Final Blog Post

Coming into my first semester of college I felt unsure about my major.  I had chosen to be an English major based on my strengths in high school and the overall fact that it was undeniably the only course I had enjoyed.  I wanted to be able to read and write if I was going to do anything, despite the constant criticism and questioning English majors receive of there being nothing to do with an English major.  Over the course of the semester through this class I became more and more confident every class that I had chosen correctly.  In high school I had only really ever written literary analysis essays and history essays, never exploring the different types of academic writing that we did this semester.  At first I actually felt challenged as of how to go about writing an essay that wasn't a literary analysis.  As the course moved along I began to enjoy that type of academic writing and it became more and more enjoyable.  I found that as a writer I work best when I put all of my thoughts down on paper in one instance rather than writing parts and then adding back later.  I discovered that I work best at night when I am alone and enjoying music in an atmosphere I am comfortable in.  This course has excited me to continue my growth in academic writing and to hopefully become stronger and more coherent in my writing process.

Why Cities Feel Glorious

The feeling that overcomes you when you enter a city, surrounded by looming towers and enveloped by seas of unique people, is one that it almost impossible to describe.  I've often found myself wondering why cities seem to have this overwhelming effect that suburbs just never seem to live up to.  Aaron' Renn's article, "Why Cities Feel Glorious," does an interesting job of examining the reason behind this feeling of superiority that comes along with being in a city compared to a suburb.  As Renn points out, everything in a suburb is a scaled down and less magnificent version of what is already in a city.  Renn points out that even the name "suburb" declares that a suburb is merely a sub par version of an urban setting.  

I agree with Renn's justification that the architectural exuberance of a city is what makes it so great and that the architecture of a suburb is even to some points submissive and unimportant.  I think Renn successfully emphasizes the cultural significance of cities versus suburbs.  No matter how hard suburbs try or want to be as sacred as cities, they will never be able to reach the historical points that cities have reached.  Not only are cities older than the suburbs that surround them but they are more heavily populated and centered around the activities and events that create and mold history.  There is a level of depth and importance in cities that cannot be replicated in the suburbs.

Perception of Waco

Growing up if I had been asked where I was going to college the answer was always, "not Baylor."  Ironically,  here I am.  With 15 people in my family having attended Baylor, I always had the intentions of going elsewhere.  From my perspective Waco seemed dirty and ugly and all around boring.  Up until the very last minute of decision making, I had every desire to spend my Freshman year living anywhere but Waco, but the close it got to choosing where I would be, the more that Waco seemed to fit me and just make sense.  I was not excited at Waco in the slightest.  I had always had a view of Waco as being cursed by poverty and having absolutely nothing to do.  There seemed to be nothing special about Waco other than Baylor itself.  As I have settled into Baylor and become a part of the community of Waco,  I feel like I couldn't have been more wrong.  The people of Waco make the town an incredible place to be.  One of my favorite places in the world has become downtown Waco.  On occasional nights when I finish homework and studying early I'll find myself taking a drive through the downtown area just to look at the old buildings and lights that hold such tradition and history in them.  There's something really special about Waco that not many towns have.  Every street and corner has character and a past that can't be replicated anywhere else.  Waco has gone from being a place that I dreaded living to somewhere that I know I am going to have a hard time leaving and will return often.  

The Solution to World Poverty

In finishing the essay, “The Solution to World Poverty” by Peter Singer, I found myself immediately disagreeing with his closing comment that “we are all in that situation” that Singer hypothetically creates in order to get across his point of humanities ignorance to help even when they are able.  In addition I found myself with few exceptions, disagreeing with the essay as a whole.  Singer makes some very strong points,  yes, we as an entire whole of humanity have created focuses and priorities that do not match up with the morals that a majority of us claim to follow.  We spend money selfishly and flippantly without thinking of others and the repercussions that are frivolous behavior could be having, but his overall point that there is relevance between intentionally choosing to pick a material object over the life of another person is hyperbolic and all around just untrue.  Choosing to save a priceless car over the life of a child is not equivalent to going on a shopping spree rather than donating a large sum of money to UNICEF.  The moral implications and consequences of both may be relatable but the overall intentions are not even close to one and other.  He also leaves several holes in his argument, failing to point out that organizations like UNICEF and other relief programs also spend money frivolously and there is no way for the donor to ever truly know where their money is going.  The only implication of donating to these foundations is the instant feeling of fulfillment that comes from knowing that you gave an effort to help someone in need.  This is in no way more morally correct then just going about your life spending your money as you please rather than seeing spending money as a selfish act that takes the life of innocent children, which is implied by Singer to the extreme in this essay.  

Journal Exercise, p. 201

I received a phone call from my parents on Monday that started with the phrase that no college student wants to hear, "Mollie, We need to talk."  My parents had become concerned that I had been spending so much money eating out recently.  I explained to them that the food on campus is less than appealing and at some points all around unappetizing.  When I wake up in the morning I crave breakfast but I want something healthier and more natural than the concoction of scrambled "eggs" in the dining hall.  As I have gathered from my peers and from my own experiences the campus dining could use a little more than an overhaul.  Without having food on campus that appeal to students they are forced to look else where.  As a part of the student government I would use the $10,000 to invest in a solution to this issue.  I would use the money to start or renovate a dining hall into having a section that is completely farm to table with natural, organic and delicious meals that made students actually want to eat on their meal plan rather than venture out into Waco to spend their parents money on over-priced and over-portioned meals.  Students could have the opportunity to pick from an array of heart healthy and delicious meals that would be included in their meal plan.  A student’s diet is a vital part of their overall experience and their life as a whole and would be a valuable place to invest the assets.  

Evaluation Essay Thesis

Magnolia Homes has become the perfect example of the essence of Waco, combining tradition and family with change and progress while enhancing the strength of the local economy.  

Conserving Communities

Through out my reading of "Conserving Communities" by Wendell Berry, I found myself constantly coming back to an observation of a central questioning of the moral focus of our economy.  One of his thoughts that especially struck me was his thoughts on the education system.  Berry points out that our education system is focused on teaching children how to get and have a job that can make them the most money rather than to actually educate them.  He emphasizes that rather than actually teaching children about the world, we treat education as "job training."  As a student I felt that this was a very interesting thing to point out.  Our lack of focus on local economy as a whole centers around this moral dilemma of humanity measuring success based on how much money someone makes or how high ranking their position is in their job.  As Berry puts it we think that the "summit of human achievement is a high paying job." As a society we have failed to construct our everyday routine around actual moral values and instead have focused our values on goals that are amoral.  Resulting in an economy and society that are more interested in winning and defeating each other socially and economically than benefitting everyone in a just way.  As Berry explains through his central message in the essay, if we were to focus our economy more locally the repercussions would be more positive than imaginable.  The ideals of the current global economy that centralize around “mega businesses” has led to massive, unfixable issues.  

Evaluation Essay Businesses

Magnolia Homes

Magnolia Homes is a real estate and home renovation business featured on HGTV run by two Baylor graduates and Waco residents.  I feel like this would be a great business to do an evaluation essay over because the business has brought so much positive influence to Waco and has also focused on improving the community and involving the residents of Waco in the process of beautifying Waco. It would also be an interesting topic because it is specific to Waco and not a chain business so the evaluation will be very unique.  Identifying the criticisms of the business would also be easy because it would not be hard to collect information about the business and my perspective of what is done right and wrong.  

Cafe Cappuccino

Cafe Cappuccino is a local breakfast place in Waco that is very popular amongst Baylor students and Waco residents.  This would be a smart choice for my Evaluation Essay because it is a very Waco specific place that serves food that is very common and can be easily compared to other well known restaurants in order to provide a solid understanding of the menu to the reader.  It is also very accessible which provides me the opportunity to visit and evaluate the restaurant based on a basic criteria of atmosphere, food and service.  

Teriyaki Park

Teriyaki Park is a sushi and asian food restaurant near campus downtown that is frequently visited by Baylor students.  As a topic for my Evaluation Essay this choice would provide a unique menu that would create a very detailed evaluation of the restaurant based on the criteria of service, atmosphere and menu.  The atmosphere and the mood of the restaurant are very individual and would provide a very intriguing topic for the paper that would entice the reader and leave them wanting to read more and to try Teriyaki Park for themselves.  

The Most Logical Choice

Waking up in the morning is a part of the daily routine that every student dreads.  Having a course that challenges, evokes curiosity, and demands your attention makes that slightly less painful.  What type of course could possibly make pulling yourself out of bed worth it?  Philosophy of Logic.  When thumbing through the course catalog, you might not be immediately drawn to a course with such a tedious sounding name.  Students are failing to see that taking a philosophy course like logic is a true breath of intellectual fresh air during a day filled with subjects they've been taking since they were in Kindergarten.  Every student wants a class with a light course load, interesting content and relativity to the real world that is taught by an understanding and intelligent teacher.  Though the course load is often demanding and rigorous, the knowledge gained from the course and the relation to the real world is worth the work.  Each day the teacher makes it clear that she is well versed in the topic she is discussing and creates an atmosphere that is free of judgement and open to questions.  When walking into class, there is an anticipation over the whole class of what will be discussed that day.  With the requirement of a philosophy course and the existence of a logic option there seems like no easier choice.  If logic is beneficial to gaining knowledge for a student's future then student's should take logic.  Logic is beneficial to gaining knowledge for a students future, so student's should take logic.

How to Say Nothing in 500 Words

In reading "How to Say Nothing in 500 Words" by Paul Roberts, I found myself quickly shifting between agreeing with Robert's perspective and then disagreeing just as quickly.  Robert's point that often Freshman writer's fail to elaborate on their topic and ever reach any depth, felt very relative to me at this point.  Thus far in my college writings across the board I have felt a lack of depth and a limitation in focus.  On the contrary I feel that my dilemma with reaching this depth is not so much in the category of being due to a desire to quickly reach a word limit as Robert’s suggests, but that I have felt constricted by the word limits.  Because of my personal experiences with writing and the curriculum I was a part of, I often wrote papers and essays that stretched from 1,200 to 2,400 words on a constant basis.  This window left much more room to pick multiple perspectives and points and plenty of time to elaborate on each.  This transition from one type of learning to another made me appreciate Robert’s suggestions on how to create this depth in your writings under a more restricted word limit.  I found value in his suggestions especially on ways of thinking of original topics, specifically the topic he touches on of creating interest in your writing by taking "the less usual side."  Often times it's easy as a writer to choose the most obvious responses to a prompt or to pick a topic that you are most familiar with, but what one often doesn't realize is that this leads to a boring and general paper that will leave much to be desired.  

Thesis Statement

Though Southlake may seem like just another suburb to a passerby,  the traditions and history of the town create an atmosphere that cannot be replicated.

Blog Post Reflectiton

Overall my blog responses have shown growth in my writing since I started responding to the essays just two weeks ago.  As I writer I feel that based on my own reflection and Mr. Marshall's analysis that my main area of weakness lies in my repetitive tendency to make the scope of my posts to broad, rather than picking one area of interest or literary feature and focusing in on that aspect.  In order to fix this problem I need to pick out a device that stands out to me in relation to the theme and fully develop that device through my writing rather than trying to point out several features on a shallow level.  I also feel that my writing could improve if I were to not only read the essay but to gain outside knowledge through my own research about the author of the essay in order to properly understand their intended message and why they might have this perspective.  As far as what I have done right in my writings,  I feel that I have been successful in finding unique rhetorical devices in the essays and that I have been successful in relating these devices to the overall development of the author's intended theme.  I also feel based on mine and Mr. Marshall's reflection of my writings that I have been successful in clearly expressing my thoughts and ideas.

The Common Life

In Scott Russell Sander’s essay “The Common Life,” Sanders reflects on his own personal experiences with place and community and expresses the importance of community to each person’s happiness and to the world as a whole.  By using diction strategically in a way that expresses to the reader that Sander’s has an understanding of his environment and the community in his environment in a manner that only someone who is comfortable with those surroundings could understand,  he is able to create a feeling of home and family through his style of writing.  As Sanders starts off the essay he describes his surroundings using adjectives that would not be commonly placed with the nouns he is describing.  For example when he says it was a “delicious afternoon” or when he describes his daughters as having “eager dark eyes and shining faces.”  By using these syntax combinations to create a style of writing that expresses his comfort with his surroundings he is able to emphasize the overall importance of community and the impact that “a place created and filled by our lives together” has on each person’s individual happiness.  Sander’s carries on this style of writing throughout the story by using personal examples to emphasize his point of encouraging community.  The style he uses creates a lively tone that exemplifies how community has personally impacted his life and how it has created happiness for him individually.  

An Amish Perspective

In David Kline's essay, Kline uses his personal experience of living on a farm to examine and discuss the importance of making your own mark in your place while also keeping a balance of the history that exists in that place from the people who were there before you.  He uses metaphors and history along with his family's memories and day to day lives on the farm to express the connection that his home has on his life and the importance of living somewhere that evokes these emotions.  One of the key aspects of the essay that drew me in was Kline's clear knowledge of history and nature.  Through his writing it is apparent that Kline is a well informed naturalist whom the reader can trust to provide trustworthy information over the historical topics he discusses.  Kline uses his knowledge of the history of his farm to connect the reader to the emotional ties that he has with the land and help the reader to understand why he feels such a personal connection to the land.  The part of the essay that most intrigued me was Kline's introduction to the topic.  He simply and bluntly begins by saying that he "want(s) to talk about our farm." By beginning with such a plain statement Kline immediately grabbed my attention and had me wondering where he was going with such a simple sounding topic.

From Monoculture to Polyculture

     In the essay "From Monoculture to Polyculture" by Paul Custodio Bube, Bube discusses the conflict of whether or not it is good or bad for cultures to mix and coexist together and whether or not culture should become homogenous in places like America.  Ultimately he comes to a conclusion that "the richest possibilities for community will only be attained when we achieve a diversity that extends beyond all forms of anthropocentrism as well as ethnocentrism." In other words concluding that all cultures and communities should coexist in a polycultural world that would fully live up to God's "fullest realization."  I found myself very drawn in by this topic initially because of the way that Bube decides to begin the essay.  Starting off the first paragraph with a seemingly unrelated metaphor of the geography of Kansas seemed odd to me, but later helped tie together the essay and create a perfect example of his overall idea.  The paradox between monoculture and polyculture in relation to the other paradoxes he exemplified such as fundamentalism and positivism created a very static tone to the essay and truly illustrated his concept.  I found myself very drawn in by his point that though fundamentalism and positivism seem like "polar opposites," they are actually very similar.  The topic that most interested me was the idea of fundamentalism.  Reading about the ideas of fundamentalism and the concept of the bible as a literal interpretation and a "perfect" translation of the word of God was baffling to me.  My perspective had always been so much different and it was interesting and perplexing to read about such a contrasting paradigm.

Leave If You Can

When I first read the essay “Leave If You Can” by Henry W. Paige, I immediately felt a sense of comfort from the familiar and homey diction that Paige used to evoke a sense of nostalgia that all of humanity naturally associates with home.  Then I began to see Paige’s broader and deeper purpose of humanity’s tendency to become too attached to a location or place and in return to be held back by this attachment.  I found myself very intrigued and drawn to this concept as he discussed it.  Near the beginning of the essay Paige creates a character that remarks that he is a “prisoner here” in his home town.  By using this metaphor of the expected American man who is tied to his hometown by obligations and principle but claims of a great desire to escape, Paige develops his theme of the hypocrisy behind humanities desire to branch out and yet being too fearful to actually do so.  One of Paige’s final remarks is that man is a “prisoner of place.” This singular phrase enveloped the entirety of the essay in my interpretation.  I agree with Paige’s notion that man should branch out among their own horizons both physically and mentally so that we do not allow ourselves to become too attached or stuck in our own perspectives.  

Entry 8/28

When it comes to writing, I focus best with no distractions around.  I find that I am able to concentrate and get the most work done when I am somewhere that I am comfortable and happy in and that I cannot be easily taken away from my objective.  I cannot listen to music or be talking when im writing because I often find that when I do my mind wanders and I lose my train of thought on the subject at hand.  Being alone helps me to isolate my thoughts and to work thoroughly and efficiently to complete the writing.  Most of the time I find I get a lot of work done just sitting on my bed or alone at a table in a coffee shop.  To me writing involves peace and concentration in order to be efficient so I try to surround myself with these qualities as much as possible.