Socrates,Plato,and Glaucon Have Me a Little Confused

I really tried with this reading. I read it over and over again trying to understand exactly what the meaning of it is. Each time I read it I would catch myself rereading the same line, even paragraph, two more times to better understand. In the beginning of the story I thought I was following along well. I understood that if the prisoners were limited to just seeing a certain thing it would be difficult for them to take in everything else they would be exposed to that was different. ( My understanding may be very off ) While reading up to paragraph 35 I couldn't help but think of what happens to your vision in the middle of the night. When you first get ready for bed you turn the lights off and then try to climb in the bed. You can't really see anything anymore so you are like stumbling over everything unless you have your room memorized. Although, when you wake up from being asleep for awhile your vision is almost 20/20 it feels. I can walk to the bathroom, walk around anywhere and see just fine. In paragraph 33 I had to make a way to understand when it was explaining about a contest between one who has never left the den ( middle of the night vision) and one whose a little weak (just turned the lights off). Of course the one who has never left the den would win. These are the blind that have never seen. This is really as much sense of the story as I could make. I also know that Socrates was trying to compare sight of the blind with a soul without knowledge.

I really didn't understand the reading as well as I wanted to. I am now pretty worried about the quiz that is going to be given to us :( yikes.... I will read this a bunch more times to maybe understand it before the quiz!

"MY ADVERTISEMENT"

So, I don't do any kind of social media networking. It really is not my thing but I just signed up for twitter so I could post my image. I made an advertisement about white tigers. I tried to come up with something I thought would look nice in a magazine or on billboards. It is not the best but I tried :) I guess to follow me on twitter or just to see the picture then this is the url :

https://twitter.com/ZOZAN1020

I hope that is all that is needed to find me.. my username is that zozan1020

The advertisement I analyzed in my paper was on the Proactive commercial starring Katy Perry. This is one commercial that instantly came to my mind for this assignment. Proactive commercials are always airing and I am sure many people have seen it. I explain the ethos, pathos, and logos in the commercial.

I also really like Katy Perry so I am glad I got to do an assignment that involved her. :)) 

"WHAT'S IN THAT ADVERTISEMENT?"

The Handbook had examples on citing the advertisements, but more importantly it had a lot of information on oral presentations. I took a speech class last year and much of what we learned was repeated in the handbook. The eye contact speakers are suppose to give their audience, not depending too much on visuals, and knowing who your audience is helps with giving a good speech.  We will have to present in front of the class as part of this assignment so it helps to go over it again. Giving speeches are very uncomfortable to many people, so any tips that are given really help.

Both the Handbook and the textbook gave a lot of information about the analyzing process. We hopefully will learn by the end of this assignment how to analyze visuals. It is definitely something I have never done before. I am excited about learning how to do this when looking at an advertisement. The Handbook defined claims as positive statements that require support. So by looking at the visual and really understanding it, I will learn the claim of the visual. I also learned that when using a visual in any presentation it needs to be understood why it is important. It reminds me of the oreo cookie method. Before entering a quote (visual) you must introduce it into the presentation and then explain why it was important. It makes sense to do it this way because what might seem important to me may not be the same to my audience. This is why I would have to show them why I thought it would be needed.

When I was in middle school I was introduced to Greek mythology. It is not that I believe in it, I looked at it just like stories. They were so fun to read and always kept me interested. In the textbook, they bring up Aristotle and his studies with persuasion. He comes up with logos, pathos, and ethos. I think it does play a huge role in how we look at things. I think whether we want to believe it or not we use all three of these. I never knew what it was called before but it is something I am used to doing. When ever a commercial comes on t.v endorsing a product, I look at who is in the commercial. Who says that this is a good product? Does the person appear to have any credibility? This is what the ethos stands for. Then there is those commercials, or pictures that you can connect with. Maybe it is something that I have experienced in my life before, or maybe I know someone who has experienced it. On page 11 of the textbook it shows the picture of the polar bears covered with graffiti. I can't say that I have had a polar bear or used to be one, but it still makes me emotional to see it. I would love to protect these bears because they are helpless. Whatever it is that makes me feel connected to it emotionally is part of the pathos. When not looking at the credibility of whose representing the visual or how I feel emotionally about it, I look at if it makes sense. Do they have enough facts that would make me really believe what is going on is true? That is when we start looking at the logos. I think Aristotle was right about these three things.

"HALF WAY THERE"

Yay, we are half way through this semester. I guess it is going by so quickly due to only having class once a week. So far I think we have had a good semester. I think I have learned a lot from class. I have definitely  learned more in this half then I did my entire English 1010 class. That makes me feel better to know that I am going to walk away from this class with more knowledge than I walked in with. That's the way classes are suppose to be, right?

I am probably most excited about learning the quotes. I have always struggled with quotes in my papers. I would get too scared sometimes to use them in my papers. It has been something I have always wanted to learn more about and I think I did in this class. I learned about the Oreo cookie method with quotes. This method will come in handy and help with the quality of my papers. Sometimes there would be quotes that had a really good part in it, but they were too long. Whenever I saw quotes like this I would avoid using them as well. I learned that using three dots (...) before or after the quote in quotations shows that you only used a part of the original quote. This tip is going to help me with those situations involving long quotes. Knowing I have a voice in my paper that needs to come through when I write is one of the most important things I learned. This will make my papers come from me, sound like me, and be me. I am not completely there yet with the correct MLA format when writing papers. However, I have learned a lot about the format so far in this semester. I know that many papers are written in MLA format and I want to become a pro at this. I want to know all the requirements of this format without having to really stop and think about it. I also am looking forward to all the different types of papers we are writing. So far I think everything we have done has been different. This has helped with having more variety in the way I write. I always used the 5 point paragraphs when writing papers and I think this class so far has steered me away from that. These are only a couple things I have learned so far. English 1020 has been great so far and I know I will learn so much more before this semester is finished.

"It Is A Little Out There"

Coming up with the idea for my proposal was far from easy. It took what felt like forever to think about what I wanted to talk about. When I finally thought about my proposal idea, I thought wow why was this so hard?. I guess it always happens that way for me. I chose something that I really am passionate about and get pretty emotional about as well. It was hard doing my research because you see so many different stories of kids who are victims of bullies. There are so many emotions that I feel when reading these stories like hate, sadness, and useless. I wish I could take away all their pain as well as the pain of their family members.

     When I actually started writing, I scribbled some stuff down that I knew I wanted to put in my essay. I knew that my essay would definitely have research included. I have already written my essay now, but knew that I wanted to make it persuasive. I wanted my audience to read the research and side with me. I want my audience to understand the situation and how serious I think it is. My essay turned out to have cause and effect as well. It is argumentative, it displays my thoughts as well as my critics thoughts. I think my essay has a bunch of the writings types mixed in one. I think it will make my paper interesting. My proposal might freak some people out, but did Swift's not do that as well? I want everyone to know the issue I am speaking about, but that I got a little carried away with my proposal to have a little fun with the audience. I'm not the best writer by far, so I had a lot of struggles writing the paper. The quotes confused me a little because I wanted to correctly add them into my paper. I am hoping they are correct, but if not I can fix it after the review. I also went to bed after finishing the paper and DREAMED ABOUT THE WORKS CITED PAGE!! (** NOT KIDDING**) I not only dreamed about it, every time I would wake up in the middle of the night to adjust the way I was sleeping (pregnancy) I would think about it again. It would not go away!! It drove me insane because I think I did it right. Not sure why I kept thinking about it. I am just glad it is over with :) 

My take on "A Modest Proposal"

  

     One of my favorite types of movies are period movies.When I first heard the title, "A Modest Proposal", I assumed this would be a story like my favorite movies. I assumed there would be a guy and a girl falling in love with each other. The book in my mind would have all kinds of drama and romance. Honestly, when I read the first paragraph I was lost. I kept reading and trying to soak in what was written. I actually did not really understand Jonathan Swift's argument until paragraph 9. Paragraph 9 makes it obvious that he is speaking of selling the babies as food. I thought to myself, oh my goodness this guy is crazy. I have seen scary movies and watched a lot of Dateline shows, but wow this was unexpected. I wanted to keep reading to make sure Swift wasn't going to say he was just kidding. Swift was not kidding,  he was very serious about his argument. He really thought by poor women selling their children, they would be doing good for themselves and thousands of others. They would be making money instead of having their children grow up and be a burden to them. He had an American friend tell him what age the children would taste good at. He had done plenty of research it seemed for a crazy idea.The only part I thought was funny was when he would speak of his critics. He would mention them just a little, but not without putting them down as well. That was pretty funny to me. It kind of was like a guy telling a girl she was pretty, but she was dumb. Without a negative comment following Swift would not mention his critics. He thought very highly of his idea, no one was going to tell him different. The part where Swift said even the children would have preferred to be sold was insane. I don't think anyone would say they would have rather been sold than to live there life. His whole idea of when the babies would be most plentiful was really nuts. Serving children for holiday dinners is not a thought that would come to a normal persons mind. I really think Swift had some mental issues, or he just really was desperate. It is sad that they had a drought, and all the crops died. I can only imagine how many Irish people were starving. It is not fair that England wouldn't help the Irish people out, but Swift's idea wasn't any more fair. Then again, Swift wasn't fair regardless, he didn't plan on selling his child.

     I think if you want to preach something, you must be willing to first look at yourself. Will you practice what you just preached? Will you be the first to set the example? If you want to win an argument it has got to be something you are passionate about. It has to be something you really believe in. I thought long and hard for an idea on my proposal. One thing that is so out of hand right now is bullying. I hate seeing on the news when a child has committed suicide after being bullied. This breaks my heart every time and I find myself crying for hours afterward. No one should have to go through this. I hope my proposal will be very argumentative and persuasive. I'm looking forward to writing this essay because I really am passionate about the subject. Swift's proposal was very crazy, but it definitely kept you wanting to read. Hopefully my proposal will not be crazy, but will draw the readers in. 

    

Too much Information!!

I am now sitting down and feel like my head is spinning. I read chapter 46 of The Little Brown Handbook and chapter 10 of Practical Arguments. There was so much information in these chapters. In the Handbook there was 25 front and back pages of different ways to quote and cite sources. I can't believe there are so many rules to citing. It all depends on the source you received the information from. Is it a book, an article, a poem, a DVD, or something found on the web? Is there one author or two? Is the author a company?

I admit that I will never be able to remember all the rules with writing in MLA format. I am sure that anyone who has it all memorized has studied very hard. I now know that when I write a paper in MLA format that I must make sure I am accurate on the way I cite my sources.I am glad that I can refer to websites such as www.owl.purdue.org for help with the rules. It will show me how to put the information together to ensure I am doing it correctly. This website will be my new best friend.

I feel like MLA has so many rules to follow. Its a very strict way to write papers. Everything must be done the way they want it written. I do not think I am a fan. I like some kind of variety in all things. I know that all around us there are rules to follow. I would rather everyone be different in their own way. Life would be so boring if everyone looked, acted, and sounded the same.Variety is what makes life so interesting.