Farwell RWS

One of my all time favorite bloggers, Coco J. Ginger, once said “I don’t want to go viral, I want to set hearts on fire.” This defines my blog life, and yes I surely do have a blog life. For me, blogging has always been a place to release my mind; it’s a place for me to express my strife, my successes, and my pains – not even necessarily for anyone to read, but for me to be able to look back on (looking back on life is something I do often). My blogs are also a home for me to express my “writer’s voice,” as my high school English teachers would call it. In all ways that a blog can be comforting, it is to me, so when I was told to create a blog for my RWS 100 class, I was honestly really excited. I didn’t take much time to personalize it in the beginning, but I added a few things to make this blog feel more like home to me. In this blog post about my blog, I will explain how I used the layout styles of color and images to persuade my audience as well as explain a particularly popular post and the rhetorical strategies I used for it.

            Upon choosing a theme for my blog, I wanted it to really represent me considering the fact that I was in a class full of people I did not know; I wanted to make it so that it would speak for me. Color is a crucial detail for me and has been since I studied the psychology of color. A pale aquamarine is the color I chose for my background because it evokes the enhancing of creativity and inspiration along with calming and balancing the mind and emotions. An emerald green is used for my quote at the top of the page that states, “It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way,” a quote by Ernest Hemingway and a quote I really love – it represents my view on writing and it fits in with the fact that the blog is for a writing class. I chose an emerald green for the quote because that color signifies inspiration and an abundance in emotional well being and creativity, fitting because I consider this quote to be very inspiring as it pushes me to believe that writing is a skill that is learned, therefore pushing me to study really hard in writing classes, but it also tells me that when learned and used right, people will think you’re born with it. The last apparent color on the blog is a lime green used for the post titles and it embodies playfulness, youthfulness, and naivety, all of which I feel are a part of my personality and represent me well. Color is a tool of persuasion because of its mental impact on the human brain. Color changes how we feel when we look at objects, for example being in a red room is much different vibe than being in an earthy green room. Vibe is what I wanted color to do for my blog, I wanted my blog to come off as a calming, trusting, and not too bold but not too subtle vibe that invites viewers to look and make them feel tranquil when reading.

In addition to color playing a large role to the persuasion of my layout, I also added interactive fish that viewers can feed at the top of my blog. I have these fish in my personal blog as well and to me they represent my hunger for the world. These fish swim around all day waiting to be fed and when they are fed (by clicking on the pond) they frantically swim towards the food and no matter how much “food” they are given, they never stop eating. That’s how I view my consumption of the world and it’s teachings; I will never stop learning. Where to place the fish on my blog is also symbolical. Since birds prey on fish, I thought that positioning the fish underneath the birds would symbolize how vulnerable I still am from the dangers of the world. Another image on the blog is at the way bottom. It is a picture of my face from an amateur photoshoot years ago with the quote, “a little lost, a little found.” My face defines this quote as I stare both blankly and passionately at the camera and that exact juxtaposition defines me. I am neither lost nor found, but I am looking. Adding a picture of myself helps create credibility in my blog. It’s me opening up to the world my identity, something many bloggers conceal. It’s a picture that is mysterious but still real and that’s exactly how I want my blogger persona to be portrayed. It’s my face, my blog, my voice, and my life – and that is what I want viewers to see both in my RWS blog and my personal blog.

A post that I am particularly proud of in my RWS blog is my “Superwoman” post. The assignment was to find a picture, explore the rhetorical strategies used in it, and explain how those strategies helped convey the message of the image. In my explanation, I used very strong diction to make bold conclusions, pathos to help the reader feel what I felt when I saw this image and I also applied identification to increase my connection with the audience of freshmen’s who also find sexual temptation to be very everywhere in college. I left my personal opinion at the end to close the post because I wanted it be strictly business before I went into how it personally affected me, employing the cause and effect strategy. I found this to be very effective because it got the most comments on out of all of my blog posts. Death by aids is a subject that is sensitive and hard to accept, but I found that through strong uses of rhetoric, death by aids could be portrayed in a way that will push people to have a realization of how important protecting oneself is – that was my goal when I was writing this post and I feel successful through the comments that were left. A student commented that, “this ad is incredibly eye opening to me especially at this point in life,” making me feel as though my identification strategy worked well. Making my writing relatable and interesting to the reader is something I’ve always strived for in all of my works.

Having a blog in this class has been a great way to create a connection amongst all the students and to feel personally connected to the assignments. We can look at each other’s blogs and see personality emulating from it, along with reading their opinions on certain topics we were assigned to talk about. I think this was a great way to communicate to each other in class and get to know each other a little bit more. My personal blog has been one that I’ve been maintaining since 2011 and I will continue to post on it as life continues to send me on journeys. I want to thank Professor Brooks for giving us the opportunity to express ourselves in a judgement-free place, our blogs.

P.S. feel to check out my personal blog anytime! farewell RWS classmates!

I'm a Michigan Girl

Having been born and raised in Michigan, a gun right in front of me doesn't even phase me.
In fact, my dad is probably sitting in the garage cleaning out his hunting rifle right now.

Well what can I say? It's hunting season! It's the time of the year where my dad disappears for about a week and then comes home with coolers full of deer meat and a receipt from a taxidermist. To everyone in my family, this means that we'll be having venison for awhile and another addition to our wall of deer heads. Trust me, I know it's weird.

I have nothing against guns. In fact, I support the 2nd amendment. We have a right to bear arms. However, I completely agree that we have to redefine who "We" are when it comes to the right to bear arms. Not anyone can have a gun. Background checks, course requirements, gun safety tests, all these of things need to administered before anyone is given a gun.

In my parent's home, my dad has about 4 safes filled with guns ranging from all different types. He has a few hunting rifles, even a bow and arrow (I have no idea why), and some hand guns too.
No one in the family has access to the guns but him; no one knows any of the safe codes. All I know is that each safe has a different code. My dad is very protective of the guns when it comes to protecting his family, not only from potential enemies, but from us getting hurt by having access to it.

This summer, I am going to get licensed for a small handgun. Why? It's not even necessarily because I feel protected with a gun, but because it's kind of just apart of my life. I have to get licensed in order to go hunting with my dad!

Having a gun comes with a lot of responsibilities and those who are responsible do not neglect this. I have no solution, all I know is that if America can manage to let guns into the hands of only responsible people, then things would be better.

I'm a Michigan girl and guns are apart of my life.

Recreational gun usage can be safe

Breathe Me - Sia

Breathe Me - Sia

This song has been played 272 times in my itunes. And for every time that the song has been played, it was played for my sadness. The song provokes my inner weakness; it brings out from within me the pain that I tend ignore. Sometimes I just have to let it out.

I play this song whenever I'm feeling sad, lonely, helpless, lost, or in emotional pain.

Help, I have done it again
I have been here many times before
Hurt myself again today
And the worst part is there's no one else to blame

The first verse is the hardest to accept. I can only play this song when I've accepted my mistakes as my own doing. And commonly, I make the same the mistakes over and over again, hence the "I have been here many times before." The pain I feel is mine, and usually it's self inflicting - never directly and not physically - but the risks I take are my decision and the backfire is for me to endure because I made that decision.

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small and needy
Warm me up
And breathe me

This is the confession of weakness. A friend, comfort, security, warmth - these are the things I need in a time like this. The strongest line to me is "and breathe me" as in breathe life into me because I've lost it all. Sometimes that's what I need, I need someone to breathe life into me when I feel as if I can't stand on my own two feet anymore.

272 moments of sadness seems like a lot for an 18 year-old girl, but don't worry - the number's high because I put it on repeat!

A Special Quote

“What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Lord Henry Wotton) 

I love this quote not only because of what it says, but also because of whom it came from. 

Lord Henry is a cynical, selfish, and corrupted man who attempts to corrupt Dorian Gray. However, towards the end of the book, Lord Henry makes this statement, and it was a huge break through moment in the book. This was the first time Lord Henry displayed some truth, some deep substance that wasn’t vain and wasn’t imperious. It was real. It shows how Lord Henry, over time, has perhaps come to regret the life choices and views he had.

This connects to me because it makes me want to never regret the way I live my life; I never want to trade my soul to gain the whole world. In a sense, however, I have already attempted this once before. Of course, I didn’t actually lose my soul or gain the world, but I did change myself to fit amongst people whom I thought I needed to be friends with. In the end, I wanted nothing from them because nothing was real. And in the end, I was miserable because I realized that I had no real friends. I chose popularity and fake friendships over having real friends who loved me and was kind to me.

Lord Henry is a classic example of what happens when you choose to chase fame and money instead of love and kindness; you realize that the fame means nothing and that all you want is love and kindness. This quote reflects deeply into me because I have already made my mistake, and now I heavily value love and kindness. But unlike Lord Henry, it wasn’t too late for me to change!

What I Think About Jared Diamond's Talk

Well, for starters, the first thing I thought of once I grasped the theory is, "that makes sense."

It wasn't something that I was initially particularly excited to read. I do find his life and his passions very admirable and I envy the world experience that he's set out to have, but I did not connect to the text very well because I have not been exposed to evolutionary arguments before. I'm the type of the person that doesn't really look back. Knowing how things became is useful to human history, but whether its theory X or theory Y, either way I'm still standing here living my life.

I respect Diamond for his theory: his logical appeals, his deep thoughts, and his rationalization. The way he breaks up his sub-claims makes it very easy to read, and his tone and informal diction as well. When he talks about how animals and plants were able to spread east and west because they were "encountering the same day-length and climate to which they were already adapted," it clicked in my mind how much sense that made and it made me wonder why no one else thought of this before and instead used races to explain it? Perhaps it goes back to David Foster Wallace's claim that we are naturally selfish. So whoever did it first, was the best. It was the race against races. But the fact that Diamond is introducing the idea that it was the race against location and that people just simply took advantage of it, is, in the scientific world, perhaps risque since he is challenging an old (but outdated) theory. Excuse MY risque language but I can't seem to think of a better way to say it: Diamond's got brains AND balls.

I would have connected stronger with his theory if it was something that I was ever interested in, but I was born with a brain for writing, speaking and creativity. Science and math has never really been on my side, and I can easily prove that with my high school transcript!

Precis: This Is Water

David Foster Wallace, an American novelist, in the 2005 Kenyon commencement speech, "This Is Water", claims that the students have graduated with a degree that has taught them how to think, but it is now up to them to decide what to think, and based on that, what they think will determine how they see the world, which in the end, is "the freedom of a real education." Wallace supports his claim by telling an anecdote that follows with the illustration of a hypothetical situation or personal experience. The speaker's purpose is to remind the graduates to "stay conscious and alive in the adult world" by being aware of their surroundings and recognizing that this world doesn't revolve around them, that if they take a step outside of their "me" zone, they will experience a world less miserable, and that the power to think and make choices is a lifetime job, in order to help them learn to deal with "boredom, routine, and petty frustration" that comes along with being an adult. The author writes in casual, sometimes humorous, and sometimes blunt tone for the graduates, which appeals to their youthfulness, in addition to his tones applying in relation to his speech: sometimes life is casual, sometimes life is funny, and sometimes life is a blunt smack in the face.

Superwoman

The argument: Even Superwoman is helpless to aids.

The ad makers have placed an image of a very powerful, strong, battle-fighting figure we are all aware of as Superwoman in a setting that we are also very aware of as a room of fear, death, and weakness. The juxtaposition of the two come together to form an ad of awareness and warning for aids is a battle even Superwoman can't win. 

Many rhetorical strategies are put at play here in this ad to grip our attention. By placing Superwoman in the ad, the strategy of authorities is applied in order to make us, the ad readers, recognize that "aids make us equal"; that whether human or superhuman, we are all susceptible to aids. Cause and effect is also being used, but not so much in an obvious way. Unprotected sex can cause aids. An image of sex is not necessary for the audience to make that connection because this cause and effect is not breaking news. The ad serves as a reminder, not a scientific break through. In addition, the way that Superwoman is posed, the lost expression on her face, the gray filter placed on the picture to add grimness, the depth and darkness of her eyes, the thinness of her arms and face, the IV, the way her right hand is placed in an attempt to grip using her very last strength, the loneliness - these all serve under the description and pathos rhetorical strategy. When both used together, the purpose is to personify a Superhuman into a normal human being. It makes us think, that could be me. In addition to pathos, perhaps the reason why Superwoman was chosen instead of Superman is because women, when seen in pain and helplessness, stirs in men the desire to help, while in women, it stirs the feeling of relativity - women feel for other women's pain. As for ethos, the ad displays one little symbol that says enough - the red ribbon. The red ribbon is a symbol for AIDS.gov, and especially for it being a dot-gov website, we are given a sense of credibility and trust because this ad was created through a government organization. In relation to trust, examining the motive of the ad increases that trust. Why would the government take the time and money to invest into creating this ad? Was it to decorate the streets of America? No, the image serves to inform and remind. The motive is to inform and remind.

I was moved by this image because of the truth it speaks. As college freshmen, we are vulnerable to many college temptations. And though some nights may be the time of our lives, we should protect ourselves so that one awesome night doesn't create a living hell for the rest of our lives.