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.