Journal Four

"Number One Party School" illustrates everything that a solid investigative report would have. The two reporters definitely tells their point in a way that almost everyone can understand. The sound effects they use including people yelling and the songs they play really give you a feel of college. The noise they play in the beginning sounds exactly like an average night on the streets of state college. The reporters give multiple reasons for attacking the problem as soon as possible. For instance, Penn State was voted the number one party school. There is a lot of underage drinking here. Other examples they give are personal safety. They explain how people die because of drinking too much or doing something crazy while drunk. The report has countless facts and details. They use interviews with cops, residence, pricks who steal signs, students, non-students, and town employees. Interviewing a FIJI brother about his involvement in a students death was nice. They go to frats and see how many people are underage drinking. They show how disgusting a fraternity really is with puddles of beer everywhere. He explained how he feels about drinking now after the incident. He says how he didn't realize the consequences of his actions. The reporters quote the president of the university a lot. The president talks about the other side of being the number one party school. Graham Spanier tells us that the students are allowed to vote. What he basically says is that Penn State is the number one spirit school and that no matter what the students of Penn State are voting for they want to win. They also quote cops and many other people. An interview with a cop shared that cops are not looking to arrest students. The dumb students that don't realize these cops have been working and know every trick in the book fall right into the lap of the officers. They know every secret probably way better than any of the students. Acting like an idiot in public is the reason why people get caught. Just be safe. I feel that the conclusion the reporters want us to make is that underage drinking is dangerous. I think they want us, as students, not to drink, or at least not to get hammered. I think these two people did an excellent job of describing college life and giving us a feel. I enjoyed how they explain that drinking is a part of the atmosphere and lifestyle. I really enjoyed listening to this report. Sometimes drinking is absurd to the amount people take it. In my personal opinion underage drinking on college campus is not the major problem. I would have liked to here more about the positives state college has. I felt that the entire report was full of negatives about how awful we are here at state college. I think that the students here at State believe in a reputation that we have as being a wild school with the most spirit. We want to keep up the rep. We love college. We love Penn State.

First Drafts

First drafts are always awful. What Lamott is saying is that no matter how worthless your first "shitty" draft seems it is one of the most important parts of the writing process. Get all your ideas out and put it on paper. If you try too hard to make your first draft perfect you are bound to miss vital information that is hidden somewhere in your sub-conscience that would only come out by opening up your mind and letting the words flow out. The first rough draft isn't supposed to be good and she goes on to say that no one but you will see it so there is no need to worry about people laughing at your work. It is also important to realize that writing takes work. You need to try and try again before you really accept what you've done. Lamott says she "trusted the process more or less." After such a long time of writing she has to have countless exampled of when the writing process worked for her. Practice makes perfect. What I think she means by "more or less" is that there is always a little fear at the beginning before you've written anything. It's self doubt and you don't know what you are going to say. What I can relate to in this reading is the fact that it is hard for everyone to start writing. It made me feel better about myself to hear that people who love writing sometimes dread their topic. Finding a place to start is sometimes the hardest part for everyone. I always get stuck various times throughout writing a paper with writers block. So like these professional writers I need to get up and be occupied for a little to get my train of thought back. I was surprised that even these people that get paid to write doubt there work and are less confident than I thought. The rough draft is absolutely about the process instead of the product. The product may not even make sense at all. It's about getting started and tossing out ideas. During the rough draft process of my personal narrative I say and thought for a long time and the problem is I had too much information. I wrote it all down and took the pieces I thought would fit the best together to explain my message. In general my first drafts are very "rough". Sometimes I'll read my work aloud to myself and I'll laugh at what I wrote because it didn't make any sense. But no one but me will see these drafts so who cares? After the draft is set I feel a little better because I know where to start. Getting the information out is always the most difficult part of the writing process, for me at least. Once its done I'll read it over make as many corrections as needed until I'm satisfied with my work and ready to have people read it. Often, almost always, my final paper looks nothing like my first, rough, grammatically incorrect draft.

Journal Two, Shirt Memoir

David Giffels' "Shirt-Worthy" is a story of how a father finally felt like he earned his Ramone's T-shirt. He tells us that to be "worthy" of wearing a Ramone's shirt you were obligated to attend concerts and actually buy one there. The shirt needed to be worn out, maybe faded, and more or less dirty with your own blood, sweat, and tears. This was the only way to not be a poser, someone who does or wears something just to fit in and be cool, as we would call them today. Giffels didn't feel worthy of having a Ramone's shirt even though he attended some concert's. He said, "it felt to easy," or something along those lines. When he buys his son the t-shirt putting aside his past values to be a father figure and his son rips it on a fence he finally feels that he has earned his own Ramone's shirt. Back then it was harder for someone to pull of a t-shirt like that. If you had a band shirt people knew you attended concerts. Nowadays anyone can have whatever shirt they want. You can say, "hey man I love the Ramone's too," and the person may respond with a thank you and actually know not one song by that band. What I feel he is trying to get at is that it is too easy for kids today to get whatever they want. They might not form memories with something such as a t-shirt because they just went to the mall and bought it instead of living it. Earning gives an object meaning.
This story is relevant to our time because it shows us how hard people used to need to work to get what they wanted. Nobody could be a poser because they had to earn that t-shirt. Giffels is speaking to whoever remembers a time when something you wanted wasn't as available as they are today, or even possibly to a kid these days who has the same morals about earning their belongings. The point of Giffels' writing is to address those people who don't care about the meaning of objects and just have them because they look cool or want to fit in.
The author is particularly strong with dialogue. I hope to use dialogue to get my point across and reach the readers emotions like David Giffels. Ethically on the other hand he is reaching his audience saying that he knew he wasn't worthy of the shirt and didn't buy one anyway. He wanted to earn it himself. The logical part of this narrative is how he put his past values aside to get his son what he wanted. Using ethos, pathos, and logos David Giffels addressed the exigence with a message that fit his meaning.

Journal One

Let's just say my past experiences with writing and an English class in general have been uneventful. In all honesty writing is my weakest subject and this may be the major influencing reason why today I dread writing. Needless to say throughout my primary school life the only writing I did was required. From research papers to persuasive essays, I have found it difficult to put my thoughts into words like such an author as Frederick Douglass. My vocabulary is mildly broad, but on occasion I don't know the context certain words should be used making my writing, not always, but sometimes, hard to understand. Another problem I have had in the past with my writing is that my sentence structures (or just structure because it is singular) do not vary. Throughout high school I was criticized because my thoughts usually came out on paper as simple as subject and verb. Don't get me wrong these sentences had complete thoughts but I had never used such writing tricks as similes, metaphors, personification, alliteration, and others to make my writing much more interesting.

Now, I have realized how big of a part rhetoric plays in my everyday life. The first step is identifying the problem at hand. What is the point of your writing, speech, or presentation? It is also important to use the correct way of communication when presenting your information. And depending on the purpose of your communication the way in which you would explain may be completely different. For instance, when you watch any television show there are not just words scrolling down the screen to be read until the next commercial. That would be absurd. One needs to present their information by whichever means necessary to have the most effect on the reader. So when watching television the point is to use visuals to get the point across. You also need to examine what your audience likes. If your girlfriend is mad at you for some reason and she loves music you may write her an apologetic song to get the most effect out of what you have to say.

I had never been a fan of reading from as far back as I can remember. Actually I didn't even like bed time stories as a child. During my childhood if I needed to read a book for school I would end up on page ten from page one not remembering what I had just read because my mind went off on a tangent. Then came high school and my thirst for knowledge grew and grew. In my second year I was given a book to read called Forgotten Fire. Buy it right now! This was the first book in my entire life that I read from cover to cover. I couldn't put it down. The way the author, Adam Bagdasarian, expressed his feelings really got to me. This book was phenomenal and the start of my reading career. I am not an avid reader these days but none the less if I find a good book nothing, and I mean nothing, can pull me away.