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.

Homosexual Bishop in the Episcopal Church

I have decided to do my unit two project on the Episcopal Church’s decision to allow a homosexual man to be a bishop in the church. Last year the church voted at assembly to allow Reverend Gene Robinson to be ordained as a bishop in the church. This sparked a large amount of uproar outside of and within the Episcopal denomination. This decision has also sparked many to revolt in a way against the church. The Anglican cycle that the American Episcopal Church used to belong to has now, for the most part kicked them out. Some diocese, like my own has requested to leave the American Episcopal church so that they can stay in communion with the rest of the world. This has been granted and the churches that do this will now be called Anglican. This one decision to allow Gene Robinson to be a bishop will in turn affect the lives of thousands. I personally am very attached to this decision because as stated before, I belong to one of the churches that do not condone this decision made by the American Episcopal Church. There was a great deal of media coverage over the decision so I think it will be fairly simple to find good quality media arguments for and against this topic. I am looking forward to researching this topic considering it really hits home to my family and I.

Cartoonist Makes Fatal Mistake

This cartoon appeared in the New York Post in the cartoon section on February 18th, 2009. Since its appearance it has sparked hundreds of conversations and blog postings because of its intense controversy. The cartoonist is clever is the way that he linked two large news stories together in one cartoon, the stimulus package and the current shooting of a chimp that was a member of a family that went wild and almost killed a family friend. The police unfortunately had to shoot the animal because it could have caused more damage. To my knowledge, the woman is still in critical condition. The intended audience was readers of the New York Post, however many of them were highly offended by this because of its apparent racial slur. Logically, the cartoonist simply is trying to connect two pressing news matters and combine them together for a laugh. Delonas claims that he never meant to make the racial slur that he did by comparing African Americans to chimps, but he made an ethical blunder by not realizing that this was exactly what the cartoon did. The cartoon repulsed many emotionally because of the apparent racial zing. In today's age, it is completely inappropriate to compare a black man, much less the president of the United States, to a wild animal that almost killed a woman. The cartoon made a much larger impact because it was in a very credible newspaper. If this had been in a very conservative magazine with a very small circulation, people would not have been shocked or thought twice of it, but because it was put in the large and credible New York Post, the response was staggering. The reprecussions that will follow because of this cartoon are sure to be large. Many are trying to get Delonas along with the editor fired. Delonas was undoubtedly trying to funny and clever and claims that he never meant for the cartoon to be racial, but nevertheless that is how the majority of readers saw it and the responces continue to flood in with responces to this emotionally damaging and thoughtless picture.

In class: thinking rhetorically

I found the definition of "rhetorical" to be a bit challenging. The book defines a rhetorical analysis as a close reading of a text to find how and whether it works to persuade. The rest of the chapter goes into deep discussion on the variety of different text that can be used to persuade while emcompasing the previously discussed pathos, ethos, and logos. Which was all pretty self explanatory. The part that really confused me a little bit was when it stated, "Don't be surprised when your rhetorical analysis itself becomes an argument. Tha'ts what it should be." A few pages later, chapter five was very helpful by giving a quite to writing a rhetorical analysis. As far as unit two goes, i am very comfortable with the first two steps, which is choosing a topic and find different sources for the topic. I am thinking i would either like to do Obama's decesion to close gitmo, which falls into my major category, or the decision of the episcopal church to condone a homosexual bishop and the decision of some of the diocese including my own, to leave the episcopal church and rejoin the Anglican communion because of it. I know i will be able to find plenty of information on this, im just a little confused on how to put it all together with my claim and proposal an how to organize it.

The Pathos, Ethos, and Logos of Fieldstone

The barn, Fieldstone, makes many different arguments. I believe that the barns strongest Pathos argument is that it appeals to those who love horses. No one is out there, except for when we have one of our games, that isn’t deeply moved by horses and cares about them very much. Another Pathos argument that the people who work at Fieldstone make is their relationship with their boarders and with us. When they go out of their way to be nice to those who pay to stable with them I believe that they are appealing to our emotions in attempt to make us continue to stay there. Fieldstone also makes many Ethos arguments, the first being that riding horses takes place there. Many do not believe that horses should be ridden like we ride them or ridden in general. By allowing this to happen on their facilities, they are displaying that they condone this behavior. Another argument, which is not as accepted, is their treatment of the horses. By letting some of the horses get turned out in dangerous pastures, not turning the hot wire on to contain them, and by not feeding adequately, they seem to be making ethical argument of apathy. This does not appeal to any of the team members and actually often upsets us. The final argument, logos, is pretty straight forward. Obviously the owner has many acres of land and a large barn with stalls, so it would therefore make sense for her to rent out those stalls to those who would like to stay there. With this, comes the hiring of stable hands to take care of the horses and the establishment. Also, because she has two rings to ride in, the space makes the argument that it would be practical for people to ride there and pay money to be taught lessons. Of course the barn makes many other arguments that I will continue to find with more research.

In class: analyzing visual objects

candy cigarette:
My attention is immediately drawn to the young girl holding the cigarette. I believe that my attention is draw to it because of the shock factor pathos argument that it makes. It also makes an pathos argument because most believe than eight year old should not be already smoking and it is not a practice that i and many others would advocate.
As i pan outward, i notice the other little girl. She makes it clear the the girl holding the cigarette is in fact not very old, yet she also makes the girl look much older. I think the picture is trying to portray that smoking ages you and take away the innocence. It is also integrating to seethe way the girls are dressed. it seems like it could have come right out of a country music video and that it was taken at night time on a farm in Alabama.
I think this picture tries to portray two things. First, like i said before, that smoking takes away innocence and that too many young people are now smoking. And second, that poverty and ruralness inspires smoking in young children. The young girl that has seemed to have to grow up too fast seems very mad at the world around her instead of seeming scared.
I think the photographer wants to preach against the young people smoking and that he/she want to increase awareness of children growing up too fast around us.

In class: logos

i found everything in this chapter pretty self explanatory. This chapter, to me, seemed the easiest to understand because its the type of arguments that we are the most accustomed to. In high school, i was in public forum debate. There are three different types of debate in Texas high schools, ld (which is based on ethos and pathos), cx (which is all logos with complete cramming of facts), and finally pfd (which involved pathos and logos) My partner and i foudn that we used a lot of logos arguments to actually stir the emotions of the judges. Examples of these include; facts, statistics, surveys, and testimonies, etc. The judge in pfd is a lay person, so we always found ti much easier to cram hard facts and logos arguments into their head. My partner was a more pathos debater and i added the needed logos. The only thing i found a tad confusing is when the book explained how Cultural Assumptions and Values could be a logos argument, but after class im sure i will better understand that. besides that, i found the chapter pretty straight forward.

In class: There is NO mad tofu disease

Today I brought in a button that says "there is no mad tofu disease" I, myself, have been raised on a ranch my entire life, and was completely supported by my parents cattle buying business. However, i couldn't really find any grand object in my own room, so I went next door to my roommate and best friends room and stole this button from her. She has this button because of a cute joke, but she displays it to make an ethical appeal. She has been a vegetarian since a very young age. It was not a decision that was pushed on her, but one that she chose willingly because she believes deeply that it is the right thing to do. However, she is by no means president of PETA. She rides horses, and is actually on the team with me. And just in case someone was unaware, her saddle and riding boots etc, are all made from leather. I think what makes her argument ethos instead of pathos is because her reasoning for being a vegetarian isnt "o poor cow". She is very unhappy with the way the meat industry is run. She believes that meat production is very wasteful of not only the animal but also of water etc. She has does large amounts of research on this and can argue with the best of debaters that eating meat is not ethically right. It really is quite funny that we are so opposite but yet best friends, but I believe that is because we dont let our emotions get in the way of our belief systems and can agree to disagree

Space Proposal

As I wrote in class, I am fairly certain that I will am going to use the barn that the TCU Equestrian team rides at for my pubic space. This barn is hidden outside of Mansfield Texas and has about the same emotional appeal to a horseback rider as a deflated football would have to Tony Romo. In most of the team members opinions, the barn is in chaos and is a complete disaster.
We currently board probably twenty horses at Fieldstone and I live in constant fear for their safety. First, they don’t even have enough stalls, so each horse has to share a stall with another horse. One horse will get it during the day, and the other will get it during the night. This can lead to many problems like the transmitting of diseases. I also can’t quite tell if they are actually feeding our horses or not because they all have seemed to drop an average of fifty pounds over the year.
The owner of the barn also doesn’t seem to like us too much and seems highly annoyed by our presence there. I feel like she thinks the girls are too snooty. This may be true, I myself even admit to turning up my nose to the way the business is being run. However, our attitudes usually have cause, if they aren’t jumping horses that are lame, then one of our horses is lost, or we can’t ride because they have chosen to water the arena right after a large rain storm has just occurred. For instance today, I spent most likely thirty minutes trying to locate one of our horses. The mare was supposed to be in her stall, considering she gets turned out at night, but she was of course mistaken for another and was off in a foreign pasture.
The pastures that the our horses are supposed to be turned out in, supposed being the key word, are actually not too terrible. However many of the other pastures are completely filled with debris. One time, my coach, actually had to untangle one of the owners ponies from a trash heap that it was trapped in. Also, many of them are enclosed by a simple hot wire, that I have never actually seen on. The horses could easily escape, which some have, and marched out to the highway that runs in front of the barn.
However, I seem to have a clearly very one sided opinion of Fieldstone. Besides the team, there are many other borders that keep their horses at Fieldstone and also take riding lessons from the owner. And even though I can never imagine stabling my horse at the location, there is something that seems to appeal to those who do. I plan to go out there at many different hours and observe the array of people that spend their time riding at this barn, and maybe after observing them, I will have a better understanding of the barn and its borders.

In class: Possible space

Im fairly certain that im going to use the barn that the TCU Equestrian team rides at for my personal space. This barn is hidden outside of mansfield texas and has about the same emotional appal to a horseback rider as a deflated football would have to tony romo. The barn is complete caos. We currently board probably twenty horses at Filedstone and I live in constant fear for their safety. They dont have enough stalls, so each horse has to share a stall with another horse. One horse will get it during the day, and the other will get it durignt he night. This can lead to many problems like the transmitting of diseases. i also cant quite tell if they are actually feeding our horses or not becuase they all have seemed to drop an average of fifty pounds over the year. The owner of the barn also doesnt seem to like us too much. I feel like she think the girls are too snooky. This many be true, I myself even admit to turning up my nose in the way the business is being run. However, our attitudes usually have cause, if they arent jumping horses that should enver be jumped, then one of ours is lost, or we cant ride because they have chosen to water the arena right after a large storm has jsut occurres

In class: Oh thursdays

I have started to really hate thursdays. Because im on the Equestrian team, we have to set up our schedule to fit the demands of practice and workouts. Usually I am able to take a few classes everyday in the morning and i am done by eleven and than i can go to practice. Well, it didnt workout liek that this year. Now, instead of rpacticing on every afternoon, i practice all day on monday,wednesday, and friday. I therefore have to go to school all day on tuesday and thursday. My weekends are fabulously lengthy, but my tuesdays and thursdays are tragic. Ever tuesday and thursday we get up at five forty five, and walk down to the DMC for workouts at six. After our two hour workouts, we then eat as a team, go shower, and then make in time for my nine thirty (English 20803), i then head off to one of my PR classes, follwoed by a communication in society class, and finalyl ending with a rivoting lecture from my presidency class. Its enough to shoot myself when the sya is done. However, because wednesday is our day off from workouts, i am now able to go out on tuesday nights, which is a cool little break in the middle of the week. I am not counting down the hours untill i can bust out of the "highschool" setting at 3:30 and get ready for a very long and needed weekend.

Thoughts from Obama

Every single class that I am taking this year is a Tuesday/ Thursday class. And they all, besides this class, felt the need to show the inauguration speech on Tuesdays. I, being a republican, assumed i would be completely annoyed by the time the day was done, but my feelings were actually quite opposite. President Obama actually made numerous compelling arguments throughout the twenty minute speech, and after watching for the third time, I felt that i began to understand what he was truly trying to argue. He made many different types of arguments during his speech that include informing, convincing, and exploring. He also discussed the the past, present, and future, and argued the actions that he thinks that the country should take. One of the first arguments that President Obama made was to explore he present circumstances of our country. He admitted that we are currently in a time of turmoil and compared it to a storm. This was very compelling because he didn't pretend like everything was going swell and that nothing needed to change. Another argument he made was to inform. He explained to many parties, including domestic and foreign, what he planned to do to rebuild this country. He also explained that America's responsibility was to lead this world and that under his leadership, he planned to retake that position. In my opinion, one of the best arguments that Obama made, was when he convince the American people that we can indeed be unified. He used the words, "we" and "our" to show that it was not him making the decisions but we as American citizens were embarking on this journey together. He also explained that if a nation can come together and put prejudices aside to elect a minority as president of our nation, then we can certainly all come together to rebuild what needs to be fixed. President Obama was also very smart to argue about how much he admires to heroes of the past, that compell him to strive for the future. I believe too often, many politians forget to pay mention to those who came before them, and I was very impressed by his reverance. In conclussion, the speech didnt have a "one-liner" that will follow Obama for years to come, however, it did convince many that, the Obama presidency will truly be a change for our country.

In Class: Whats an Argument?

Before listening to our class discussion and reading the first chapter in our book i defined an argument as soemthing that has two distinct sides. Throughout higschool, I debated, so that concept of an argument was drilled into my head. I believed that it was definitely not an argument if it didnt have two sides. Now i have learned that an argument can truly be just about anything. The book tells us that from what I wear, to the way i style my hair, all the way down to what i chose to eat this morning, makes an argument about myself. This is a hard concept for me to grasp. The section that spoke about the "purpose of argument" was also intersting because, before reading, i belived that the only reason that one mgiht argue was to win someone over. Now i know that are many other types of argumentsm an inviational argument, for example, is desgined to not win people over, but rather to invite them in. other arguments are simply there to inform or to make a statement. This new definintion of argument has already tought me that there is more to arguing than "pro" and "con".

In class: sweatshops, they could be a dream job

Today i decided to brign in an article about sweatshops. When Ms. Irvin told us to find an arguemnt, i went to the nytimes and looked under the "opinion" tab, because if gured there would eb an argument there. This was really jsut the first one that came up, but it was actually pretty intersting. The article explains that most of the time people view sweatshops as inhumane and a thing that needs to be eliminated. The obama administration has actually taken a stance on trying to do away with the "terrible exploitation of people in sweatshops aroudn the world"; however, the author of this argument says that sweatshops really arent that bad. He interviewd people whose dream is to actually be able to work in sweatshops. If you take away the sweathsops, you are taking away many of these people only source of income. He interviewd a 19 year old woman that said, "I’d love to get a job in a factory. At least that work is in the shade. Here is where it’s hot." This woman currently picks up plastic for the garbages and off the sides fo the streets for her source of income. He mentions other accounts on how a ten year old boy watch people get hit by the garbage trucks while they tried to pick up garbage to sell. The aurthor also argues that sweatshops are not the source of the problem and that if you eliminate them, then you are eliminating a solid source of income. True, the conditions could be better, but at the present time, he bleives that you shouldnt take away soemthing that many in the country only dream of having.

Introduction

Hi my name is Tassie Munroe and I am sophomore at TCU. I am originally from Waco, Texas, but I decided to come to TCU because I was offered a position on their Women's Equestrian Team. I am taking this course to fulfill my a core requirement; however, because this is the only English course that I plan to take at TCU, I hope it will help me with my major. I am currently a Political Science and Public Relations double major. In both of those fields, I will have to write a great deal, so I am hoping that this course prepares me well for that. Because I have not taken an English class since my senior year in high school, I feel that my writing skills have suffered a great deal. In my everyday life here at TCU, I find that the only type of writing that I do is through informal emails, text messages, or informative essays, in which my professors could care the least about my writing skills. I hope that this class will refresh my writing capacity and make it more correct and engaging. I have also read, understand, and agree to the terms of the syllabus for this course.