Academic Reflection:
Class started in the normal fashion. Students took their seats and Mangini jotted the T chart on the dry erase board. Mangini had told us why he had decided to change the course. I think he was starting to get a bit burnt out like the rest of us. I thought about how busy my midterm week was, but I imagine it was nothing compared to dealing with close to sixty students.
We spoke about rhetoric and rhetorical situation. Rhetoric is the effective means of communication and is also defined as the art of persuasion. We did a little “whisper down the lane” exercise. The sentence to remember and whisper was “A deep understanding of the rhetorical situation which include ethos, pathos, and logos, will enable you to construct a targeted and persuasive argument.” The sentence morphed into, “To understand a statement you have to understand pathos.” The purpose of the exercise was to help us understand how choice of words allows for better or worse memory.
We learned about rhetorical situation and the canons of rhetoric; logos (logic/text), ethos (credibility in the speaker or writer), pathos (emotion>perspective>audience) appeals to anger or fear, telos (purpose), and kairos (setting/context).
Next we talked about the use of a thesis statement as an entry point into essay structures. Mangini shared his TPS method with us, “Topic+position+support”.
Blog posts 15# (optional), 16# and 17# (mandatory) are due by next week. In class we will have a catch-up class and will be composing our room-for-debate essays. We will be having conferences with the professor.
Non-Academic Reflection:
This past week hasn’t been much out of the norm with the exception of Halloween. My 3 year-old son, Arthur, took his role of being Spiderman very seriously. When my wife, Shannon, attempted to dress our 2 year-old son, Simon, in his pirate costume we came to realize that the outfit was too small. Shan blew a gasket because the same thing had occurred last year. “You remember we went through this with the Kermit outfit??”, she asked. How could I forget? She darted off at the last minute to fix the crisis and find a costume. Simon was a panda bear by default as it was the last 2T costume that Target had in stock.
While his mother was out hunting down a costume, Arthur was in character. “Daddy, I have to go outside now. Darth Vader is out there. I have to save the day”, He said. Despite my efforts of keeping him in the house, he unlocked the deadbolt on the front door and proceeded to exit. As I grabbed and pulled him into the house he let out a holler, “Hey, Darth Vader! You’re a bad guy!”
Once my wife came home and Simon was decked out in his black and white panda one piece, we headed out the door to get the goods. Arthur had a hard time trick-or-treating at first, as he felt the need to point out every villain that passed us. “Daddy, that’s the Joker! Hey, Joker! You’re a bad guy!” Once he realized that we were walking up to houses to get candy his focus changed dramatically. He became determined, running from house to house. At first, Simon mostly sat in his mother’s arms. He was a little skittish and a bit freaked out by the ghouls. When he realized that he was walking around our neighborhood in the pitch black of the night, he became excited and started darting down the street. We had to work to keep up with him. We hit a few houses and headed back to the house to hand out candies.
My cousin, Ed stopped by to see the kids. After the boys were tucked in bed, we drank some pumpkin beer. The stuff taste like cloves to me, but hey, I’m trendy. Overall, Halloween was a great time. My parents usually come over for Halloween, but were on vacation in Key West.
I declined the optional GOP debate assignment. I’ve been in a slump with the writing. I know it would look good if I did the assignment. I know that it would help beef up my website. I also know that I work pretty hard and deserve a break. I honestly tried to watch the GOP debate, but I can’t stand the site of Chris Christy’s gobble neck for 2 hours. The only two GOP candidates I support are Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. The media calls them extremist constitutionalists. The government ridicules them. The public eats and regurgitates whatever horseshit the media feeds them. I’m not sure if these guys have a shot in hell, but I like them. If the media doesn’t endorse or like them, I think it may be a pretty good indicator that these guys could make a difference. Who knows?
On another note, on my downtime this past week I've been watching Ed Bassmaster on Youtube. Dude is hilarious!