December | 2018 | Toni McFarland Blog

06
Dec
2018

My Last Baking Adventure for this Semester

categories: Passion

I’m a little sad that this is my last blog. I’ve really enjoyed using this class as an excuse to bake really sugary treats. But, I found a lot of value in examining my baking, and I wanted to reflect on what baking means to me.

Although I originally set out to write about baking itself, I’m very happy with what I’ve learned. I did not learn many new recipes (although I did learn new tricks for baking), and I did not really experiment with new kinds of desserts (I mainly stuck to cookies, brownies, and cupcakes). But what I did learn was about people.

I find the most joy in making people happy. And although baking helps destress, I also find it extremely valuable to share. And I offer my baked goods to any person who walks by the kitchen, because I think it’s a useful icebreaker, and I’ve made some friends by offering them some of my baked goods.

In college, with a whirlwind of assignments and activities making us all extremely busy, it is important to take a step back sometimes and relax. For me, when I decide to bake, that was my time to relax. But I also think that I was able to make some of my friends relax, because they would wait with me for the food to come out of the oven and then cool, and then they would eat and talk with me for a few minutes. Even if that was only for a few minutes, I think that it was beneficial in providing my friends a break from their stress.

So today, for my last blog, I decided to make promiscuous brownies. Unfortunately, I will not be testing these brownies tonight. I am saving them for class tomorrow, where I will share with my RCL classmates! When I was baking, I saved as much brownie batter as I could, so after I made 24 brownies for my classmates I could bake the rest for the people on my floor. I am very excited to bring them into class and surprise my classmates. I think an unexpected dessert can always brighten someone’s day, and that’s what I hope to achieve tomorrow.

I’ve noticed that small things can really make someone happy. And I feel very fortunate to have enough baking talent to make things that can help improve someone’s day, even if it’s just by a little bit.

06
Dec
2018

What have I learned?

categories: RCL

When I started the RCL class, I thought that it would be an English class with a couple of papers and a couple of projects. I expected to read some books and analyze them and move on. I never really discussed how rhetoric affected civic life.

I previously thought that rhetoric was only something that could be used in books. But through this class I can see that it’s about making an argument through writing or speech; some images can even make arguments. I previously thought of civic life as being a “good citizen” by voting or recycling. But I learned it’s more than that; civic life involves establishing a community and changing society for the better. This can happen through voting or through recycling, but the society is what ultimately benefits from civic life.

I did not expect to learn about how rhetoric and English plays a role in human society, but I can say with confidence that I have learned a lot about rhetoric’s role in today’s world. I never really thought of TV shows to be rhetorical, but after preparing my speech and paper about 13 Reasons Why, I learned a lot about the impacts of the different rhetorical devices used in TV shows. Hyperbole, for example, was a huge factor in creating 13 Reasons Why into a stagey melodrama that affects societal views on suicide.

I think that the second project, where we had to thoroughly research a topic, made me more aware of civic issues in our society and the shifts that we have faced throughout history. Although smoking, my topic, is something that I have grown up learning about, I found it very beneficial to learn what drove the societal shift away from smoking, as well as the shift back to e-cigarettes.

I am extremely excited about our last project. This has taught me a lot specifically about civic life at Penn State. Our project is about inclusion of transgender students in college dorms, and I find it very beneficial to see the rhetoric made about transgenderism, as well as how our culture in State College handles inclusion. I never really thought that rhetoric would apply to a topic like transgenderism, nor that transgenderism is a part of civic life.

December 2018 archive