Duncan Ackerman E-Portfolio

Here’s a link to the website I made for the advocacy project about ending drug prohibition.

I think that I will focus on political evolvement for my advocacy project. My goal is to get younger generations of voters reinvigorated about political participation. My audience will be people between the ages of 18 and 30. It seems like people are growing more and more apathetic towards politics lately and I want to express how important it is for people to stay involved and make sure that they have a say in how our country is run. The occasion is now, modern times. I think that right now is a good time to start getting people to focus on politics since there is currently so much frustration with our national government.

I think that I will focus my paper on the benefits of free trade as applied to the textile industry in 3rd world countries. I intend to persuade people to inform people of the benefits of sending manufacturing to places like Africa. My research has turned up some interesting facts about the benefits of low skill labor entering 3rd world markets. Most of the western world use terms like “sweat shop” in a derogatory way that simply do not hold true in the eyes of citizens of 3rd world countries. Many citizens of low income countries see “sweat shop” factories as very beneficial to their local economies and use them as an opportunity for career advancement.

Expression is crucial for human development, rendering so many other things irrelevant. Without expression life is less than worth living, I believe. I believe that thoughts not published can eat away at a soul, day by day as life ticks away.

I was 16, in that weird embarrassing era between being a kid and being an adult. Like any high school student I was prudent on social climbing and trying to find a niche where I fit. It’s hard to figure out where to start when your heart is not quite connected with your brain. The pain of rejection can drive a student towards insurrection or reclusive action, a path that I tried treading, dreading the lonely alternative. The wrong crowd was my first crowd, had me ready to bow out and throw in the towel during the first boring hour. They weren’t the friendly type, just throwing around reputations to spite the aspirations of others. No room for creativity or fluidity of thought. I felt strangled, tangled and constantly wrangled back to the hangouts and dragged towards the burnouts. Didn’t take long for me to realize that these weren’t people to idolize, and it would take more to revitalize my life.

The problem wasn’t the lack of productivity. It wasn’t the constant sitting around. Or the boring meaningless sounds that just seemed to pour from their mouths. It was the lack of expression. They were like robots with one master calling the shots and the others falling in line behind. I could count the hours, minutes and seconds that passed by as we spent time together. And always I was the same, and they were the same. No growth occurred, no hope of ever gaining from one another, I needed a change.

Upon self reflection I started in a new direction with more attention paid to the problems I faced, ready to embrace a solution. I found that I was trapped here because I didn’t have the courage to express myself and find people who shared my genuine values. My lack of expression destroyed any chance I could have to advance my own personality.

Embracing creativity life came into focus vividly, timidity faded, rapidly replaced by vitality. I put myself out there to be judged, loved, and shoved around. I let my true colors fly. I found friends who valued what I did and liked what I liked and thought what I thought was right. It was the time of my life and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Wouldn’t have been possible without losing the self doubt and breaking out of my shell that trapped me in my own living hell.

I believe that we need to express ourselves to relate to others and create meaningful relationships. With expression we can make impressions on others. We can be liked. We can be loved. And life will open up, opportunities will arise and life will be worth living. Keep your eyes on the prize. Never let creativity die.

 Word Count: 500

I’m pretty sure of both my TIB, and CI topics. For the TIB, I think I’ll talk about my belief that self expression is a necessary part in achieving happiness. For the CI, since I’m an economics major, I think I’ll talk about free trade and current economic conditions and how they relate to politics and the U.S. as a whole. I will keep my Passion Blog the same, poetry posts only. This semester I will definitely try to improve blogs, especially in the format department. My RCL posts last semester were a little chunky and boring looking. This time I want to use more pictures and videos in my posts.

It’s been an interesting first semester of college for sure. For this last post, I’d like to discuss what I’ve found to be the most and least effective forms of rhetoric that I have written about in previous weeks. RCL has taught me to be much more analytical when viewing others’ attempts at persuasion, a skill that I think will be very important in “the real world” after college.

I’ll start by discussing some of the not so great attempts at rhetorical persuasion that I’ve encountered over the course of the semester. Some of you may remember my post about the men who held up the massive “Church is a joke” signs outside the Willard building. Many people seemed to think that this was an effective strategy for arousing the interest of passersby, which I do agree with. However, I stand by what I said in my post. The signs were very offensive to the majority of people who were watching. I noticed that these guys were surrounded by a group of people watching intently, but out of this whole group, only one person actually grabbed a piece of information that they were handing out. Even this person was obviously just trying to be polite. From the start, these demonstrators alienated themselves from a huge group of potential followers just by blatantly insulting church, which is a coveted practice for many Christians. Overall, this was one of the best methods of attention grabbing that I saw during this semester, but one of the worst persuasive efforts at the same time. Another bad attempt at persuasion that I saw was the people who tried to persuade others to go see the hypnotist at the hub. They were just running around at the last minute, practically yelling at students studying in the hub. There method was not captivating and was just obnoxious.

The best rhetoric I saw all semester was easily the Willard Preacher. He argued controversial points, backing them up with what at least sounded like logical statements and data. Sometimes just sounding like you know what you are talking about can go a long way in an argument. No one does this better than the Willard Preacher. While speaking, he sounds so sure of himself and so devoted to his views that it’s hard not to at least give them a little bit of thought. I definitely learned a lot about making a persuasive argument from watching him even though I don’t agree with about 99% of what he says.

Overall, I learned so much about persuasion and civic engagement from this semester of CAS 137 and I’m sure that next semester will prove to be just as enlightening. I’m looking forward to seeing all of you next semester.

This week I missed quite a bit of class, so I’m a little behind in my TED talk preparation. I think that I want to talk about something involving psychology, but I don’t know exactly what. I hope to talk about the science of persuasion and the chemical processes that go on in the brain when the mind is being made up. My thesis would be something along the lines of “Persuasion is both a mental and physical process that involves specific brain activity reacting to the situation in which the individual is being persuaded.” I hope to engage the audience visually with a brief visual aid/powerpoint, but  mostly by just presenting a captivating argument with counter intuitive facts.

Last week as I was studying in the hub, I was approached by a guy who was advertising a hypnotist’s performance. He said that the hypnotist was going to be performing in the upper auditorium in the hub later that night. I didn’t think much of the opportunity at the time, but I became bored later and decided to check it out.

As far as the rhetoric in the advertisement goes, there’s not much to be said. The kid who told me about the performance didn’t seem very interested and didn’t come across as captivating or sincere. My interest in the performance itself was the sole factor in my decision to go.

Later that night, I went to see the hypnotist. The auditorium was about half full; a total of about 200 people showed up. The hypnotist was a large bald man, who was quite a good speaker. It was evident that he had done many shows like this before and that this type of setting was not new to him. He introduced himself and then played a video of himself hypnotizing a previous audience. This tactic definitely gained him some credibility by showing that he had indeed been able to hypnotize a prior audience and added some merit to his somewhat questionable art.

I was not convinced however. I am not one who believes in things like hypnotism or mind control, but I decided to go along with what he was saying. I listened to the gentle drone of his voice and did all the things within my own mind that I was instructed to. Before I knew it, I found myself on stage with the hypnotist and four other members of the audience. During our time on stage, he had each of us doing crazy things that I never would have done had I been in my right state of mind. He had us playing air guitar, singing songs, and randomly passing out by simply saying the word sleep. Hypnotism is very real, but it must be voluntary.

Throughout that experience, although strange, I couldnt help but think that it was an opportunity for civic engagement. I helped participate in the spreading of a new idea (hypnotism can work) by personally (accidentally) demonstrating it to a large audience.

This past week, Samsung set up a kiosk outside the hub. They are using this to promote their Galaxy phone and their company in general. Every day as I walk by I see their gaudy white kiosk with the giant blue Samsung logo on it. People always seem to surround it, leading me to believe that they must be using some effective rhetoric to persuade those who come.

The first way that the Samsung uses rhetoric in this situation is by paying workers to stand about 20 feet away from the kiosk and hand out pamphlets about it. To me this doesn’t seem to be very effective since the people handing out the pamphlets are so close to the kiosk itself. They don’t seem necessary. If people are interested in the general idea of owning a Samsung phone, they will most likely walk 20 feet over to the kiosk on their own and check it out.

The second way that the kiosk advertises itself is by giving away free stuff to people who visit it. I didn’t go in for too close a look, but I did notice that free sunglasses and other little nicknacks where being given away, possibly as prizes for some type of game being played by people at the kiosk. I think that this is a much more effective way of persuading people to come check out the products at the kiosk since everyone loves free stuff. Also, the games add a “fun” aspect to the whole business vibe that a kiosk can have. The overall vibe of the kiosk seemed very laid back and college student friendly.

Overall, I think the Samsung kiosk did a good job of drawing people to it and getting the word out about their products. I’m not sure how many sales they actually made, but people definitely showed interest. Samsung’s rhetoric here shows how simple it can be to persuade people to come look at what you have to offer; Just throw some free stuff at them and people will come.