, but that wasn’t that well received when my brother made the decision to not attend college. Every one of my relatives have all gone on to graduate college and that was probably what pressured my parents to want a child who has done the same.  For a long time, family gatherings were not easy for them because of him.  Everyone would talk about how he threw away his life and will never reach his potential.

Looking back now, my relatives could not have been more wrong since he is now more successful than anyone else in the family.  He had given up a chance to attend college to pursue own business and I was to follow in his footsteps coming out of high school.  The only reason I ended up attending college was because I felt like I owed it to my parents since I was not exactly the greatest kid.  They still think that me investing this time to school will make a big difference in what I will make down the line, but if they truly understood what I had to give up to commit these 4 more years to school, they may have felt differently.  Just as when my brother made his decision, they may not have felt the same if they knew what he would go on to achieve.

03/15/16

Revising Attitudes

This piece pretty much summed up my whole experience with revision.  For the longest time, I really didn’t find revising useful.  One of the main reasons why is because I was always able to get away with writing I had done the night before.  I was able to get praise on that writing never received any level of revision.  Looking back at what I used to write and what I’ve been able put out recently,  there is no hiding the huge discrepancy in the levels of writing.  The one’s that underwent multiple stages of revision had elements in them that I never really thought I was capable of.  While revision may be time time consuming, understanding what you can get out of it is what makes it worth it.  It was the lack of said understanding that made my past experiences with revision so unproductive.  A lot of what Deither points touched on in the section about understanding are something I look to add to my own revision. Just as the piece said, “seeing is believing.”

03/3/16

Responding to Others’ Writing

I’ll admit that I’m often one of those people who sees revising an unfamiliar individual’s paper tedious.  The mentality of “get in and get out” was what I always had going into each phase of revision.  Maybe that’s probably because no one ever really gave me feedback that made me really think back on my writing and I felt obligated to return the favor, but this piece made me really rethink my whole way of going about this.

Few words there and few words here would pretty much all you could get out of me, and I would think that’s fine because the teacher was satisfied.  Nobody ever told me what I was doing was wrong, so I never saw a need to change how I was doing things.  This piece showed me a new way of going about reading another person’s paper.  A lot of what it tells you to do conflicted with everything I’ve done in the past.   Like “Short and sweet” being often bad and commenting in full sentences weren’t enough, it even wants me to be more critical of my peer.  A first draft is when a writer is most vulnerable, so it would make sense that that is when they are most open to receiving critical feedback.  One’s thoughts on your paper might differ from what you might think, so having someone be able to point something out is valuable.  One thing I never really took into account was what exactly that person’s identity as a writer.  It’s nice to see that a lot of Jeremy’s response to Todd’s paper is what I always wanted to do, but never wanted to since the amount of effort required was too much for my liking.  If anything, this piece has shown me a new way to tackle the revising process, and for that, I am grateful.

03/1/16

Shitty First Drafts

This piece pretty much sums up my whole writing experience.  One of the hardest things I find myself being able to do is actually knowing where to start.  I would imagine a large part of this is attributed to the fact that I want to be be able to present something perfect right away, but maybe it’s just something every writer struggles with.  The moment I accepted that it was fine for me to create a first draft that was shit was that moment I really began to see my writing evolve.  One of the many things I’ve noticed throughout my years of writing, it is that when I just let myself go while writing, I come up with things I probably wouldn’t have otherwise.  After multiple rounds of revisions, this would lead to an end product that while having elements of what made that first draft great, all the things that makes the final draft what it was meant to be.  To be honest, even though I know that this is the right way to go about it, I only really find myself doing this if what I’m writing about is something I am passionate about.  I can easily say that nearly every school paper I’ve written was able to receive a good grade with my approach of trying to perfect a first draft, but those perfect grades never really showed up except for the pieces where I just let myself go.  This whole method goes against my philosophy of getting work over with as quickly as possible, but the more I think about it, starting with something that has a lot to improve upon saves more time.  Rather than spending a ridiculous amount of time attempting to perfect something that shouldn’t be, I can just use that same amount of time on something that can be.

02/23/16

Rhetorical Analysis/Baldwin

Baldwin’s piece is gives us an insider’s perspective of a dark time during our nation’s history.  From the get-go, his intentions for writing the letter were clearly stated.  He made sure his nephew knew that him being tough, him being dark makes him vulnerable to what society is capable of doing to him.  He claims that there is another world, the white world, that looks to make sure his people stay defeated, but that is only half of it.   Defeat can only come once you have begun to believe what the opposition wants you to believe.  The grounds for these claims were because of the time he lived in, and those who came before him lived through.  This leads to what he has to say being warranted because of segregation.  Literally a world where whites and blacks were not to be seen as equals, and one where the slightest signs of weakness can be the downfall of even the strongest, it can be said that Baldwin wants to make sure that his Nephew knew of all the trials and tribulations his people had to face.

Baldwin knows that his audience for the piece is his nephew, so he knows that him being young might cause him to not fully understand what is going on around him.  He might not know that “this innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish” because everyone around him puts on a smile.  Kairos seemed to play an important role in the piece since it seemed intentional that this letter be written on the one hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.  Not only was it the anniversary, but the Civil Rights Movement was taking place. From stating the many struggles his people had to face, to ultimately formulate something resembling a motivational speech, it can be said that Baldwin wants to make sure that his nephew, at the young age of fifteen, knows that his future is within his control.

02/18/16

Letter to My Nephew

Baldwin’s piece shed light on some of the many underlying problems in American society.  Throughout the nation’s history, we have seen slavery and racism be what really defined what this nation was all about.  One can say America is the land of opportunity, but that does not necessarily that opportunity will be given equally to all.

One physical trait is all it took for people to turn its backs on their fellow human beings.  Much of the country’s history has been about the struggle blacks had to face.  Oppressed by the whites, they were forced to act upon what they believed was right.  While some held true to who they really are, those who ended up “believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger,” were victims of a system that set them up for failure.  Even the “freedom” granted from the Emancipation Proclamation doesn’t really mean all too much in the grand scheme of this if blacks are “free” to do as they please only if it is within the boundaries of what the oppressors had in place.  What is history can forgotten is one of the main takeaways from his line “no one’s hand can wipe away those tears he sheds invisibly today, which one hears in his laughter and in his speech.”  A nation who had said “all men are created equal,” should really have said “all white men are created equal.”  It is not just the struggles of blacks that plagues our past, but the women as well.  A “melting pot” is what you can call America, but whether or not you choose to assimilate or integrate, you will still lose sight of who you once were.  The hardest facts to accept is that “you must accept them,” because if you don’t everyone will keep on moving along without you.

02/12/16

What is Rhetoric?

I found the rhetorical appeals the most interesting part of the piece.  Understanding how to properly utilize these appeals in business is one of the main things I’m personally striving towards.  Just as it said in the piece, I never really took the time to “see how they work.”  When it came to persuading people, every just sort of came naturally.  This definitely opened up my eyes to the inner workings of what I do.  Every time I put myself out there for an investor, I am a rhetoric in a sense.  This seems to translate into how I carry myself as a person, with me essentially treating everyone as though their whole purpose in life is to judge me.

02/11/16

Backpacks vs Briefcases

Caroll’s piece touches on one of many aspects that makes American society what it is.  The fact that at one point the average Americans would see as many ads in one year that someone else would otherwise see in a lifetime, just goes to show how prevalent this aspect is in our life.  Everyday, we walk around and may not notice just how much of the environment around us are actually advertisements.  They are as she called “rhetoric” since they served the purpose of getting us to act for their benefit.    One of the main sentences that stuck out to me was “Even if we intellectually agree with something, it is difficult to get us to act unless we are also persuaded in our heart.”  This is actually true more often than not the more we think about it.  Many would agree that many ads are pretty easy to agree with, but unless it really strikes us as something that we really need, we tend to move on with our lives.  Each ad has is put out with the purpose of cornering their target audience, the people that will be persuaded through their heart.  Our mind is what gets us to act logically, and our heart is what gets us to act emotionally.  It is important to recognize that every ad may not be meant for us, and the ones that are, will more often than not persuade us whether we like it or not.

02/11/16

“Nevada Looms as Battleground for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders”

Despite all the elections that have taken place throughout the years, I never really took the time to really think about people classifying certain states as “battleground states.”  It just so happens that I started noticing these little things when I became old enough to vote.  The more you think about it, the more it makes sense for these states to be classified as a battleground.  More often than not, many states are already pretty decided as to which parties they’ll belong to, but for some, its less clear.  Assuming that every party gets each state that they should get, one’s hopes for president is put in the hands of these select states.  Of course, this is the case for when both parties have already decided on their candidate.  In this case, these individuals are vying for the democratic bid in the coming presidential election.

You can not really classify a battle as truly being a battle if it were not a hard fought one.  Just as how both candidates are looking to lock up what would be a huge step in the right direction for them,  a battle between two parties is fought to ensure that their side gets what they desire.  A campaign is no different than a battle.  No matter how high the stakes,  a county can be just as much as a “battleground” as any state.

02/10/16

Everybody’s a Critic

Scott’s piece essentially breaks down what it’s like to be a “critic” in this day and age.  Just as the title states, everyone should be a critic, and that’s how it really should be.  That would be just too easy if it were the case. Being critic himself, he finds seems to find it rather amusing that people are so open to having other’s think for them.  Year in and year out, people look at the Oscars as some sort of be-all and end-all of being successful in the film industry.  People hardly ever look past what is handed to them and assume that everyone who takes part in deciding what is to be deemed “good” or “bad” as being the definitive way to judge something.

He goes deeper by saying how this era makes it harder to think on your own.  With all the opinions that now present themselves more than ever, we fail to utilize our “fundamental human attribute.”  Something that separates us from all other living things is now being diluted by the ever-growing use of social media and reliance on ratings.  Many of these sites like Yelp would not even exist had it not been for the demand for other people’s opinions.  A role that was once relegated to select individuals is now open to everyone through many platforms.  Yet, many people still choose to not think on their own, not cater to their own tastes, or realize that there is so much more than just formulating a “personal” opinion based on many others.  Everyone’s way of thinking is something that is unique to themselves, a way for people to differentiate themselves, and yet everyone is so willing to let others do the thinking for them.  Perhaps it is just as he says, being a critic is a soldier, and some people just don’t have the soldier within them.

02/4/16

Metaphors We Live By

With metaphors being something we tend to use without thinking, Lakoff and Johnson’s, Metaphors We Live By, is somewhat of a deconstruction of what a metaphor truly is.  While at one point a metaphor might have been a thought or action, many metaphors have now become something that is instilled in our minds.  The more people looked to express themselves through a metaphor, the more society has come to accept these words as a norm.

The line “The essence of a metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” pretty much sums up this whole situation.  It would only make sense that when we as a society gains more experience,more metaphors will have the opportunity to spring forth.  “Argument is war” is one of the metaphors they touched on during the piece and it was described as something we were hardly ever conscious of.  While our understanding of war may be something on a much larger scale, an argument is simply the same thing on a smaller scale.  It took time for people to put two and two together.  Just as how at one point we would have never thought of thinking of argument and war being anything close to the same, there was a time where time and money were never thought of as ever being able to go hand in hand.  This piece showed me another way of looking at not only metaphors, but how I think as a whole.  The way I talked really seemed to fit what Reddy documented, with how a number of expressions in English “account for at least 70 percent” my speaking. With many of the points the author touched on being noteworthy, it was clear that they wanted us to understand that our language as a whole is one that is ever-evolving.

02/4/16

Jerry’s Intro

Hello everyone, my name is Jerry and I’m currently a sophmore at Baruch.  I’ve lived in New York City my whole life and currently live in the Upper West Side.  I plan to major in Finance with the hopes of take my personal business to the next level.

I’ve always been a huge fan of basketball, but obligations off the court have always left me with little to no time to enjoy what I like to do.  Apart from being a full time student, I work under a few people who’ve made it in the competitive world of business.  A typical day for me consists of going to school and running around the city fulfilling the many tasks at hand.  The only time I have to just be myself is in the morning where I get to cook breakfast and go for my morning jog around Central Park.  I look forward to seeing what this semester has is store for us!

Morning jog
Morning jog

https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/eng2015jp/