Welcome to my written works page! Below are the introductions of three essays from my year in CAS 137H and CAS 138T, placed in the chronological order that they were written in. The links to the complete essay explain which essay was for which assignment. My strength in writing these this semester is most definitely in including poetic structures amid the concrete claims and decisive details, as I am a poet. Something I’ve learned about this, though, is that it is at times very necessary to forsake passionate language about a general topic and gear towards a dryer dictation of a more specific topic, so that the essay will actually say something important.  I had this problem the most with my paradigm shift essay, in which I had a hard time narrowing my mind (and thus my writing) on to one topic under the umbrella term “film”. In revising it, I actually had to completely rewrite my first paragraph, as it was way too general and too long. As far as revising the rhetorical analysis, I mostly just corrected some cumbersome sentences, and for the persuasive essay I included a more dynamic denouncement-of-counterargument paragraph. All of my revisions improved my rhetoric, which I am quite pleased about. See for yourself below!

Forging a Path of Acceptance

For my essay I chose to pick a commercial I encountered while watching On Demand on my iPad. It involves three male teenagers sitting in a pizza parlor, noticing a strange-faced chef statue holding a plate of statue pizza. One of the kids remarks, “That’s so gay!” and another agrees. Directly following that, the comedian Wanda Sykes rises from the table in front of them and says, “Please don’t say that. That’s insulting,” and compares calling something distasteful “gay” to calling the same unpleasant thing “16-year-old boy with a cheesy moustache,” which is an accurate description of the boy who uttered the comment. The commercial is most definitely geared towards teens, as it is a group of teens featured in the commercial making the offensive comment. Also, the show I was watching, Doctor Who, while it has a varied audience, is most popular with teenagers. The organization behind the ad is the GLSEN, or the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. This group tries to promote better treatment of homosexuals and the various terms applied to them in schools. Another contributing organization was the Advertising Council, an organization that works on public service campaigns. The commercial appeared on October 8, 2008. The campaign, which moves to educate students about the consequences of using anti-LGBT language, is called thinkb4youspeak. The commercial created by these organizations uses a celebrity’s credibility, logic of word definition, and the old adage of “how would you feel if…” to stop the use of the word “gay” in an offensive context.

Click here to read the whole thing: Rhetorical Analysis Essay

Art or Eye Candy?

An attribute intrinsic to humanity is the ability to tell stories. This is a skill that is—as far as we know—unique to us and our large cerebral cortexes. Cavemen scribbled the first narratives with pictograms on stone walls, and within a few thousand years ancient bards made stories immortal with their repeated telling. Nowadays, the most widely proliferated and profitable form of “professional” storytelling is that of Hollywood. The arrival of film in the turn of the 19th century combined visual beauty with the grandeur of literature, allowing art both to move and to serve a purpose in a greater plot. But, unlike the static art of paintings or the visualization trigger of words, filmmakers could not depict raw imagination in their stories without time-consuming tampering of the film itself, or using even more time-consuming stop animation or models. But this all changed with the Digital Age, or more specifically, the Age of CGI.

Click here to read the whole thing: Paradigm Shift Essay

Pay Attention

Psychological health is too often given short shrift, especially in education. The Pennsylvania Department of Education requires schools to have health classes, but there is no mention of the necessity of mental health in the curriculum (Pennsylvania Department of Education). This needs to be remedied. Psychological and physical health have a symbiotic relationship, so when one is ignored, the other is bound to suffer. This ill-founded ignorance of such an important fact is especially debilitating to the population of young students, since their early education sets up the foundation for the rest of their life, and because many psychological disorders show their unwanted faces in childhood. Thus, a clause should be placed into Pennsylvania’s Academic Standards for Health, Safety, and Physical Education regarding courses on mental health, namely requiring courses on mindfulness meditation in elementary education.

Click here to read the whole thing: Persuasive Essay