Playing Favorites

So what is my favorite type of essay structure?

Well.... as much as I see the importance of writing with a style that gives credit to opposing sides, I personally prefer the Classical style, for the sole reason that it is basically a debate format. Haha, so in all honesty, i just like a good debate, I appreciate a well put together argument with solid points and an objective tone, and I especially like the Classical style's inclusion of a rebuttal type section to "throw away" any "strong" points an opposition may think they have.


What a satisfying feeling to know you came out on top in a good debate.
What a good essay format.
It even sounds classy.... "Classical", how nice.

Summer- Izing

The following is a video, it is a comedy video made by a snowboarding movie maker from Whistler BC, Robjn Taylor. The video consists of a quick progression throughout a year in Robjn's life, making outrageous, yet hilarious, claims as to how he spent the year. Despite his unique.. and very strange comedic styling, he has claimed quite a vast internet fan base, and continues to make comedy shorts out of his home town.
The video starts off with the claim that he was working on a crossword puzzle, and when he can't find a certain word, puts the crossword puzzle aside and distracts himself with other activities for a full year. In the end, he makes quite an interesting discovery, bringing the story to a close.

"Streblo"
or
"Too Much Pistachio Pudding Makes Me Feel Sick" By Robjn Taylor





Anyways, if you chose to watch the movie even after reading the above description then you must have made a summarizing opinion in favour of it. What YOU as the reader did was look at a brief overview, and summarized, a common tool used by readers of writings (and blogs! which kind of falls into the category of writings, so lets move on).

Anyways, I know I summarize many things, I never judge a book by anything but it's cover, and if a movie doesn't have a flashy poster? then no deal. Same goes with people, Quick summary, and you are set. It's called first impressions, watch out!

The end (of this post)

****I claim no responsibility for the video, i think it's funny no more, i was not involved in it's creation, conception, filming or editing. I do my own work thank you very much

I just thought it was funny.

My Reaction to J.H.P's writing

Okee Dokee, What did I think of J.H. Plumb's writing style?

Well, I like it personally. As a matter of fact, today in class while my group was trying to decide how to start our paragraph (that we had been contemplating together), I (believe it or not) actually (no joke) referenced (for real) the tone of J.H. Plumbs "The Dying Family" as a suggestion on how we should/could/would write our paragraph. True Story

As a result, I approve and enjoy J.H.P's writing style, and would not restrain from using such methods in my own writing.

Yep.

An Interesting Paragraph

What I have learned about helping the Audience follow my writing.

Keep it simple (stupid).

Essentially in class I have Learned that the best way to keep a reader interested in what I am saying, (no matter what it is about), is making sure that in that the opening paragraph has a few certain things. These things are important because they keep the reader interested, they can be varied in different ways, particular methods that are exciting enough to keep the reader following along, until the thesis. I felt that this is an important skill and recognize it's importance. I Believe, (which I know you may not) that a good paragraph will have that certain thing that will "grip" the reader. Examples of these, (that we learned about in class) include the use of examples and humorous anecdotes, statistics, etc basically anything that will grip the readers attention soon, especially a strong thesis statement, one that doesn't flop about.
Now if you are reading this far, you will have (hopefully) recognized the above paragraph as being the most uninteresting, repetitive, rambling that is an example of a BAD paragraph, and for your dedication to read the entire thing (despite how painful it might have been) impresses me.
This is how I chose to illustrate that point, by showing that I recognize how horrible a paragraph can be without the elements that grip a reader.

Other classes??

Hmnm.... oh Prof Enz, you are always raising the bar for difficult topics to randomly write about in the blog. Today? Happens to be "What is an Issue that you are discussing in ANOTHER class", interesting topic indeed, not only is the question one that requires a good answer, but it's ALSO one which causes us to think about our work outside of English, bravo, bravo.

Anyways, a discussion we've been having in another class would be.... Ah, well in Philosophy we are discussing the "Value of Philosophy" (for a brief time, we will soon move into arguements about the existance of God), but at the moment it's been discussion about whether Philosophy is worth learning at all. Personally I'm loving it, that class is the most interesting class I have been in since kindergarten I think. Anyways.... I can't quite remember how long this was supposed to be, and truth be told, this is being done in a rush so I havn't been able to put too much thought into it, but thats the answer to the question. Philosophy, is it worth it.

Thats all.

Champions

What do I think of editing others peoples work? Well... in all honesty I bit bad about it haha, you see, the entire time I'm reading someone else's work (with the purpose of "correcting" it), I feel overly judgmental. As if "I could write this better". Which I guess is a good attitude to have, seeing as the entire purpose of this course is to "write better", and presumable "write better than what is being written now", but you see, I'm tempted to completely erase everything they wrote and just rewrite it with newly elaborated points, and quite frankly, a more interesting thesis.

I guess everyone writes differently.

Todays experience in particular was an interesting one, because the paragraph I was reading spoke about last years Ironman triathlon, and how inspiring the author found one of the athletes who had collided with a volunteer quite seriously. What was inspiring was how this participant got back on his bike, kept going.... (how inspiring indeed...)
Except for the fact (which the paragraph failed to mention) that that volunteer was seriously hospitalized....
I remember hearing about it on the news.

"I-AM-IRONMAN"

What is a problem, hmm

What is a problem that many first year students have? Well... there are definitely many problems.... problems getting parking, problems getting homework in on time, some first years even have problems setting up a blog! But, for the sake of this assignment I'll choose one particular "problem", now, at the risk of sounding cheeky, I'll say that a common problem that first years have is; figuring out what to write about in generally open assignment (*Gasp* Such as this one!). You see, the problem with most open assignments is that it forces the first year student to all of a sudden think outside the box, no outline, no pre-meditated structure, just "write about this general topic, your opinion". Now, although it is only apparent in a select few, opinions are something that every first year student does in fact have, many just have trouble figuring out how to present them towards the professor. There are two main reasons for this hesitation in speaking out. The first of which being an uncertainty in the teachers marking style, ("Is this a teacher who will appreciate the way in which i am approaching this?"), second of course is the reaction of the professor, ("Will the professor appretiate WHAT I'm approaching, let alone how"). The result of these hesitations, and possibly fear instilled in the student by the professor, is quite commonly a complete lack of self confidence in any answer that the first year may have been opinionated about, and in a chain reaction causes the student to have trouble figuring out what he or she should write about at all.

For your enjoyment.

What do I expect?

What do I expect from this course? Well... for one I expect that it will consist of writing, possibly in a "University or College" style, secondly I expect that I will find, (possibly an less than prefferred discovery) that my writing needs improvement. As a matter of fat, I expect (possibly) that Prof. Enz. will probably want us to go back at the end of the semester and read over what we have written at the beggining, then critique our own work! So in a sense, even writing this, and every assignment that we will have, is only setting ourselves up for the eventual realisation that we came into this class... (well, I came into this class) compleetly unpreepaired fore kollege riting.

The Beggining.