After viewing Kristin Arola's view on "family" on her video, I was almost some what annoyed. To me it sounded as though her view on family was based off her lack of family. Bitter comments because her friends and family are proud of their children so they like to send pictures of them when they get the chance to. Get over it. Family doesn't even have to be blood but to me it's whose most important in your life, and if your friends are there for you and have children and you consider them family shouldn't you consider their children family as well? But for me I chose the word Joy. You see it around almost every holiday and it's always a joy to indulge in good food, gifts and to surround yourself with family. In the common dictionary joy means a feeling of great pleasure. It's delight, gladness, pleasure, mirth, and rejoicing.

            When it comes to almost every holiday we’re always rejoicing over something. Freedom, Christ being born, Jesus dying for our sins, rejoicing in what we’re thankful for the most. But what makes the word Joy so grand is it doesn’t have to be a holiday to feel this word. It could be felt due to getting an A on your most recent test, getting married, buying a puppy anything that makes you feel good. Or another great thing that makes this word so special is cause its something that isn’t just about you. You can bring joy to someone else’s life just by the littlest things. Complimenting someone, surprising someone, or anything of that matter. It’s a selfless word. I myself have felt a lot of joy in my life especially when it comes to going to concerts, dates and even to the movies. It’s the type of word that doesn’t even take that much effort to feel, and that’s why it’s so wonderful.

Teaching/learning

In Dr. Tae’s video that compared skateboarding to the learning system in schools today, he mentioned a lot of good points. Overall he stated that when it comes to schools, students should be graded on whether or not they know the information or not. Either they know it or they don’t and giving them a C, or a B or any other grade doesn’t really mean they comprehend what they’ve been taught. In skateboarding you either know the trick or you don’t, and skateboarders aren’t graded on a trick, you either land the trick or you don’t, which makes a lot of sense and once they have learned the trick they move on to the next one. When you give a student a C it doesn’t really say that they know the information but that they know it enough to slide by, so then when they move onto the next thing being taught it causes even more of a struggle for them.

I agree with Dr. Tae, I think he brought a good point across and should be really taken into consideration. It also is close to how we’ve been taught in rhetoric. We’re not graded on the average scale, so we either wrote the essay correctly or we didn’t. It makes you try harder because they teacher hasn’t given you room to just slide by. You really have to work at it. My first few essays I got an unsatisfactory. But after given a few more chances to try again, i finally got it down pat and made some huge improvements in my writing. At first I hated the grading scale, I thought it was ridiculous. I wanted to know exactly what I had in the class, but after finally watching this video it finally made since. Our teacher was pretty much letting us know that we either know it or we don’t, and if we don’t know it then we better start practicing.

In Dr. Tae’s video that compared skateboarding to the learning system in schools today, he mentioned a lot of good points. Overall he stated that when it comes to schools, students should be graded on whether or not they know the information or not. Either they know it or they don’t and giving them a C, or a B or any other grade doesn’t really mean they comprehend what they’ve been taught. In skateboarding you either know the trick or you don’t, and skateboarders aren’t graded on a trick, you either land the trick or you don’t, which makes a lot of sense and once they have learned the trick they move on to the next one. When you give a student a C it doesn’t really say that they know the information but that they know it enough to slide by, so then when they move onto the next thing being taught it causes even more of a struggle for them.

I agree with Dr. Tae, I think he brought a good point across and should be really taken into consideration. It also is close to how we’ve been taught in rhetoric. We’re not graded on the average scale, so we either wrote the essay correctly or we didn’t. It makes you try harder because they teacher hasn’t given you room to just slide by. You really have to work at it. My first few essays I got an unsatisfactory. But after given a few more chances to try again, i finally got it down pat and made some huge improvements in my writing. At first I hated the grading scale, I thought it was ridiculous. I wanted to know exactly what I had in the class, but after finally watching this video it finally made since. Our teacher was pretty much letting us know that we either know it or we don’t, and if we don’t know it then we better start practicing.

Semester in Review

It's absurd that this is the last blog I will be posting this semester. When I first started this class I was excited to begin writing again. But then after all of the assignments assigned to me I thought "oh no, what have I done..and am I going to make it through." Well now I learned that I stuck it out and did it for the best. I learned so much about my writing this semester. My favorite blog that I posted this semester was the Pumped Up Kicks one. I loved analyzing it, and learning so much about the background behind the popular song. Understanding what the actual meaning of the song was was very interesting and it makes me look at other songs differently as well. These blogs make me look at everything differently and open my eyes to things I would have never seen before this class.

It seems surreal to think that this will be my last blog post of the year. Many of the blogs we posted were about a variety of topics, but the one that I enjoyed the most was the one about Dr. Tae's video. It taught me that it is good to relate to your audience real life situations that a majority of people can relate to or at least get an idea of what the speaker is trying to convey. It would be easy for Dr. Tae to talk above people’s heads, using analogies or dialogue a normal person may not have but he kept it at a level that most people could understand. The assessment made me look at my own writing and think of new ways to make my writing more relatable to my audience. Even though I may know what I am talking it does not mean my audience is viewing it in the same way or getting fully what I am trying to convey.

-168

Ashley Kocanda

Semester in Review Blog post

When I first decided to take a rhetoric class, I was frightened. I thought I would be writing a billion papers and I set myself up for the worst. I also thought I was a hopeless writer and I was never going to get better than what I already was. I ended up proving myself wrong. I learned a lot, especially from these blog posts. I think that the blog post that taught me the most about rhetorical situations was definitely the “Pumped Up Kicks” one. I never really thought about analyzing a song and seeing what it actually meant, especially a song that was just a big hit like this one. When a person listens to a song, they usually are looking for a good beat and stray away from really paying attention to what the words are. I think that after being able to take a song and figuring out an actual (or alternative) motive/meaning is really cool and definitely helpful when critical thinking, which is basically what it has taught me.

Priyanka Bhakta

Word Count: 174

Semester in Review

        If I were to choose one of the blog posts that really seemed to help me get a better understanding of rhetorical situations, I would be inclined to choose the post that dealt with Dr. Tae and his insight on how we learn in schools compared to how we learn in life.  Taking a system that has been in place for centuries finding ways to try to make it appeal to the learning process more than it currently does is something that takes quite a lot of critical thinking.  Looking beyond something at face value and finding reasons why it does not seem to be working effectively really takes a lot of ability to see the bigger picture in things.  The way Dr. Tae supported his claims was in a nice and easy to understand example which was how he went through a learning process by his lonesome and came out of it feeling like he could learn more than any instructor could have done for him.  This is because at the end of the day, one either learns something, or they do not, and that is why I feel like I was able to learn a lot from this blog post assignment.

-Matthew S.

Word Count: 203