In Class: Freewrite

Last full week of classes for spring 2009, summer will be nice except for the fact that i have to take physics 1 and 2... that definitely won't be fun. i suppose between that and working i won't have much of a summer but it'll still be nice to not have 5 classes to take care of all at once. and having classes and work kind of gives me reasons to get out of bed early. otherwise i'd probably just sleep in way too much and start to feel completely purposeless. im definitely ready for summer though, either way. its been getting increasingly harder to study for tests as these past couple weeks have come and gone but i still managed to keep grades so im still on track to med school. i cant believe i still will have 4 years of med school and then probably at least 6 years of residency for specializing... i'm gonna be so old when i finish everything but it'll be worth it! and hopefully i still feel that way throughout the rigorous years of medical work so that i can keep my goals in sight and not let them slip away or give up on them.

Unit 3 Group Proposal

For our Unit 3 Project, we have chosen to address the issue of the creation of a new Living Learning Center for LGBTQ (Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning students and their supporters) and the impact it would have on our community. We will be discussing whether or not this additional housing is in the best interest of all students and our community as a whole. We will talk about new concerns it has generated such as advocating separatism and segregation as well as the discrimination and prejudice it has created towards the homosexual community. We will do this through visual mediums with minimal captions such as political cartoons and video commercials. We will also use written texts like petitions, conversations, newspaper articles, headlines, and flyers along with explanations of our intended audience and context.
Our main concerns revolved around the possibility of offending others with out in one way or another based on the arguments we create. We also are concerned about our schedules matching to one another with regards to meeting outside of class to generate arguments.

In Class: Chapter 14 Visual Arguments Analysis

The first question on page 418 is an extremely important one: Who created this visual text? This says almost everything about it's purpose and intent. It's very similar to the 'follow the money' concept we have extensively used in our analyses of different arguments. If the creator of a cigarette campaign is Marlboro, we are going to look at it much differently than if it were created by an anti smoking group (i forget the name of the one that always does the commercials). We would definitely be much more suspicious and less trusting of the advertisement's message.

Another question is: Is any particular information (such as name, face, or scene) highlighted or stressed in some way to attract your attention? The girl in the 'candy cigarette' photo immediately stood out in my mind. Along with the question of how light and color are used, this photo focused directly on a young girl holding a 'cigarette.' There was no color, and very little lighting. The girl was caught in solemn and desolate glance and seemed a bit more aged than appropriate for her group of children. the cigarette was held perfectly as if she really was a smoker, the only hint we had that it was fake was the title of the portrait...

In Class: Chapter 12 General

Chapter 12 talked about our ways to create texts and items that argue for something. It establishes the kinds of discourses one can use and the different aspects that are very important in conveying your purpose. They cover very direct arguments that can be shocking for effect such as the drunk driving picture we encountered early in the book (chapter 4 maybe?), logical arguments that appeal to the people who are somewhat educated about the specific topics, emotional arguments (again like the drunk driving ad) that play off peoples feelings toward the topic, and there can be a variety of undertoned messages that do not blatently stand out to the viewer/reader but if you notice the right things it becomes quite obvious what it is trying to convey.
After having read Chapter 12, we can collaborate as a group and decide the mediums we would like to use for each of our 3 arguments and how we want to convey our specific argument for each source. I imagine we are going to use a few different kinds within each argument to better layer our work with detail.

In Class: Past Group Work Problems

I can't really think of official group work projects that did not go so well. I remember in some class i had to initiate the process of assigning parts to work on and when to meet up and everyone emailed me their pieces of work and i had to put them all together but that really was only a job for one person. even in high school i would be the one loaning notes out to friends who didnt pay attention in class or i'd have to teach a little section near me what needed to be known on the test in 10 minutes but it all really didnt bother me because tutoring other people ends up helping you better understand the material anyway! It was not that i was any smarter than anyone, i just was more neurotic so i paid attention for fear of missing any important notes and i studied alot.

An ideal group work situation would be completely in class! That way everyone shows up on time and for the same purpose and with the same amount of time to work on it. This is all overseen by a professor so each member would actually show up and contribute, and furthermore, if the group had any questions or concerns, the professor would be right there in class to help!

A possible process of completely Unit 3 successfully in a group of 4 could be to meet together and discuss our topic we will aim for and do some group research in class. Because there are 4 people and 3 arguments needed, we could put 3 of the people in charge of each argument topic (1 for each person) and the 4th person could be in charge of keeping the overall purpose together and ultimately piecing together each argument into one representation so that it could be presented to the class.

In Class: Free Write

We really have done a lot of writing in this class. Probably moreso than any other composition class I have ever taken. I think the requirement to simply type without putting much thought into it every now and then was a very good idea. It made generating some content, however useless, pretty easy to do when a new assignment was due. I also really liked the informal details of the papers due. We focused more on the content and answering the right questions inthe right ways and not so much on the grammar, spelling, and syntax. It made the class really seem like a way to learn instead of just a way to fine-tune things we already know about how to write a paper. I think the basics of writing the intro, body paragraphs, and conclusion only gets you so far in your academic life. If that's all one knew about when it came to writing, you would get torn apart in graduate school or in higher level classes. It was kind of nice to be able to freewrite every now and then and simply vent any thoughts that were bouncing around in my head or to just let my brain take a break for 5 minutes and rehearse and reflect on things i have done recent to that free write, i remember one freewrite i wrote about watching forrest gump and how much i liked that movie because i had just watched it. done

In Class: Freewrite 3 Sources

How do my sources tie into one another? There's the image posted online and in neuroscience books that says "thanks to animal research, they'll be able to protest 20.8 years longer" referring to sign-wielding anti animal testing groups. The next one is a video on stopanimaltesting.com that goes behind the scenes through research labs to show the maltreatment and neglect going on with the defenseless animals. The last one i found is an article on PETA's website that explains how we should approach the issue of considering animal rights as a matter of whether or not they can suffer. Each of these sources all relate to animal testing on different sides of the fence. the first one appeals to logical senses that animal research has, in fact, greatly increased the medical field's abilities for helping humans and other animals. the second two sources appeal to our emotional and ethical senses. the video of abused animals shivering in the corners of their cages or bleeding, vomiting, or screaming without necessary help is appalling to most every normal human being. nobody likes to see, or wishes to know, that animals are being hurt and are in pain, especially for our own purposes. the article on PETA's website explains that we should not be considering animal's inability to perform higher functions as grounds for using them as experimental specimen but we should be considering the fact that they can suffer and feel emotions like joy, happiness, sadness, pain, and pleasure.

what are the unstated assumptions and values that are informing these arguments and allowing them to succeed or fail? the warranted underlying assumptions in each of my texts are that we do not like unjustified dying and certainly suffering to helpless creatures. the first text, for animal testing, asserts that we need it to live the lives that we know, animal research is necessary for us to thrive. without testing on animals, humans would have to undergo these experiments or we would simply not have any of the many outcomes that have resulted from animal research. it would, at a deeper level, end up scaring the audience into agreeing with the claim that animal testing is necessary. the second two texts, against animal testing, assume that we do not like suffering, pain, and unjustified death so we will agree with their claim taht we should not use helpless animals for our own purposes.

what conclusions can you draw about the state of argument in the U.S? the culture of having the ability to achieve anything you want ifyou work hard for it uses their underlying assumptions to say more than the actual words and content can. otherwise, we would see billboards saying 'animal testing is bad' or 'animal testing is good.' we need to have reasons in the fields of logic, emotion, and ethics to successfully convince others/ourselves to agree. people, for the most part, do not go around stating their opinions without inhibition because, without supporting evidence or purpose, it is useless or even harmful.