Writing process

To write a good paper, there are two things that I must have, the first thing is music, and the second thing is time. When I write a paper I must finish it in one shot, I can not stand starting a paper, then walking away and trying to  restart writing. music is also a key, having an iPod in blocks out all other noise and distractions and allows me to write freely uninterrupted. Music is very inspirational and often helps me to continue with ideas or even gives me brand new ideas, that turn into key points on a paper. These are basically the only things that I need to write a decent paper and if all of these criteria are met my papers usually turn out alright.

School Blog post.

All of the things we have been reading and listening to in class, seem to point to the fact that american students are lazy and unmotivated compared to students from other countries,such as china and India. But how can we know if this is true, in the movie 2 million minutes the students they chose to follow could easily have been oddities in china and India, even though the Children said that they were normal, it is impossible to know if this is true, the movie also never gave hard facts about how far behind we are as a nation, all of the facts related to amount of study time or something similar, and as we know, the amount of time spent studying or doing schoolwork does not necessarily mean that the work is high quality or even beneficial. If 2 million minutes had given hard facts as to how far behind we were as a nation, it would add more credibility to the film, as opposed to showing the total number of hours spent studying. Grades also do not correlate with human interaction, their can be straight A students who cannot work well with others, or are very anti-social, which will make interviewing and finding a job much harder. As with any argument it is important to look at all sides of the spectrum and not just see it from one direction, just because kids in India and China are graduating more engineers does not mean those engineers are skilled or good at their job. i would rather have 10 flawless engineers than 100 bad ones.

Emoticons

In class on Friday we read an article about emoticons. these articles stated that the use of emoticons was a waste of time and made you look stupid, in some cases it said that emoticons are often changed when sending email depending on what type of email you have adding typos and random gibberish to emails. What do i think about emoticons? i personally believe that when emoticons are used sparingly and correctly they can be very beneficial to an email. emoticons allow for sarcasm or jokes to be interrupted correctly. a winky face after line that is meant in a joking tone can make a large difference. adding a smiley or other emoticon can differentiate between offensive and joking very easily. But i do agree that using emoticons can deteriorate emails that are meant to be professional, when sending a email to a friend  believe that it is acceptable to use emoticons sparingly , but when emailing a boss coworker or teacher emoticons should be left out. Emoticons are something that are hear to stay, but if people begin to use them less they will retain a larger meaning and not make the users look stupid.

Obama Speech

This Speech is very different than MLK's speech that we watched in class, Obama starts of much less formally and his voice does not rise and fall the way MLK's does, but although they are different Obama as president is still an expert public speaker. His gestures are used rarely but when they are used they are extremely beneficial he also seems to be very calm throughout his speech. this may be due to fact that that both men were talking about extremely different things. Obama uses a good combination of pathos, ethos, and logos in an attempt to motivate students to improve and do their best in school. This speech, although not quite as powerful as MLK's I Have a Dream still provides motivation for students teacher and all citizens to work hard and strive to be the best all of the time.