Survey = Doughnut

At the end of each semester, professors recommend students complete a reflective survey about their experience of the class an it's material. Did the class achieve the expectations of the student or should some adjustments be made. Of course, since these surveys are not mandatory, most college students are too burdened by sloth to complete them. Well, bellow is just a sarcastically motivational email one of my professors sent the class in hopes of encouraging us to complete the survey before final exam day. Priceless... 

At midnight tonight, I will check the course evaluation percentages, and determine the victor in the most important struggle of our times, the race to acquire free donuts.  When I spoke with the other class last week, I discovered that they were not only excited about receiving a donut, or perhaps two, for absolutely nothing, but also thought you guys looked like jerks!  They haven't even met you!  The nerve!

I wouldn't take that kind of lip from a bunch of strangers if I were you!  If only one or two of you fill out the survey, right now, then you can decisively tear this donut opportunity from their clenched, hungry fists.  Don't let that other class get their way!  Fight back!  Log on to Blackboard and take five minutes to answer a handful of questions, if not for your own sake, then for the sake of your grandchildren, so that in the future you can look them in the eyes and proudly say "Oh, college is fun sometimes.  Once we had donuts in an exam."

Writing Tip

Just to make it short and sweet.

Never reference the "audience" in a rhetorical analysis or, in fact, in any other paper you write. Logically, does it make sense to reference the glass when describing the water? Probably not.
Simply said, to mention "audience" or even "readers" in analytic writing is sacrilege, so don't do it if you want a professional voice.




image source: http://www.ponder.co.za/wp-content/uploads/Identify_Your_Audience.jpg

Reflection on "Do Sweat the Small Stuff" Rhetorical Analysis

"Do Sweat the Small Stuff" is an October 2014 New York Times Op-Ed piece written by Mark Bittman, a known food writer who advocates food system reform. 

Summary Reflection

I believe that a summary of any written work shows that the writer comprehends an author's message, and he/she can now accurately summarize the its content and the author's purpose. Personally, my summary of Bittman's article served as a blue print for me when writing the analysis. Each article, column, and book has its points of interest. The summary of any written work strips all the unnecessary supporting details and highlights the main ideas. After writting the summary, I conceptualized the sections of Bittman's article that I would later decide to analyze.

Preparation for the Rhetorical Analysis: 

Most students are tempted to write a report or review about the article, which would be a commentary rather than an analysis. Analysis is a general word for a plethora of modes for analysis. I imagine that an analysis is like a microscopic lens that may be changed when the mode of analysis changes. Analyzing the author's purpose and intentions is different from analyzing his rhetoric. The prior is a semantic approach and the later is a rhetorical approach. Some students may have never analyzed for rhetoric before, so a lesson about Aristotle's modes for persuasion (ethos, pathos, logos) provided a different lens for analysis. Generally, these modes of appeal are easily understood, but they are quite difficult to notice in more advance kinds of persuasion and rhetoric. To resolve this issue, I simply re-read a text several times and note all the places where the writer attempts to appeal by one or all of the modes. I did some extra research on ethos, pathos, and logos to better understand how to analyze them and on to focus only on them when reading a text. The RAD charts and the Quote Sammy were also absolute great ways to structure the paper and diminish the confusion on organization.

Writing the Rhetorical Analysis: 

The temptation to analyze and infer the author's message stuck with me the entire way; however, I just asked myself the questions: How does he persuade, to what extent, and why is this effective? These questions avoid the tempting question: What and why does he try to posit. However, this question forgets the "how." These were only slight mental games that kept me focused on the correct lens of analysis. It was a real challenge to avoid the word "audience" in the analysis. I read several sample rhetorical analysis, not to mention I wrote impromptu analyses in AP Lang. in high school, and everyone seems to always include the word "audience" or use ethos, pathos, or logos as a possessive noun instead of writing "appeals to ..." I remember I used to write how the author appeals to an "audience" when I wrote rhetorical analyses in high school; now, such a construction seems to be less open and little repetitive. I had to place much effort into two parts of each paragraph in my paper. The first issue was setting up the evidence. I only used a block quote once in my paper as an illustration to the reader, so the reader may have a better understand of the rhetoric Bittman appeals to at the the beginning of his article. Any other quotes required attribution and a setting. A writer could not simply shoot a quote at the reader in hopes that it seems self-explanatory. To resolve this problem, the summary is a great solution to provide an overview of a situation or content before providing evidence. The second issue was with analyzing how the appeal works. In this case, one could write, "Bittman effectively appeals to pathos." This is the "what." The "how" would sound like this, "...appeals to pathos by creating vividly emotional images." The "why" complements the "how" by possibly elaborating on the way the pathos evokes feelings of empathy and compassion. The second is obviously the core skill to be learned in this assignment. Overall, I find rhetorical analysis a great way of writing to not only notice but also study why arguments seem so appealing.             

image source: http://vafoodbanks.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/fresh_food.jpg

Freedom in Words: Post-Presentation Multimodal Reflection

Freedom in Words

What ideas influenced the creation of this video?

I honestly favor technology in my life. It simplifies most of my daily tasks (ex: applications), it provides a treasure of digital information (ex: internet), and it grants me occasional  modes for entertainment (ex: games, music, film). I think that technology is ethically neutral; it posses both good and negative consequences. The good consequences may be superior computing ability, revolutionary communications/networking, surmounting data availability/storage, and various modes of organization. Negative consequences revolve around internet addiction, game addiction, and other forms of malicious over dependence on technology. These negative consequences often induce an ignorant and oblivious attitude to the real world. A simple screen hypnotizes the mind and diverts all attention into an artificial environment flooded with digital data. Often times, technology-related activities are performed inside a building, so there may develop a lack of interaction with the natural world when technology use takes up most of the day. Additionally, technology may most times influence the mind to multitask, so an overuse of, or an addiction to, technology may stress the mind with an influx of information; attention to details and focus on simple tasks soon becomes difficult. The best way to retain freedom of thought is to simply read from time to time and take breaks from technology use because the mind will continue to receive a short but powerful amount of information during reading, and focus improves on single tasks.

Moreover, most people do not have much time in today's busy world, so an occasional book can always entertain and captivate the intellect. 

What specific aspects of a mode allowed you to present your idea? 

I intended to make a reflective video, not a melancholy one that  demonizes technology and advocates puritanism. I depended on photography to deliver my message because it is simple, and, unlike film that presents several pieces of information in a chronological series, images invite the viewer to reflect on a series of diverse moments for a longer period of time. I purposely chose powerful pictures to depict  my message in the series of images. Most images stand as antithesis to one another in order to project a contrast and resolution to a conflict between certain images. Text slides guide the viewer through the film, and short-phrased questions set the viewers initial mindset to a proceeding series of images. The text also logically organizes the images and provides simple transitions between them. Color also played an important role in creating mood. White text on dark grey background isolated the viewer's mood to a reflective and, later, hopeful state. Negative images about technology overuse are gray-scale images, and color images are positive images related to reading- a freedom in thought, with a splash of variety.  

How did fellow classmates react to the video? 

My video left fellow classmates in a quite reflective mood. No one had any serious questions nor was anyone confused. The vividness and the thematic power behind each image, along with flowing, soft electronic music, truly created a reflective atmosphere. Every person in the classroom had a short, introverted moment after the video to consider the video's massage in perspective to their own lives. The film was also open ended, so it did not impose any resolution or specific reaction on anyone, but rather it provided an subtle, alternative mind-set to a certain unnoticed issue. Overall, I am glad with the film's turnout and the expected reaction of fellow viewers. 

 video source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU9IbKV012s        

Multimodal Reflection

What are my modes?

I suppose that three modes are ideal for a video, because additional modes might present too much information to the viewer. They might distract the viewer with special effects rather than drawing the viewer into the video's deeper theme. I chose images, instrumental music, and text as my modes because when combined together, they evoke a simple, reflective mood that does not always have to be serene. I created a video that functions almost as a virtual art exposition; I aligned several images in thematic and chronological order and sewed under instrumental music along with guided textual inquiries that provoke the viewer to grasp the message of each image in terms of the video's holistic message.

What is my platform?

I chose the YouTube video editor because of its frame to frame simplicity and large selection of music.

What is my concept?

Today, innovators have evolved technology brilliantly. It is so pervasive in society's daily functioning that without it some might be unemployment, while others might be incapable of performing their job. Technology has simplified life and sped up many daily activities. Ethically speaking, technology is not bad at its essence, but as any creation, it carries both positive and negative consequences. My video addresses these negative consequences and implicitly provides an avenue to a resolution.
The hardware in my video symbolizes the sometimes damaging software that strips away time by artificial entertainment: surfing YouTube videos, playing with the thousands of available apps, devoting days to computer/video games, texting compulsively, and surfing endlessly on the internet.
An over dependence and sometimes an addiction to some aspects of technology can dull the mind, invoke an oblivious standpoint to real life, and inflate the mind with an influx of information.
The simple solution: set aside the technology for an hour or two to interact with the natural world and read a book. Reading demands complete focus that counteracts the unfocused multitasking  present in the overuse of certain technology.

How can my video be better?

I can improve my video by adding much more powerful images to better present my inquiry. Powerful images demand the viewer to capture an image's message with the least amount of confusion and the most connection to the holistic message of the video. I may also edit and rearrange my textual information to better introduce a theme for a series images.

image source: http://www.danvosslaw.com/assets/images/photo_open-book.jpg 
   

"SUH-MASH" Those Buzzwords

I remember my high school days on the gymnastics team; team members would shout "YAH-tzee" (the name of the board game) when one gymnast would perform some monumental stunt at an event. Looking back on it now, I think I would be expelled from young adult social life and deemed a social misfit for the rest of my days if I would reuse that obnoxious word in the wrong context.

Language changes and no one can stop it. Technology progresses and social networking enhances at the second. New words are bound to be created. For instance, Dictionary.com posts insightful words of the day for anyone looking to build their personal vocabulary. 
Moreover, an etymologist is a specialist who knows a great deal about etymology, the study of words: their meanings, sounds, and origins. These people are professional word-crafters. Universities will pay etymologists to form new words from roots found in ancient manuscripts and blend pre-existing ones together. However, etymologists are not the only people doing the etymology. People from all walks of life: academic fields, business corporations, government agencies, and popular culture, contribute to the massive influx of jargon in everyday language. Today, jargon that reaches the headlines of social and professional media, soon slips onto the tongues and into the sentences of everyone having a decent conversation or writing some lame status update on Facebook. Jargon, and other technical or social "lingo", that hits the big screens and appears in popular vocabulary for a while - until it becomes unbearable to hear or read - is what I, at least, define as buzzwords.

Buzzwords become pernicious cliches that sabotage legitimate English - or other language - vocabulary, clutter the columns of news articles, trash social media news feeds, and float around in the ether of useless, overused, and annoying words. I am convinced that every white collar worker will honestly shoot anyone who uses the words 'synergy,' 'content,' 'transparency,' 'sustainability,' and 'guru' outside 'the office.' Computer techies and programmers might be overheard at the lab overusing words like 'big data,' 'cloud computing,' 'ajax,' and 'canvas.' Use the contemporary carpe diem buzzword, 'YOLO,' and I guarantee the only social life you have will not last for long. Often times buzzwords numb the mind and impair human communication with bland, vague, and crude vocabulary.

Most people remember Caleb McGillvary, also known as Kai the freewheeling, hatchet-wielding hitcher-hiker, whose interview after the Fresno incident went viral on the internet. In Fresno, California, 2013, Kai killed a man with his hatchet after the man, supposedly, tried to run over a woman at a gas station. During his interview, Kai describes the incident in his hippie slang. He re-enacts the skull shattering moment when he swung his hatchet into the man's skull, shouting, "Smash! Smash! SUH-MASH!" "SUH-MASH" went viral all over the web; it became one of the most popular buzzwords in raps, chats, texts, columns, tweets, and feeds.

Diction and syntax give each person a voice. Voice may either be colloquial, formal, or in be
tween on the spectrum of formal and jargon diction. Buzzwords are fun to use from time to time in lax conversations but the professors hate them in writing, especially when they litter papers and give the writer a filthy and inaccurate voice. So, "SUH-MASH" those buzzwords from your diction.  

 image source: http://article.wn.com/view/2013/02/09/kai_the_hitchhiker_8216smash_smash_smash_8217_remix_video/

Noise Hurts

Nobody seems to value moments of silence anymore. Some people dismiss it as socially awkward, painfully boring, or unbearable for their conscience; however, it promotes concentration and improves cognition. Of course life for most is not an anechoic chamber, unless they are deaf, but at least a reduction in detrimental noise of the surrounding digital and working worlds may improve personal experience of life. Ambient sounds bring serenity to the mind and counteract the annoyance of vehicular traffic and ranting media. It may also be better to avoid bombarding the mind with constant, everyday auditory information. For instance, take out the headphones when reading, working, driving, and even sleeping. Polluting the mind with loud sound may even cause mental problems. Usually, a person overexposed to loud sound may suffer form migraines, anxiety, tension, and emotional disturbance.  This does not surprise me that a known method of interrogative torture is dulling and shredding a mental state by ceaselessly playing loud music until the subject becomes emotionally disturbed.  Therefore, for those who live stressful lives and feel overwhelmed, try reflecting on your daily exposure to unnecessary noise and consider a life with better auditory peace.                

Reference on Noise Pollution: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/noise-pollution-effects.html

image source: http://mikeeisenhart.blogspot.com/2012_05_01_archive.html

Reflection on Christo's Valley Curtain Summary Project

Christo's Valley Curtain

Christo's Valley Curtain is a short 1973 documentary film directed by David and Albert Maysles that features a passionate artist named Christo and his industrious efforts to resurrect a personal art piece identified as a valley curtain.

My summary on Christo's Valley Curtain definitely qualifies as one of  my most interesting assignments. I have written many papers in my academic career, but I have never written one that solely focused on descriptively summarizing media, especially a film! So, I take the holistic rubric as my backbone for this honest reflection on my film summary project.








Rhetorical Knowledge

I must confess that after I watched Christo's Valley Curtain the first time, I could not conceive any idea to commence my writing. I usually have writer's block at the beginning of each assignment, but I believe the mind stirs it up in hopes of giving the writer a false impression about instantaneous analysis. In other words, I mean that the writer might think that the he or she will hyper analyze and suddenly the ideas write themselves on paper, but not everyone is a creative writing magician.  So, the problem for me, as also with most other writers, lies in organization. I usually think of the act of writing as a pile of Legos that I must re-organize and piece together to construct something insightful. Christo's Valley Curtain is a thirty minute short documentary film; every minute may not be summarized. When writing my first draft, I faced this thirty minute giant by cutting him up into specific scenes, briskly summarizing the gist of each scene, and trying to create natural transitions from scene to scene. However, there lies an issue with such a methodology; it becomes a repetitive listing of events, such that transitions between similar scenes will create boring and recursive syntax. To fix my problem, I worked on my kairos, syntax, and flow. I watched the film again and weeded out all the unimportant scenes and details of the film in my writing, while I synthesized other key-note scenes. This methodology reduced any hectic and abrasive transitioning between scenes; thus, my writing gained natural syntax flow.

Critical and Creative Thinking

Well, let's be honest, we all are brutally biased sometimes, and we often don't account for potentially offensive, stereotypical judgement in our writing. At least in my case, once I realized that the main character in the film is a Frenchman, I felt an excruciating temptation to include a subtle, yet outlandish, impression in my writing about the French being snotty and lazy. These assumptions are logical fallacies; they qualify as generalizations and ad hominem arguments, which should never be included in a summary. These issues usually occur when the I, as the writer, am not "showing" what happened, but I am rather "telling" what happened by including qualifying statements instead of descriptive syntax. The creative notion on the technique of "showing" rather than "telling" also played a vital role in my writing. Personally, "telling" type of writing always tempts me to jump to conclusions and fire quick simple statements. However, "showing" type of writing challenges me as a writer to reflect and to paint a scene or a complex idea using creative description and vivid diction.

Genre Knowledge

Different types of writing require different uses of language, tone, and syntax. A simple example that defines this notion may be a comparison between my film summary and a research lab summary. When writing a research lab summary, the writer is persuaded to use a complex or compound syntax so that a didactic and explanatory tone may serve the purpose of presenting technical procedures and data. Other aspects of research lab writing include maintaining a monotonous passive voice and a robotic diction. By using passive voice, the reader must have the impression that a ghost preformed the experiment because no proper noun commits an action; research genre writing only implements passive voice that the reader may focus on the details and the information. On the other hand, writing a film summary requires a style of contained narrative and descriptive writing. To reiterate, the writer must "show" what happened rather then "tell' what happened. The writer develops the tone of a story teller, filled with vivid verbs and lively actions. An active voice helped me shape my film summary into a story-like summary rather than a debriefing. Films are motion pictures that attract the eyes to movement and action, so a film summary must mimic a film screen in directing words into life, action, and movement.

Mechanical Knowledge

I have concerns that my writing may be sometimes infected by a virus called complex sentence-itis. That means I overuse complex sentences to communicate too much information at one time. So, I have been revising my papers, especially my film summary, to fluctuate between the use of simple sentences and complex/compound sentences. Grammar wise, my issue may also include inserting too many participle phrases and extraneous clauses into my writing. This type of cluttered writing may exhaust my readers and dull my tone. Again, I think that film summary writing should be lively, and the use of varied types of punctuation, syntax, and diction must also add vibe to the writings mood and tone. For example, for the my film summary, I tried using words with varied length and compact but powerful sentences. This may only be achieved through constant revising and editing.  



 image source: http://www.polyvore.com/valley_curtain_1972_signiert_poster/thing?id=21324727
 image source: http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/img-thing?.out=jpg&size=l&tid=21324727

Technology Doesn't Make You Look Weird

Technology has improved incredibly over the past decades and never ceases to become innovative in new ways. It governs actions and dominates decisions. For instance, most people never do math in their heads any more. They shuffle for their phones and "touch" the magic square called an "app" with a calculator graphic pictured on it. These types of fast-paced user-interface applications have enhanced people's status quo  and performance rate in our fast-paced society to that of a "multi-tasker." Technology users can now do literally thousands of things almost simultaneously: text, search the web, play games, and listen to music all the same time conveniently on their  phones or tablets. Moreover, teachers no longer must painfully write and rewrite lectures on the board, and students no longer must take endless pages of notes now when PowerPoint invades the classrooms.  Just to further illustrate the pervasive use of technology in contemporary society, one of my college professors, as probably many others also, prepares and lectures his class from his phone! Everything is now at the fingertips, even the job materials! This isn't at all  a rant about the maybe not so seemingly malicious ways technology has suppressed our lives and numbed our minds; however, on the optimistic side, technology may at least make its users not look blatantly awkward for once. Many times when I am at the store or on campus, I might see someone presumably talking to a cereal box on the shelf or another person sitting alone and talking to thin air. These kinds of confusing moments in life might evoke the intention to just politely ask the person, "Are you talking to your self?" Well, surely they are not! Is it not obvious that they have the new wireless bluetooth earpiece or the intriguing mobile, hands free headset with a bluetooth microphone? Thus, it is preposterous to notion a personality disorder. Thank you, Technology, for changing human perceptions on social awkwardness. At least now if I want to think out loud and still be normal, I can simply wear a headset.
 


image source: http://www.123rf.com/photo_14024174_businessman-talking-on-mobile-phone-with-handsfree-headset.html

A good sentence ending with a question mark

One stormy and rainy night, two sage philosopher's sat in a mansion's study engrossed in tomes and tomes of books. While tucked away comfortably on their leather manor chairs, one of them, setting aside an opus of great thinkers, stared blankly into the fire place and asked the other in a sunken voice of despair, "What is a good question?"  The other, stirred away from his musings and likewise perturbed  after some lingering, respond, "Hmm... might that be good question?"

The moral of my story isn't to ask questions that intend an absurd reinstatement of the prior question; rather, I just wanted to induce a meditative air as I consider a hint of a plethora of aspects that accompany the art behind questions that simply seem good. An imperative quality to "good" questions is that they comprise of a relevant context and an appropriate purpose. Context, in a sense, demands a question's correct correlation between its circumstances of a situation and the response(s) it intends to obtain. For example, someone would be bizarre for asking a zookeeper a question on quantum physics because it has no context in zoology, which I assume would be the context of a question posed to a zoologist. Let's suppose an analogy, if a question were an animal, like a kangaroo, the context would be it's indigenous habitat, the Oz. Moreover, questions relying primarily on context tend to be vague and mechanistic; they just lack flavor. Context may be the outline of a question, but the purpose animates it with color. Purpose implies intention. It paints the question with all the colors of mood, tone, and rhetoric. Questions may be informative to seek knowledge or conceptual to create new philosophy; rhetorical to make a point or Socratic to generate discussion, and sometimes they may even be sly to deceive. The tone of a question usually reveals the inquirer's intention for asking the question, and it creates the mood for the question's context. For instance, the question "What are you looking at?" may evoke varied responses based on the question's tone and mood. A curious professor may politely ask a biology student studying plant cells through a microscope, "What are you look at." On the contrary, a frantically self-conscious woman might rudely query a person looking at her and intolerantly ask that person in a voice of absolute mockery and derision, "WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?"    
I believe it to be important on how to construct good questions in daily conversation and writing, because the context and the purpose of questions often imply the type of reaction and answer they receive. Questions will always be self evident of man's intrinsic nature to inquire and pursue the truth, then it's worthwhile to appropriately ask the relevant ones.

image source: http://www.123rf.com/clipart-vector/difficult_decision.html

"Awareness" - A commentary on J.F Wallace's "this is water"

J.F Wallace delivered a commencement speech to the graduating class of 2005 at Kenyon College. In his speech, he introduces some thoughtful perspectives on compassion in life from his essay "this is water."
 
I believe that all hard working people in the world experience the frustration and annoyance that prods daily adult-life routines. As David Wallace satirically describes, these agonizing idiosyncrasies about the situations and the people in life paralyze man's thought process and contort his sometimes unaware experience of life into a depressing drama. People, whose minds are constantly badgered with a "why must I have to do this again" kind of attitude, incur the consequence of a narrow-minded perspective about others. The monotony of a thoughtless and vague experience of life causes severe boredom in life and the lack of empathy for others. Just focusing on all the pessimistic aspects of life will eventually incline anyone towards ignorance of  the self and the world around them; Wallace creatively portrays this idea in his speech by the gold fish that were absolutely oblivious of  their everyday aquatic life. Personally, I find his metaphoric link between the "this is water" statement and the obvious parts of life quite insightful. In essence, it's the everyday obvious realities that test people's perceptions. Once the difficult sensations of day to day life's drone boredom and nagging frustration seep into the human unconscious, the catalyst, ignorance, transforms the human into a walking unconsciousness, a zombie, absolutely insensitive to others and unaware of the choices present in his/her life. However, the ability to make a choice, a free decision after thoughtful consideration, is the mysticism of the regular week day that enables man to break the bonds of monotony with spontaneity. For instance, I drive sixty miles everyday to school and back home, and I know - as most other people who also drive daily - the frustration of driving behind cars that drive ridiculously slowly and pace at long distances behind other cars in rush hour traffic. The experience generates agonizing frustration for drivers sitting in a car for at least two hours a day. Although, David Wallace proposes that with the power of compassion and choice, I don't have to react in my "default settings." I can change my perception on the way I experience the sometimes-monotonous moments of my life. I can be aware about the world, situations, and people around me. I may choose to understand that the notoriously slow and distancing driver in front of me in morning traffic might have been in a terrible car accident and now driving petrifies him. As free-minded people, we don't have to submit to utilitarian routines and a meager sense of existing, but rather we can choose to live a life animated with the vim of choice.

Image source:  http://www.istockphoto.com/photo/goldfish-in-aquarium-19653587?st=d823f28 
Image URL: http://a.dilcdn.com/bl/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2013/05/thisiswater.jpg