TOW 24

The New York Times recently wrote an article explaining the argument against headphones. The article begins by explaining how there has been a 33 percent increase in hearing loss in teenagers, and studies have shown that this derives from the over use of headphones. The article uses statistics and appeals to pathos in order to argue that people should use headphones less, however for the younger generation this argument is ineffective. The main premise of the article was explaining why the use of headphones became popular. It went through the history of world war II all the way up to current day. I think this makes their argument less effective because it spends a lot of time focusing on background information rather than how headphones can hurt hearing loss. Along with this, they constantly say that headphones have been causing this decrease in hearing loss but have no real evidence to back it up. The only solid piece of information they include is the 33% increase of hearing loss in teens. The article constantly refers to the people who need to use headphones as "children" putting an 'us against them' feel to the article which would repel teenagers from trusting the article. The appeals to pathos are somewhat effective, because it appeals to the fear people feel. Fear is one of the most effective feeling to appeal to because fear is what drives people to make changes. However, because their appeals are not backed up with evidence it causes their appeals to be questioned therefore non-effective. As a teenager, I read this article and will continue to use headphones the same amount, therefore it was not effective for me. I think they could have improved their argument if they included more statistics and studies that support what they are saying, focus less on background information, and increase appeal to pathos.

TOW 23

           Everyone experiences stress. It is inevitable. Of course, a certain level of stress is needed in everyone's life in order to have motivation to do something. However, often we get to the point where the amount of stress in our lives is too much to handle. The Guardian published an article on how to deal with stress. In How to Cope With Stress, the Guardian uses lists and credible people in order to effectively inform readers of how to cope with stress.

         The article is divided into 8 different sections, and each section is numbered with a subtitle. For example, "1. Recognize the symptoms," (para 2). By dividing the long essay into subsections, it makes it easier for readers to follow and comprehend. The 8 subsections become like a set of directions for the audience to follow. This helps The Guardian effectively explain to their audience on how to deal with stress. It is much easier to understand short sections, and pick up on the important highlights, rather than trying to figure out the steps on one's own in one big paragraph. 

          The Guardian also uses quotes from professors and specialists. For example, they include "Frank Bond, stress expert and senior lecturer at Goldsmiths College, University of London," and "Mike George who runs stress management courses for companies such as British Telecom and American Express" (para 1 and 4). Not only does the Guardian include the names of these people, but also what they do that makes them credible. This appeals to ethos, which helps make their article more convincing to readers. Having the information written in the article coming from people who are specialized in the field of stress makes the information provided more reliable. This helps the Guardian effectively deliver their information, because people are far more likely to take the information if they trust it. 

          The bottom line is, everyone deals with stress. The Guardian uses lists and credible people to make dealing with this stress easier for people. The important thing is to remember how much stress is good, and when it becomes too much. 

TOW 22

The New York times released an editorial about how virtual reality will become the next big thing. The editorial is built of three different people's opinions, and all of them argue that virtual reality is the best medium for connecting with people. This argument is effective because of the personal anecdotes that are included by each person. The first person's article was about her personal creation of a virtual reality involving bison. She described what it was like to see the bison running at her, and hear them as if she was standing in the middle of the pack. She described how she cared about bison in a way she never had before, because she felt like she was personally interacting with them. Virtual reality allowed her to feel like she was in the pack of bison as well. The second article is a personal experience from someone who experienced virtual reality through virtual reality goggles. The goggles put them in a scene where they felt like they were in a bar witnessing a bar fight. The participant described feeling real fear and concern and even tried to break it up. The virtual reality created a different feeling than what a recording of a bar fight could simply do. The third example was written by someone who was part of making a virtual reality movie about a survivor of Ebola. She described her experience as being the only way to tell this story, because it was the only way that viewers would be able to live her experience. All three of these stories are why the argument is so effective because it describes how virtual reality allows people to live an experience that they are not.

TOW 21 - Visual

Smoking is one of the most talked issues in America. Currently, only 17.8% of Americans smoke, but there are organizations that are trying to get that number lower. The visual I chose is an ad that encourages smokers to quit by arguing that their children will take after them and smoke if they see their parents smoking. This is displayed by showing crayons inside of a Marlboro cigarette box, and words across the ad saying "Do you want them to take after everything you do?" I think that this is one of the more effective ads that against smoking because it appeals largely to pathos. The majority of people with children are very protective over their kids and want what's best for them. In this day, there is no longer much debate over whether or not smoking is bad. Therefore, because even the smokers know it is bad, they don't want their children to smoke. I think by expressing this through crayons in a cigarette box is very effective because it makes people realize how their actions will effect their kids. Along with this, I think the argument is effective because it is one of the few that express how smoking effects others rather than just the smoker themselves. However, I think this can be a risky choice, because not everyone who smokes has children. Therefore, it greatly limits who the audience can be for this advertisement. If a large majority of smokers have children, then this ad will be very effective. However if the majority of smokers don't, then this ad may not be effective at all.

TOW 20 -IRB

The Glass Castle is an inspiring memoir written by Jeannette Walls. Her memoir takes us on an unbelievable journey through her life, beginning when she burned herself making hot dogs at age 3. Throughout the book, Walls takes us through the events of her life starting at early child hood through adult life. Her alcoholic father and mentally ill mother take her and her siblings all over America, causing Walls to face immense difficulties through poverty and neglect. What makes this memoir so interesting is the immense detail that Walls writes with which makes her memories read as if it were a novel. Through her incredible use of imagery and description, Walls is able to entertain her audience while still conveying her story.
The imagery included by Walls helps the readers connect and understand what had happened in her past In one scene, she describes an instance where her and her brother set fire to the house after playing with matches. She writes, "Dad had an arm around each of us. He said it was an incredible coincidence that he happened to be walking by. Then he pointed to the top of the fire where the snapping yellow flames dissolved into an invisible shimmery heat that made the dessert beyond seem to waver, like a mirage" (Walls 61). The imagery included helps readers be able to picture what happened during this scene which allows it to come to life. Being able to understand the scene fully helps Walls convey how the true events she writes about really happened and why they are important. Not only does she describe the actions of the fire, but also the actions of her father. This helps put the events that were occurring into context with how it effected her life. All of the imagery and detail helps the book flow smoothly, and create a moving story. This not only conveys her story but keeps readers intrigued as she tells it.
The immense description included by Walls effectively helps her tell her life to an audience. This memoir has an extreme importance to Walls, and her delivery of her story helps connect this importance with her readers.

TOW 19 - Argument

Society is constantly searching for a way to lower the amount of crime happening in our community. It is scary how many crimes are committed each day. The NY Times recently released an article on how to reduce crime. They claimed that raising the age that people are tried as a juvenile would help lower the rate. While I agree that raising this age would be beneficial to our society, it can only be raised to a certain extent.
The legal ages for being tried as an adult usually range between the ages of 14 and 16 years old. While I do not think crimes should be taken lightly, I agree that it is not logical to try someone as an adult who is not even legally an adult. The NY Times released studies in their article of how raising this age would be beneficial. One state raised the age to 18, and the number of people that were rearrested decreased by 39%. This is because the juvenile detention centers focused more on reform and helping these children learn. I believe that often children who commit crimes do not know better, and lack role models to teach them right from wrong. This being said, if they are still a child, then they have the chance to learn and improve. I think raising the age can significantly help. However this state is now talking about raising their age from 18 to 21. Focusing on reform can still be beneficial for people the age of 21 so this would also add to reducing the number of people who are rearrested. However, it seems like there needs to be a limit of what this age is raised to. What is keeping the age from being raised from 21 to 25? At some point, I believe that people need to begin to be tried as adults. I think the age should not be raised any higher than 21, because if you are old enough to legally drink, you should be old enough to prevent yourself from committing a crime.
That being said, I think the age should be no lower than 18. If society doesn't allow someone to vote, then they should not allow them to be tried as an adult. Clearly if their judgements aren't trusted enough to let them vote, then they have not developed strong enough judgment to act as an adult.
I think that raising the age will greatly benefit society by helping reform a larger amount of people. Kids still have their whole life ahead of them, even if they make a mistake. By being tried as a kid, they have the option to change, and start over.

TOW 18

           Everyone experiences stress. It is inevitable. Of course, a certain level of stress is needed in everyone's life in order to have motivation to do something. However, often we get to the point where the amount of stress in our lives is too much to handle. The Guardian published an article on how to deal with stress. In How to Cope With Stress, the Guardian uses lists and credible people in order to effectively inform readers of how to cope with stress. 

         The article is divided into 8 different sections, and each section is numbered with a subtitle. For example, "1. Recognize the symptoms," (para 2). By dividing the long essay into subsections, it makes it easier for readers to follow and comprehend. The 8 subsections become like a set of directions for the audience to follow. This helps The Guardian effectively explain to their audience on how to deal with stress. It is much easier to understand short sections, and pick up on the important highlights, rather than trying to figure out the steps on one's own in one big paragraph. 

          The Guardian also uses quotes from professors and specialists. For example, they include "Frank Bond, stress expert and senior lecturer at Goldsmiths College, University of London," and "Mike George who runs stress management courses for companies such as British Telecom and American Express" (para 1 and 4). Not only does the Guardian include the names of these people, but also what they do that makes them credible. This appeals to ethos, which helps make their article more convincing to readers. Having the information written in the article coming from people who are specialized in the field of stress makes the information provided more reliable. This helps the Guardian effectively deliver their information, because people are far more likely to take the information if they trust it. 

          The bottom line is, everyone deals with stress. The Guardian uses lists and credible people to make dealing with this stress easier for people. The important thing is to remember how much stress is good, and when it becomes too much. 

TOW 17

As an 11th grader, college is constantly on my mind. Over the past few months I've discovered dozens and dozens of colleges. So how do I know which one I should choose? An article published by SuperCollege was aimed to inform kids like me how to decide. In the article How to Choose the Right College, the authors use lists and metaphors in order to inform students on how to choose the right college.
SuperCollege uses lists in order to help their audience easily understand how to effectively choose a college. The article is split into three sections. 1. Imagine colleges are Neapolitan Ice Cream (Sounds strange but the description makes sense), 2. Seek out personal recommendations and 3. Focus on Academic goals. By organizing the article into three separate sections, SuperCollege simplifies the process of choosing a college to make it easier for their audience to process and follow. Along with this, it makes it easier for their audience to execute in their own lives. The list also indicates an order to follow, which is easier to see than if everything was jammed into one paragraph.
SuperCollege also includes a metaphor in their article in order to effectively inform readers on how to choose the right college. In the first step of the article, SuperCollege relates college choices to Neapolitan ice cream. They explain that if chocolate was the favorite flavor, vanilla the second favorite, and strawberry the least favorite, then the reach schools are chocolate, the suitable schools are vanilla, and the safe schools are strawberry. By including this metaphor, the college search becomes much more relatable to the audience. It simplifies the complex process of choosing a college into something much easier to understand such as ice cream. This helps make the process a lot easier for audiences to follow.
SuperCollege's article How to Choose the Right College effectively addressed how to pick a college and made it easily understandable for readers. When I have to start choosing colleges, I will definitely be thinking of Neapolitan ice cream.

IRB intro #3

The book I have chosen for my 3rd IRB is called I Am That Girl, written by Alexis Jones. I heard of this book from social media posts from one of my favorite actresses, Sophia Bush. She contributed to the book and is an activist for the I Am That Girl association. After reading about the association I became even more intrigued to read the book. It is all about changing the standards for how girls are raised and making them feel secure in who they are. I think it will provide a very interesting perspective on life and hopefully give me more tools for moving forward in a society as a girl.

TOW #16

I really enjoyed reading Freakonomics. It caused me to develop a new perspective on everything, especially on the way things are connected. The book explains seemingly crazy reasoning behind the correlation of events, or why something occurs, which is all very interesting. One of the chapters I found really interesting was on "What Makes a Perfect Parent." Upon first reading the title, I almost laughed because, I doubt it is possible to have a PERFECT parent, more or less have a scientific formula for what makes one. However after reading through the chapter I realized a lot more plays into parenting than I originally thought. Levitt and Dubner include theoretical anecdotes and lists in order to show how certain factors contribute to the parenting of a child. In the beginning of this chapter, the idea of how people make decisions out of fear rather than shock is introduced. These sort of decisions can negatively effect a child. The authors express this through a theoretical anecdote. The anecdote explains a story where the parents of a child ban their child from going to friend A's house because friend A's parents have a gun. However they allow their child to go to friend B's house, even though friend B has a pool. Through statistics, Levitt and Dubner explain that the chances of their child dying from a gun is far less likely than dying from drowning in a swimming pool. In fact, the chances of dying from drowning are significantly higher than the chances of a gun accident. This anecdote is an example of how a decision made based on fear could negatively effect a child. The anecdote shows the extreme way children can be impacted from a simple decision by their parents. The child's chances of dying actually increased based on the parents decision, because their child would be spending more time at the pool. Through the use of this theoretical anecdote, the authors are able to exemplify that even simple decisions contribute to the effectiveness of a parent. Dubner and Levitt also included a series of lists to help explain the factors. They start off with explaining how some factors contribute to the way a child performs on a test. They began with one list of all the possible factors in the life of a good test taker. The list was shortly followed by a second list that showed only the factors that actually contributed to the child's success. Next, the authors made up short lists directly comparing one factor that contributes and one factor that doesn't. For example, "Matters: The child has highly educated parents. Doesn't: The child's family is intact" (page 170). By including these lists, the authors are able to compare different life factors in order to show what really matters in parenting. It was very interesting to see that having educated parents can alter the performance of a child, but the family being intact, which seems more important, does not. Through the lists, Dubner and Levitt expressed the number of factors that contribute to a child's life. Along with this, it showed how many factors are not even choices made by the parent. Yet, something out of their control could make someone a good or bad parent. This chapter was extremely interesting to me, because I never realized how many factors there are in parenting, or how they can effect a child. Now looking at my own life it is interesting to see if any of these factors are apparent. Next time I fail a test, maybe I can blame the factors of my parenting!

TOW #15

All of us experience set backs in our lives due to things we cannot control. Such as gender, race, age, etc. However, what we usually do not account for is the privilege that may also come with it. Roxanne Gay, American author, published an article about this very issue, and why we should learn to embrace privilege rather than deflect it. In Peculiar Benefits, Gay uses personal anecdotes and theoretical situations in order to argue that we should acknowledge that we all have privileges and we should embrace them. The essay begins with Gay bringing us back to her childhood when her family took a vacation to her parent's homeland, Haiti. It was then that she realized what an extreme difference there was between poverty in America and poverty in Haiti. This anecdote effectively introduced how we all have privileges, even when we don't consider them to be privileges. Such as being middle collar in America, or having the ability to work two jobs. By showing how people in another country have worse problems, it shows the benefits we experience. Along with this, Gay argues that we should learn to embrace our privileges in her theoretical but common situation of a White Man being told he has privileges. She writes“It’s not my fault I am a white man.” They say, “I’m working class,” or “I’m [insert other condition that discounts their privilege],” instead of simply accepting that, in this regard, yes, they benefit from certain privileges others do not." (para. 6). This exemplifies how people tend to react when they are labeled with the word privilege. This situation helps Gay argue that just because we have a privilege does not mean life is not hard. It is just showing how we have something others do not. Just because one has a privilege because of race and gender, does not mean they don't have other setbacks. I think this article brought up a very interesting perspective on a topic I've never spent much time considering.

TOW 14

 The debates about gun violence are non-stop. The controversial issue is not getting any smaller. Moms Demand Action released an ad that features two children, one holding a gun and the other holding a Kinder chocolate egg. The ad portrays how America forbids kinder chocolate eggs because they are a choking hazard to children, yet guns are still allowed. The ad includes emphasis of colors as well as rhetorical questioning to get their audience to inquire the issue of gun violence. The ad's background is darkened including everything but the children, gun and the egg. The children are highlighted making them stand out. The dark colors appeal to pathos, and create a negative connotation for advertisement. Instantly looking at the picture, you can tell there it is about a dark subject. The fact that the child is holding a giant all black gun, opposed to a small hand gun. The size and color of the gun add to the negative effect that this ad has. This creates audiences to question what guns could be doing in America. Along with this, the ad questions the audience with a caption that reads "We won't sell Kinder chocolate eggs in the interest of child safety. Why not assault weapons?" This directly addresses the audience on the issue of gun violence. It compares a kinder egg, which is a candy that was intended for kids to enjoy, with a gun that has the potential to kill someone. Clearly, the one that seems safer for the child is the egg. By questioning the reasoning behind which one is banned, it shows how ridiculous it seems that kids have access to these weapons. The ad overall, effectively raises the question of gun violence, and why it is an issue.