In class: freewrite

Well the year is certainly winding down and much to my disliking i have discovered that going to nationals has put me very far behind in school work. Nationals took place all last week and it was one of those weeks that i thought would truly never end, it was certainly a marathon. Our English team ended up getting eighth, but our western team became reserve national champions! so that was very exciting! However, i was very disappointed with the response that was given to us when we got back to campus. Most students knew that we had won nationals last last year, so our placings this year seemed to disappoint them. Of course they do not take into consideration that a team winning the national championship two years in a row has yet to ever actually occur. Second place is not too shabby, and i believe that many need to see the reality in that.
Now that i am back on campus, after my week long sabbatical, which was anything but relaxing, i hope that i can muster of the energy to get through these next few weeks with success!

Unit 3 Proposal

For our Unit 3 Project, we have chosen to address the issue of the creation of a new Living Learning Center for LGBTQ (Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning students and their supporters) and the impact it would have on our community. We will be discussing whether or not this additional housing is in the best interest of all students and our community as a whole. We will talk about new concerns it has generated such as advocating separatism and segregation as well as the discrimination and prejudice it has created towards the homosexual community. We will do this through visual mediums with minimal captions such as political cartoons and video commercials. We will also use written texts like petitions, conversations, newspaper articles, headlines, and flyers along with explanations of our intended audience and context.
Our main concerns revolved around the possibility of offending others with out in one way or another based on the arguments we create. We also are concerned about our schedules matching to one another with regards to meeting outside of class to generate arguments.

In class: readign over chp 12

Well i might as well be quite honest. After being sick from the flu this week, i have two makeup test to do today and i frankly just didn't read. No need to rush through chapter 12 and try to figure out what it said and pretend like i know exactly what i am talking about because i do believe that you would see right through that. So today i chose honesty.. yay. however, i did just hear you say that the reading was about style. I'm sure my writing style could use some work, so i plan to read chapter 12 soon :)
Im sure this information could be very benficial because like i said before, my writing needs style work. Also, since its a group project we're going to have to put together all of our writting styles, so that'll be a toughy, maybe the chapter helps out on that aspect. Other than that, i havent the slightest, but im srue after i read the chapter, which will be soon, i will have a better insight on how it can help us with our group project.

My thoughts on Unit 3

I believe that our group worked very well together on Tuesday morning.  We were able to easily identify each of our strengths and weaknesses.  On that note, I was assigned the role of Lead Presenter.  I will be in charge of doing our 3rd type of argument and also writing out the what each person will say during our presentation.  Some of our group has a little bit of stage fright when it comes to presenting so i agreed to head that part up because in high school i did a lot of public speaking.  I am very excited about our group, they all seem like they will work very hard so that our group project is a great success!  The members of my group are Nick, Claire, and Steve.  

In class: The Horrors of Group Work

I havent had to do much group work since i have come to college, but this semester has certainly made up for that. All but one of my classes has a huge group work project due at the end of the semester. I am so sick of group work because i know that at least in one of the projects, i will most definitely be left hanging. In high school everyone wanted to be in my group because i was a very meticulous perfectionist and they knew that if they had done a halfassedjob then i would stay up all night and fix it until it was perfect. This is certainly what will happen to the group that i just mentioned. They actually make me wonder how TCUaccepts students, because there is no way that they should have gotten in. I hope that this group will be better, i know that they are certainly smarter :)
And ideal group situation, especially for this assignment would be one where we all come to the table with different talents. I feel that this project has many different parts and allows for many different "geared" people to contribute. We definitely need people that that are creative, structured, and speak well. Truly, if everyone works hard on it does there part, and are flexible towards one another, we really should be just fine.
With that being siad, this project allows for many differnt roles. I dont know if i fully understand it yet but from waht i do, i can imagine that a few basic roles will be needed. We will ofcourse need a manager of the group. The mananger is the one that emails us all and we send eveything that we have done to him or her with realtion to writing etc. The also needs to be a creative, considering that some of the texts have to be drawn of created visually. There also needs to be a good writer who can write teh purely ttextual text and put that one together well. Finally, there needs to be a charismatic who can truly lead the group when presenting our project to the class. We all also need to help write teh paper, but that alwasy seems liek it is more difficult to split up, so hopefully we can find a way to easily do that and then send it to the manager for editing and puttign togeher ec.

In class: Reflection

It is very interesting to look back and observe all of the topics that i have written about this semester. When we began, i didn't even know what pathos, ethos, and logos even were, much less how to use them to make an argument. We have also talked about an large assortment of different topics in this class. From my about me introduction, to mad tofu, to sweatshops, to a horse barn, and finally my latest discussion of a gay bishop. I very much like how i actually picked all of those topics, humorously enough. There was a great deal of freedom in this class, which i very much enjoyed, because it let me talk about issues and places that are imporatant to me instead of assigning an off the wall topic which didn't interest me at all. It is funny that very often during our assignments, i wouldn't realize truly the purpose of it until the assignment was completely finished, which in itself was a cool discovery.

In class: freewriting about ol' unit 2

My three text fit together because they offer different opinions concerning the decision on whether or not the fort wroth diocese should split from the episcopal church. All of my sources come from very passionate people who have clear opinion on whether or not there should be a split. As i explained it to on of the people who read one of my arguments, this is a classic "civil war" agreement, should Texas succeed from the union? Every author uses logical and emotional appeal to convey their points, and all are sure the mention the fact that the main reason for this rift is because of the ethical decision to allow a homosexual man to be a clergy of the church. On the other hand, the texts are all very different. They all use different techniques to prove that their side is correct. On of the arguments went out as a speech from a very high ranked official in the church, trying to connect to the poor, confused audience. The other is a blog from a fairly non-important person who educated himself to fully understand the problem at hand and is very adamant about the issue. And finally, the last is a simple reporter who is trying to simply convey, to the DFW citizens, the fact that a huge collision is about to take place.
There is a great deal of common knowledge that an audience must have when evaluating these arguments. The first is that there is a denomination in Christianity called the Episcopal Church. Seconds the Episcopal church is broken down into many diocese all over the world. Another forgotten assumption is that The American Episcopal Church stems from the European Anglican Church and what we all know as the Church of England. Each diocese is made of a bishop, who overseas, like a governor, all of the churches in his region. Over five years ago, at a national assembly, the Episcopal Church (TEC) voted to condone the ordination of an openly homosexual man into the clergy. Some of the diocese (regions), especially the more conservative ones, were appalled by this decision and it was consequently the straw that broke the camels back on the path that the church was taking to become more liberal. Because of this decision, some dioceses, including the fort worth diocese, have decided to leave TEC and rejoin the Anglican communion, because of this ethical decision.
These texts prove that America truly lives in a society of assertion. So many have claimed that America is truly the only place that would allow such a thing to happen on either side. The conservatives claim that only in America would we ever go against the teachings of the bible to be politically correct, and the liberals claim that only in America would any of the pompous conservatives actually think that they can leave the national church an take all of the church lands with them without payment. As the news writer said, this is truly going to be a fight till the end with every single little church being included in.