Blogger-Post-Numero-Twenty

A. This course as a learning experience.

I don't think I'm entirely sure how well I write anymore. I used to/still would like to think that I'm a fairly good writer for your average college student, but there is absolutely no way I am ever going to remember enough about the writing processes of rhetorical, object-oriented, etc. essays to be an English professor.

As far as my views of writing, I think I now have more respect for (good) essay writers, having seen everything that they have to remember about each style of writing in order to turn out a respectable (among other writers) piece. I was amazed to find how hard it can be to do a good example of rhetorical or object-oriented writing.

I think work-shopping with other students is god as far as finding out how easy to read and interesting your piece is, but as far as technical stuff, like grammar, punctuation, etc., peer-reviews are pretty useless. For this reason, I think conferencing with writing teachers is extremely important when working on any sort of writing project - only your teacher can give you exact, accurate pointers on how to improve your work.

MY definition of ''good writing'' is a piece that is easy and interesting to read, relates to the reader in some fashion, and is free of spelling, grammar, and/or punctuation mistakes. This is how I evaluate everyone's writing - both my own and the writing of others.

I think I can now successfully recognize a few different types of writing, but as I'm planning to be an artist, I don't really think critical essay writing is going to be too prevalent in my life after college... but, really, who knows? Several people in my family have had career-changes over the years. It could happen to me.

B. Your own development as a writer during this course.

I would like to think that my writing has improved somewhat over the course of the semester, having gone back and read some assortments of stories I'd tapped out on my laptop and realizing how much now needs to be changed to make them easier/more fascinating to read. I think I've also become a bit more 'descriptive' in my writing (as far as physical descriptions and sights, smells, sounds, etc.).

I think my strengths as a writer are in physical descriptions - smells, sounds, etc., and grammar, etc. I need to work on 'emotional' writing, though. Right now I try to avoid emotional writing because it's very touchy-feely. I think this is why I had so much trouble with object-oriented writing - it's all extremely nostalgic.

Liferaft of the Rings

By the time I reached eighth grade, I had already moved countries twice, states three times, cities seven times, and houses nine times in the five years since my family had left Canada. Through all this, I had desperately clung to whatever friends I could find, hoping and praying we would not be moving again. By the time we settled in Marion, Illinois, I was enrolled in a painfully Catholic school, and starting to wonder if making friends was even worth the trouble, as my father refused to unpack in apprehension of another move. I was thrilled when was accepted into a clique of five girls who all had two things in common - they were head-over-heels in awe of their 'leader', and all absolutely obsessed with J.R.R. Tolkien's books, mainly, 'The Lord of the Rings'.

At first, I was hesitant to go anywhere near such books, having associated 'fantasy' with 'nerdy' for most of my life. However, desperation to understand their 'inside jokes' and really join in their group drove me to search out 'The Hobbit', which I was told was a prelude to the 'Rings' books.

The copy I found had been shoved roughly onto the miniscule bookshelf at the back of my homeroom class, most of it's pages torn from the binding and the pages all dog-eared or stained with food, ink or, oddly, nail polish. The next time 'silent reading' rolled around, I cracked open the pages and immediately became absorbed in the story of Bilbo Baggins and his unwitting involvement in a Dwarf-quest to recover their stolen halls and treasure from an evil dragon named Smaug.

As soon as I finished 'The Hobbit', I ran out and - having found 'Rings' to be slightly above my reading-comprehension level at the time - bought 'Fellowship' and 'Two Towers' on dvd, falling for the story of Frodo's adventures even faster than I'd fallen for Bilbo's.

Unfortunately, the clique I'd been 'accepted' into wasn't the slightest bit impressed.

"We" meaning the leader, since whatever her opinion was immediately applied to everyone else - "don't watch the movies." With that, the five of them skipped off, leaving me feeling numb as I unknowingly resolved never to be a 'sheep' again.

I've grown to become an almost nerdy 'Rings' fan, and, since moving back to almost six years ago, have started reading 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'The Children of Hurin', sought out 'The Silmarillion', and have reread my own ratty, dog-eared copy of 'The Hobbit' three times, intermitently cracking open to my favorite parts to get me through bouts of depression - knowing each time I read it, that I will never regret my decision to leave the mainstream of preppy cliques and go out on my intellectual own.

Silver Lining

In my life, I have never really had a constant object to keep near me as a security blanket - any objects I held in reverence have long since been tossed into the trash by my father without a second glance, along with many other valuable (memories-wise) items belonging to my brother and mom.

However, there is one item that sits, even now, on the topmost shelf of my dresser, that was gifted to me when I was thirteen, probably the worst age of my life. Around the neck of a tye-dyed purple Beanie Baby is a small, tarnished gold cross, it's white and red gems half-missing as it sits quietly surveying the bric-a-brac that clutters my room.

I don't remember exactly when it was given to me - I think it was right before Christmas Eve, immediately before my mom and I recieved our flu shots. That night, both my mother and I became ill, purportedly after-effects the flu shots, though my mother was the only one feeling better the next morning. I quickly became less and less willing to eat, and had little to no energy to move from our couch in the living room. By the time my father's Office Christmas Party rolled around, I was lethargic and could do little more than sleep all day. After a few hours, my mother called home to check on me, and immediately ran home, sensing something was wrong. The next morning, I was hauled out to the hospital, crying with the effort of walking, and was immediately admitted with pnemonia. As they prepared a room for me, I remember pulling the cross from my neck and handing it to my mother for safe-keeping. Somehow it ended back on my neck, where it stayed for the next seemingly endless week as I struggled to breathe and, at one point, completely stopped eating. My mother stayed with me the entire time, refusing to go home to sleep and literally holding me up as I was forced to walk around the halls to help my lungs. By the time I finally regained my appetite, half the gems in the cross were gone, having been worn out and off by my continued tossing and turning as I lay in the hospital.

As soon as I got home, the cross was taken off and disappeared for a long while - it wasn't until I moved back to Lincoln from Illinois with my mother and brother that I found it again, packed in with a going-away Beanie presented to me from one of my only true friends from the hell-hole of a Catholic school I'd attended in Illinois. I carefully wrapped the necklace around the Beanie's neck, and it has stayed there for the last almost six years, a constant reminder that no matter how hopeless and miserable I feel, there is always a way through - everything will be alright in the end, even if I have to endure a period of misery before the 'silver lining'.

Thanks, mom and Mary-Beth.

Only An Elephant

The first time I saw the small, ivory elephant - swaddled safely inside a clear, white film canister stuffed full off cotton balls - I nearly mistakened it for one of my teeth. Clutching the elephant tightly in my eager 5-year-old hands, I held it out to my mother, asking what it was.

As she held it up to the light, I was able to make out the small carvings of an eye, tusks, and trunk embedded in the ivory, the entire figure small enough to sit comfortable on the face of a dime.

When my great-great-grandmother was a young girl, her father took her to the circus, where she was terrified of the giant, powerful elephants parading around the ring. Shortly afterwards, her father came home with the ivory elephant, saying, 'See? Not so scary - it's only an elephant.'

After that day, the ivory elephant became a reminder to my great-great-grandmother to keep everything in perspective - never to let yourself be intimidated by a problem. Eventually, she handed the elephant down to my mother, who carried it faithfully to every one of her law exams to help her keep each situation and problem in perspective.

One day, I was told as the elephant was packed carefully back inside it's canister, I will inherit this small beacon, and until then, whenever I feel worried about some impending deadline or problem in my personal life, all I have to do is think back to that small, ivory carving waiting patiently in the back of my mother's closet and remember - it's only an elephant.

RhetResponse to 'Never Too Late'

The video for 'Never Too Late' by Three Days Grace relies heavily on pathos, compare/contrast and metaphor, while kicking logos completely out the window at times.

Compare/Contrast is used extensively throughout the video, flashing between peaceful scenes from the asylum ward's childhood and her chaotic life in the asylum. In the scenes featuring the inmate as a child, the audience is given a strong dose of pathos from the overly loving, cookie-cutter family she dances with in an ideal child's room, which serves to make the agony-ridden face and frantic efforts of the girl as an asylum ward, being physically torn away from her mother and bound to her bed to keep her from hurting herself or others.

Metaphor is also extremely prevalent in this video - the butterfly, a metaphor for freedom as it lands next to the girl, bound to her bed - the angel, possibly a personification of the mental retreat the girl forced herself into to escape the abusive nature of her father - the black handprints that appear all over the young girl and her bedroom walls, leading back to the father and acting as a physical representation of his abusiveness towards her - and the hands of the father than materialize in stead of the hospital restraints, representing both a physical and mental entrapment of the girl who has gone insane from a childhood of abuse.

This is also where logos gets almost drop-kicked out the window - much of the video's storyline plays out along the lines of Lewis Carrol's 'Alice in Wonderland', with the girl's memories changing to things that can't possibly be real or are highly unlikely, including the angel in the corner of her room, the parents with the band-aid eyes, the black hand-prints all over the girl and her room, and, at the end, when the girl apparently has been lying on a bed parallel to the floor or is walking straight up the wall from her bed.