October 2020

Compassion

Rebecca

I think it is safe to say that life for everyone right now is not what we imagined 11 months ago around New Year’s Eve. The battles and struggles that I have dealt with this year alone have made this year one of the worst, easily. A recent thing that comes to mind when I think about people showing compassion towards me this year is when I was in a dark place earlier this month and one of my best friends surprised me with something at work every day for a week. She didn’t know the whole story as to what was going on, but she could tell that I needed some compassion and love. I think my close friends, even the few that I have, are some of the most compassionate people ever. They go out of their way so much to show love and support to everyone, not just me.  

The other day there was a cold snap, and it was raining. One of the managers at work got all the outside order takers, expeditors, and cash cart people hot chocolate with money out of her pocket. I was off work today, so I brought her coffee at breakfast, tea at lunch, and a milkshake just an hour ago. I loved getting to see her smile and make her day. Compassion doesn’t even have to be about buying people something. I like to ask as many people as I can how their day is going, and genuinely be involved in the conversation. Smiling at people and telling them to have a great day is such an easy thing to do when you want to show compassion more.  

I think someone that needs compassion right now would be one of my best friends. He has been in Virginia for basic training for National Guard and he gets home next week. I am going to surprise him when he gets home with his favorite meal (that he hasn’t had since March) and we are going to have a best friend’s day. 

10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation

Rebecca

Celeste Headlee’s TED Talk might be one of my new favorites. She is so good at engaging her audience and explaining a negative habit that we all do and need to stop without belittling or “bullying” us. She stays relatable and real throughout the whole thing. The ten steps that she brings up are things we already should be doing, but we have become so distracted and focused on ourselves that we can’t anymore. She brings up how these skills make one a better interviewer, but also a better listener. This TED Talk isn’t just meant for business people trying to get jobs, it is for everyone that has any conversations with people. The content that she talks about is something that I have had brought up to me several times. My dad always gets on to me because I am always jumping from one thing to another in conversations. It is a bad habit I have that I am actively trying to break. Another point Celeste made that was really impactful was the end where she talked about everyone having that secret awesome thing. It is an optimistic outlook on life and I plan to use it more.

rhetorical analysis

Rebecca

The social media post I have chosen to write about is a Twitter post by Joshua Rush. Joshua Rush is most well known for playing Cyrus Goodman– the first canonically gay character in Disney- in the series “Andi Mack”. He is a role model to young people in so many ways: being politically active, an LGBT ally and member, and a climate activist. He had a weekly social media series titled “News in a Rush” where he broke down current news stories in a way that younger audiences could understand and be more involved. The intended audience of the tweet is any of his followers. He may not have the most followers, but he has quite a few (just over 119,000 to be exact) but majority of his audience shares the same beliefs as he does.  

There isn’t really an argument presented in the tweet. The overall idea, or thesis, behind the tweet could be inferred based on his activism and prior social media presence. He supports our country’s leaders in many ways, but he, like many more Gen-Z’ers, is vocal about is dislike of President Trump. The main appeal in Joshua’s tweet uses pathos. Pathos appeals to the emotions, both happy and sad. There is not really a presence of ethos or logos in this tweet. Joshua has demonstrated his knowledge about the political climate in many of his other social media posts, but this one in particular is meant to be more humorous. It is often disregarded behind ethos and logos, but when used well, it can still sway a person’s opinion. Joshua’s humor and delivery of words in the tweet are perfect in using pathos.  

The way Joshua wrote his tweet, along with many others, is quite informal. This way of writing in social media is popular with the Millennial and Gen-Z crowd. There is no capitalization in the post. The structure of the tweet is quite simple. There are just three lines, all are technically they are not sentence fragments, but there is no punctuation to make them real sentences. The initial impact of the post is meant to be humorous and making light of the current events of the world. Teens on Tik Tok have posted videos of themselves in Joshua’s words “borrowing” peoples ‘Trump Pence 2020’ signs. It is meant to be satirical. The deeper meaning behind this tweet is that there are so many young people that are trying to speak up in any ways that they can about their beliefs and what needs to be done. 

Jones Reading Journal

Rebecca
Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page  Jones, Rebecca. Finding the Good Argument OR Why Bother With Logic? writingspaces.org/sites/default/files/jones–finding-the-good-argument.pdf. 

 
Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words  Rebecca Jones’ article is all about arguments: what different types there are, how to structure them, and how to effectively use them. Something interesting to me was reading about the difference between deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. They were illustrated by triangles that represented how the flow of the argument goes. It was helpful to see that visual. Overall, the graphs in the article helped me understand the content much better. The chart on page 171 is something I will be using in visualizing an argument for a paper. The 10 rules listed at the end of the article are another thing I will be paying close attention to. It’s like a little checklist for writing a paper! 
Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author. 

 

 Deductive reasoning takes a broad idea and funnels it down into a narrower argument. 

Inductive reasoning takes a specific idea and creates a more “general conclusion” 
How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research? 

  

 I have been learning about ethos, pathos, and logos for a little while now. In a different English Composition class, we would write papers analyzing the rhetoric of an article. This makes me feel a little more confident in what the next few weeks of class bring. 
Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion.  How do you incorporate the tools of rhetoric into verbal arguments/ debates? 

 

Grant-Davie Reading Journal

Rebecca
Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page  Grant-Davie, Keith. Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents. mjreiff.com/uploads/3/4/2/1/34215272/grant-davie.pdf. 

 
Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words  Keith Grant-Davie writes in his article about rhetoric. The word rhetoric has always seemed kind of weird to me, I didn’t really understand what it meant until my sophomore year of high school. Grant-Davie does a good job of explaining what rhetoric is and how It translates over into life. I keep seeing the word discourse in a lot of the articles we read for class, but it is interesting to see how each of the articles connect with one another. I think I understand what rhetoric is a little better, but I probably need to read more from other authors to feel more confident. 
Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author. 

 

 I have heard the word constituents before, but I had no idea what it meant. Grant-Davie uses it in the terms of a part of something. 
How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research? 

  

 As I mentioned before, I keep seeing the word discourse throughout the articles we read. I never knew how much was involved in the literary world, from sponsors to rhetoric to mother tongues. It is like showing the gears working a machine, and that machine being literacy. 
Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion.  Have you been taught what rhetoric was in school (prior to this class)?