Letter to you preshus lil chillins

Oh man, AP english. It's gonna take some work to get through the year, but it's definitely possible. You're gonna run into a couple assignments you haven't seen before. First are the TOWs (standing for text of the week), which happen every week. You must post one 300 word rhetorical analysis by sunday night at ten. You get to pick an essay or other text to analyze, so pick stuff that interests you to analyze, because if you don't, it's not gonna be fun. TOWs aren't that bad once you get used to them, so get used to them.

Next are the timed essays. They're rough. You get a solid forty minutes to read a text or prompt and then write an essay about it. It requires you to work fast, and think fast, and takes a lot of getting used to. However, you get plenty of opportunities to practice them, so by the end of the year, timed essays aren't really too bad. lol jk.

When you think APELC gets bad, just remember - you could have ebola. In all seriousness, the course isn't that hard if you put in the time and effort that Mr. Yost and Ms. Pronko ask of you. You've got this. Welcome to APELC.

TOW #28 - Reflection

Throughout the year, having looked back upon three TOWs that I have completed as the year progressed, I can see a definite change as I, as a writer, developed with this course. At the beginning of the year, in my first TOW, everything was very clunky - the writing was clearly compartmentalized as I went through the checklist of things I was supposed to do in a TOW - it had no flow. As I went through to TOW #14, everything meshes far more smoothly - the introduction of the author made sense as it transitioned into the rhetorical analysis, and into the effects of the rhetoric, and into the conclusion, asking myself if it was effective. In one of my last TOWs, #24, the writing seems so relaxed and comfortable, as I had truly become familiar with the idea of rhetorical analysis - I could understand how much context I should give, how much effective analysis should follow, et cetera. A funny note - as I progressed through the year, I began choosing texts that I liked more and more, because I realized that I could analyze things that I also found interesting at the same time, a concept that was new to me, who had only correlated schoolwork with tedium and boredom. I think the one thing I've truly mastered over the year of TOWs is the ability to read a text and to know what rhetorical devices were in effect. At the beginning of the year, I didn't know what the hell rhetoric was, and now I can figure out the subtle ways that an author tries to turn ones opinion to a certain direction. I can still work on making sure I flesh everything out to its fullest extent. One issue I faced was trying to keep things concise, but accidentally underanalyzing as a result. I still need to find that balance within my writing. TOWs served as a regular practice assignment that really helped me get comfortable with the ability to understand on a deeper level the little things that people use to convince their audiences. The only issue with TOWs is that they sometimes feel like a chore, and not enrichment, but schoolwork is bound to feel that way sometimes, so it can't quite be helped..

TOW #26 - Still, I rise, Maya Angelou - written

Maya angelou is one of the most important pets and writers of the 20th century. She was one of the earliest black female writers to rise to fame in the world. She has written many influential works on the themes of individuality and race, such as "I know why the caged bird sings". In her poem "Still, I rise", she makes many statements about race and self. She begins the poem with a somewhat pessimistic view, accusing a presumably white audeicne of potentially writing her down in history as less than she is. This demonstrates the struggle of black people in the era that Maya Angleou was relevant, the animosity that existed bewteen black and white people. She then asks the question, "Does my sassiness upset you?" this shows that she, as a person, is not afraid to be herself and question if it upsets other people. This makes a very strong statement about angelou's opinions on being oneself - that one should not let the opinions of others change who one is. She then asks the question, "Does my haughtiness upset you?" this also shows that she, as a person, is not afraid to be herself and question if it upsets other people. This makes a very strong statement about angelou's opinions on being oneself - that one should not let the opinions of others change who one is. She repeats this question once more with "Does my sexiness upset you?" all of these questions reinforce that she believes that one should not bow their own personality in the face of adversity from others. All in all, angelou makes an effective argument about her opinions on race and self in "Still, I rise".

TOW #24 - The Most Important things in life, violence, by Harlan Ellison - written

Harlan Ellison was, at the time of the anecdote he references in this essay, a "Nice quiet Jewish kid from Ohio... a published author... well into terminal destitution. Poverty would have been, for me, a sharp jump into a higher-income bracket."  He is also one of the best known writers of the 20th century, namely for his amazing humor and ability to put you in a situation. In this essay he writes about the prominence of violence in life. He illustrates this through the entire section of the essay being an anecdote, in which he uses humor and great description to put you in the scene and make it believable. He outlines a story about him and his friend seeing a movie at four in the morning with a bunch of food when a fight breaks out amongst the few people in the theater aside from them. He uses great humor in sentences like '"Oh shit," I murmured, slumping down even deeper in the seat, till my knees were up around my ears like a grasshopper. Beside me, my Texican buddy was praying in High Church Latin, Yiddish and Sufi, all at the same time.' This humor opens up readers to accept the reality of the story more and to let the reality of the anecdote convince them more truly of his point. He describes everything down to the smallest details, which, along with the humor, serves to immerse the readers even deeper in the world that Ellison creates. Overall, Ellison crafts another great essay in "Violence".

TOW 23 - Feeding Kids Meat is Child Abuse by PETA - visual

Seen above is a visual rhetorical text brought to you by our favorite Animal Rights group, PETA. PETA is well known for their borderline militant views on animal rights, going farther than anyone else has or wants them to in order to make their points, even when there is no real backing to what they are saying. This one is particularly bad, having next to no rhetorical validity to it, though there are many strategies in effect in an attempt to get people's attention. First of all, there is the image in the top part of the advertisement. It shows an abnormally large child about to bite into what is presumably a ham or cheeseburger of some sort. This, in tandem with the message at the lower portion of the advertisement, saying "Fight the Fat", is an attempt to convince people that eating meat will make them fat - something that has been backed by no evidence, placed in the ad or in existence otherwise. Next, they make the gutsy claim that "feeding kids meat is child abuse", a very large and controversial claim that has no support in the advertisement or out of it. Just like any of their other terrible ads, this is just another attempt by PETA to shock people into listening to their message without presenting any information with depth in it. At all. PETA fails again.

TOW #22 - ON A MOTHER'S LOVE by T. Augustus Forbes Leith - Written

T. Augustus Forbes Leith was an ornithologist and ethnologist in Australia during the 1800s. His manuscript is held at the National Library of Australia. In this essay, titled "On a Mother's Love", he ruminates on, well, the nature of the love that mothers have for their children. This essay is beautifully written, and ephemerally short, a style and form that match very well the subject matter at hand. He argues that a mother's love is the purest of them all, that no love can ever be as unbiased, unwavering, or unselfish. He cites how it lasts from your birth to your mother's death. This is a rhetorically sound example because in the data that he presents, from the birth of the child to the death of the mother, the entanglement between mother and child is highlighted. It is not the birth and death of just one party that determines the love, it requires the birth of one and the death of another. This demonstrates the almost destiny-like entanglement of souls that Leith argues is present in motherly love. He argues that a mother's love never leaves you, and in that respect, it is the truest, most unbiased love of all. Because it does not discriminate between rich and poor or good and bad, it is true and absolute, and this brings it to rise above all other loves as the purest. Although Leith's evidence is primarily speculative, it is quite effective due to the beautiful and concise form in which he presents it. Leith's views on motherly love are valid and believable.

TOW #20 - Isaac Asimov on New Ideas - Written

Isaac Asimov is widely considered to be one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time. Having written many great classics like I, Robot and the colored Mars series, Asimov is undoubtedly one of the ost important writers in the entire genre. Like many short essays published by popular authors, On New Ideas is a large departure from his normal writing material. Isaac argues that creativity is the act of flying in the face of reason in order to create something new and beautiful. He argues this with manny examples an anecdotes from his own personal experience, and supports these anecdotes with beautifully simple prose. He references many of the works of 19th centruy naturalists and their view on creativity and beauty in combination with their views on nature. He speaks about how they, in the face of a looming and inevitable industrial revolution, write their ideas about the beauty of nature. This fits in well with his thesis of flying in the face of reason and inevitablitiy in order to create something amazing. He references Thomas Huxley's saying upon completing the origion of the species, "Why didn't I think of that?" The reason he gives is because Huxley was not one to fly in the face of what was at the time known as reason, the ideas of fundamentalist religious ideas on the nature of man and biology. Darwin was a dude who was like "I have some ideas about how this works, and I'm going to go up against what most of you view as reason to present them." This, Asimov argues, was the epitome of creativity, the O.G. of new ideas. All in all, On Ideas is a great meditation on the nature of how one gets new ideas and how creativity is spawned in humanity. It is a very effective rhetorical text.

TOW #21 - IRB halfway review - Universe in a Nutshell, Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking is widely considered to be one of, if not the, greatest living scientists. His contributions to math science, and theoretical physics are undeniably earth-shattering. He is also known to have sent John Oliver to the hospital with one of the sickest burns of all time, especially for a theoretical physicist. His book, The Universe in a Nutshell, is about the universe and some popular theoretical physics concepts that are prominent in today's science world. He presents these theories masterfully, imparting the complexity and brilliance of the theories in language that a filthy 11th grade peasant like me could understand. Hi Caroline. He presents these with as much evidence as possible, and his analysis of that evidence is very clear, concise, and detailed. So far, he has described the backing of quantum physics, M theory, superstrings, and Multidimensional theory. He goes about this by citing several studies and displaying the mathematical calculations and equations that have been made so far to describe these. With precision, he breaks down the implications of these studies skillfully and with great patience. With the equations, he breaks them down better than freaking CPM did for the precalc curriculum. His efforts to make this book readable by the general public go quite a way - so far, this book has been fantastically easy to understand, yet still interesting and engaging.

TOW #19 - The Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln - Written

On November 19th, 1863, following the Battle of Gettysburg, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln gave a two-minute address to an audience gathered for a consecration ceremony of the Gettysburg battleground. Lincoln was the President of the United States, and was spearheading the largest conflict the US had seen to that point. Lincoln's speech served both to honor the fallen soldiers at gettysburg and to make a statement about the renewed purpose and cause behind the civil war. Lincoln achieves these ends by making strong use of repetition and reverent diction throughout the address. Lincoln repeats many different figures and words throughout the address to place greater emphasis on the ideas he presents. He repeats words such as "nation," "liberty," "freedom," and "dedicated" in order to reinforce the idea of a dedicated, free nation that he is trying to uphold by partaking in the civil war. The freedom part mostly comes from his then-new purpose of freeing the slaves, giving his war a moral backing - freeing those in bondage to support morality and the constitution. Lincoln's use of reverent language in the Gettysburg address helps to emphasize Lincoln's purpose in honoring the dead who lay at Gettysburg's battlefield. Saying things like "we cannot consecrate," and "far above our poor power to add or detract" give his speech an air of truly looking up to and respecting the men who died at Gettysburg, giving his speech an ethos that really touches the audience and helps them to understand the purpose behind the war and the great moral struggle that the UNion and Confedracy were entrenched in. 7/10 would read again

TOW #18 - The FIgure a Poem Makes by Robert Frost - Written

Robert Frost is one of the greatest American writers of all time. Primarily a poet, Frost also wrote plays and a select few essays, one of which I will be examining today. He lived from 1874 to 1963, and wrote for most of his time on earth. Most of his poems and writings focused on nature and the environment. In The Figure of a Poem, Robert frost makes great use of metapoetry and imagery in order to communicate his opinion on the forms that poems take on. He argues that the purpose of each poem is to be different in form and sound from any other poem by comparing the ecstasy that he believes to be inherent in any poem to something that is not statically held in place, the best parts of a poem are not restricted to one part in any form or mold of the like. He postulates that the joy and wisdom of poems are only restricted by joy coming before wisdom. Frost utilizes poetic writing in an essay about poems in order to prove his point, which is a fine point of metarhetoric. this only goes to show that his essay about poems, areguing that each poem should strive to be different from all others of its ilk, proves its own point by being different from any other poetic writing. Robert frost uses the same poetic imagery as a Pathological tool to open up his readers to the suggestions he is making. He uses beauty as a key to open the metaphorical doors of his readers' minds, allowing them to more easily accept the information that he puts out by making it sweeter to consume. All in all, Frost writes a compelling and convincing essay about the nature of Poetry by writing a poem in essay form.

IRB Intro - The Universe in a Nutshell - Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking is possibly the greatest theoretical physicist of all time. He's written many books. This is one of them. It is a theoretical physics book that is aimed at helping the general public understand very complex physics concepts such as supergravity, quantum theory, and many others in terms that are relatively easy to undestand. I have always been interested in this realm, and thus I feel this would be a good entry level book to familiarize myself with some popular concepts.

TOW #17 - If the Beef Doesn't Kill You - Visual

Shown here is an image produced by PETA, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. It showcases an attempt by Peta to convince people to not eat chicken, or not eat meat at all. It uses a mixture of traditional and visual rhetoric, as well as some well concealed logical fallacies in order to convince its audience of the dangers of meat consumption. First, they utilize evidence that uses unsure diction, such as "speculate" and "likely" while presenting the information as fact instead of possibility. Another strategy used is presenting potential risks of eating meat wihtout comparing it to what they present as a superior alternative, non-animal products such as fruits and vegetables. They say that "eating meat promotes heart disease, cance, stroke, obesity, and high blood pressure" without saying if vegetarian products do the same or not. PETA also utilizes a subtle logical fallacy by saying "The ONLY way to ensure tht meat won't kill you is to throw it out." This is a slippery slope, presenting information in such a way that makes the outcome appear far more drastic than it actually is. They also use a terrifyingly corny image of a chicken holding a gun pointed at the reader, which has an astounding effect in striking fear into the heart of us terrible carnivores. In fact, I think I'm going to become a vegetarian now. PETA's argument was extraordinarily effective, so much so that I have dropped my lifelong love of meat in fear of death. Thanks, PETA!

TOW #16 - Predictably Irrational - IRB first half impressions

Freakonomics is a book about human nature. More specifically, it is about the irrationality that is inherently present in human nature, and how it can be studied, predicted, and from there, hopefully avoided. It is by Dan Ariely, an israeli American professor of psychology and behavioral economics. The books first half by and large examines how humans have an inherent difficulty in making truly rational comparisons. When our mind is met with a comparison, we do not understand how to filter out some small details that may appear completely unrelated to the situation. We cannot make the connection soemtimes, and we can use that to examine our own patterns of thinking and dismantle and examine every inch of our reasoning in an attempt to find that and make ourselves more logical people in that regard. He uses many different studies and other sceintific endeavors and obesrvations to support the claims that he makes, as well as personal anecdotes, and even more research. These all go a long way to legitimizing his points about human behavior, especially some of the studies being double blind and some not, so as to show the difference in results when human nature can interfere in with the results as opposed to not being involved at all. In fact, the use of this meta-data truly goes a long way to proving both his premise and his conclusion - that we are irrational, and that irrationality is predictable.

TOW #14 - Heroism by Ralph Waldo Emerson - Written

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a transcendentalist writer and orator who spent time in the Transcendentalist "utopian society" of Brook Farm, socializing and living alongside the likes of Henry David Thoreau. Emerson has published many, many essays and writings, his most popular being a series of essays about fairly broad topics such as Education or Heroism, and titled accordingly. This essay is titled "Heroism", and is an exploration of what exactly heroism is, and what importance it holds in our society as a construct. Emerson begins the exploration of what heroism using an excerpt from the Roman conquering of Athens. Sophocles, the duke of Athens, is to be executed, and he makes a thoroughly moving speech full of heroic ideals and thoughts that it turns Martius, the man meant to kill him, to truly respect Sophocles and change his life. Emerson uses that passage to define heroism using this as the ability to say and do the right thing, no matter what happens. He then goes on to talk about how important heroism is in our society, referencing the works of Plutarch and saying, "We need books of this tart cathartic virtue, more than books of
political science, or of private economy." He thiks that heroism is very important to society because it's important to let people know the truth, that they are born into a state of what is practically emotional, mental, and violent war at all times. Heroism is embracing that, but not abusing it. It's acknowledging the abysmal state of life but not losing one's mind over it, but maintaining one's composure and making a better time out of it. I find Emerson's essay to be very convincing, all of his claims are very effectively supported by evidence and excerpts.

TOW #15 - Softly; A Legend Passes by Harlan Ellison - Written

Harlan Ellison is a prolific writer, writing primarily in memoirs, essays, and short stories. The genres range from primarily science fiction to his own experiences. This particular piece, Softly; A Legend Passes, is an obituary for Julius Schwartz, agent, writer, editor, and overall creator. Ellison intends to both remember all of the great things that Schwartz did in his lifetime, and to use those events as evidence for his status as a legend amongst the world of writers. With this being an argument that is based on the quantity and quality of one's actions, not many types of evidence are available to Ellison in his writing than the use of anecdotes; this one-track mindedness is acceptable due to the restricitons placed upon him by his implied thesis. He organizes his points chronologically, starting with Schwartz's early career. He started his career as an agent, and Ellison outlines the two main authors whom he helped catapult into fame and popularity, starting with getting H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness to be Lovecraft's biggest deal, and on to getting Ray Bradbury's first novel published at the age of 21. He then goes on to detail how Schwartz spent 45 years of his life essentially making DC comics a successful company through his neverending contributions such as editing, writing, creation, and marketing of DC products. I think that Ellison's essay is wholly effective in that it uses relevant and abundant evidence that connects to my background knowledge about other writers and truly convinces me of this man's massive contributions to the world of writing. All of it is written artfully, as is the norm for Ellison and his work. Overall, an effective tool in both remembering and honoring Julius Schwartz in his death.