Great Read

Dr. Kyburz shared this great article with me today during our meeting and wanted to share it with all of you. Enjoy!

Rational Argument Day 2

             After spending a day or two reading my sources and writing down my ideals about the topic on paper, I finally sat down to write my first draft. I have come to the realization that writing while powerful is the most difficult thing to do while enraged about a certain topic. This is dangerous. If you are trying to raise awareness about a subject, the way you act while writing it can make or break the receptiveness of the audience. I wrote three pages using various pieces of evidence from my three sources and was confident it was a disorganized mess. Just passion poured onto the page. After meeting with Dr. Kyburz I was thankfully able to hear how my passion was coming off to fresh eyes. She pointed out that this is what a rational argument is supposed to do. Its supposed to challenge us as a writer to figure out how to objectively put our ideas down. Ironic however that my paper is about bias in higher education and I am letting my own positions about this subject affect the effectiveness of this argument. Edit number two is well underway and feel confident in creating a great paper.

Rational Argument Day 1

I come into class today not knowing what I would write about for this rational argument, the last paper of the semester. I have written this whole semester about the wrong doings of funding among schools and the injustices it has done in our society. I decided to continue with this idea of attacking the education system after speaking with my professor as she had asked what was on my mind and the only thing I could think about were these injustices. This whole semester all I have heard about were the interactions some of my friends have had with these bias instructors. I decided to focus on this very topic for my rational argument as a way to draw attention to the subjective way professors have become over the years.

Celebration of Scholarship

Today was celebration of scholarship at Lewis University, the halls were filled with posters and classrooms were packed for presentations! The talk that I went to was entitled: "Let Your Life Speak: Connecting the Personal with Public Advocacy". Andrea Holm was the first to present and she read from part of her essay entitled "Other People". She mentioned how she never truly had to check her white privilege before until she enrolled in a sociology class. The part that she read focused on a teacher who was laid off and he struggles of facing life without a paycheck and finding a new job all while taking care of a family. She mentioned that her motivation for minoring in social work was because of this very story!

Multimodal Presentation

https://spark.adobe.com/video/KmQ7jgEKQn7q4

Free Write: Argument Essay

This current project of the summary and analysis has gotten me to reflect a lot about how I used to write argument essays. Coming into any English course in college, every student has had an extensive history of teachers beating into them what structure essays should have. This has conditioned us to pull out that format every time we have to start a new essay. I was guilty of this when starting this assignment. I immediately thought back to my teachers in high school and could almost hear their voices saying: "It should be a five paragraph essay format where you present a new idea and argue that till the end of the paragraph. The conclusion should be a summary of all arguments put together." This, I have realized being a student in Dr. Kyburz's class, is not how it should be at all. I need to have a more open mind when writing and not limit myself to a template I learned a couple years ago. I need to write and just see where the argument takes the paper instead of where the paper can take the argument.

Art In Island

        My generation is unfortunately very into technology which consequently has caused us to stray from tradition, which is something I repel. Maybe it was how I was raised or what my parents chose to entertain me with as a child, but attending museums was something I looked forward to, even something we planned our family vacations around. One of the first quotes in this article talked about the may hours one can stay in a museum and "You don't even have a single proof of you being there". If this doesn't sum up my generation in a single sentence. As distant as I try to make myself from identifying with this generation, I am an advocate for ANYTHING that will change them. I think the idea of a selfie museum, which encourages not only the attendance of museums but the interaction with art, is an effective way to accomplish this change. This museum called "Art in Island" takes about two hours to get through but all throughout there are 3-D approximations of paintings, museum goers are encouraged to touch and sit on. This would be an awesome way to trigger interest for some students to start learning about the "traditional" ways of the past.