Critical Reading Questions

I chose the "Dear Students: Don't Let College Unplug Your Future" mostly because this guy is a super funny writer. This was just hilarious to read and I'm all about fun reading. I suppose entertainment wasn't really a goal of this assignment, so I shall move on to more important things like critical reading questions. yippee!
1) The author's intent is to get college students to take a closer look at their education. The education he is describing is less about academics and more about everything a person knows, creates and experiences. The authors wants students to use the internet to its full potential for their own advantage. He wants them to use the academic system in a way that will benefit them and not the way academia wants the students to use it. He is trying to convey the idea that success is not about a college degree, but what you can create and how you channel your passion into new cool stuff.
2) This guy uses humor and a lot of it. It's fantastic. Questions as well as metaphors are also big in this article. He likes to emphasize with caps. Irony and exaggeration play a role here too. The tone of voice he takes is super good for his audience. Reading it is like having a conversation with him. I'm not really sure what tool you would call this, but he uses angle brackets < > throughout his article like he's writing some html. It totally adds to what he is saying. He also effectively uses slang and sentences fragments.
3) So if I'm the audience for this article, he totally nailed it on the head. I didn't really agree of some of the things he was saying, but it made me think. Having people think was one of his objectives so he scores! I'm thinking this article is very effective. Some of his ideas are a little uncomfortable to deal with up front (like college could be ruining your future), but he was able to present them in a way that spoke to his audience.

Feelings on Peer Review

I've never been a real fan of peer reviews. Our current peer review assignment I found particularly nasty because there were so many papers to go over. I felt like the number of papers made it hard to spend the time to really know the paper and make good comments. I would like reviewing only one or two papers. I don't really like peer reviews because I would rather spend the time working on my own paper. I also feel like a overly critical, grumpy person or a totally apathetic person with no useful comments when I peer review.  
My experience today in class was one of the most positive experiences I've had with peer review. Thanks people in my group! You made some good suggestions that I wouldn't have thought of.

My Errors

1-"This is an easy way to sort thing out because students are already grouped by envelope." subject verb agreement 
"This is an easy way to sort things out because students are already grouped by envelope."
2-"Granted, if sophomores and upperclassmen have not fulfilled these GEs yet then there is a problem." This sentence has multiple problems. I'm thinking taking out the yet and putting a comma after GEs. Then the first part of the sentence would be a dependent clause the last part an independent which would mean a comma. 
"Granted, if sophomores and upper classman have not fulfilled these GEs, then there is a problem. 
3-"I wished I could tell you something shockingly horrible happened when I depressed my mouse button, but it was your run-of-the-mill adding a class procedure, which turned Freshman Mentoring into a conveyer of miscommunication (not to be confused with lying, which would be against the Honor Code)." wrong tense- subject verb agreement 
"I wish I could tell you something shockingly horrible happened when I depressed my mouse button, but it was your run-of-the-mill adding a class procedure, which turned Freshman Mentoring into a conveyer of miscommunication (not to be confused with lying, which would be against the Honor Code)."
4-"The Freshman Mentoring program definitely gives a person enrolled that feeling, even if in all reality, it is not babysitting." enrolled messes with the real verb of the sentence (gives) 
"The Freshman Mentoring program definitely gives a participant that feeling, even if in all reality, it is not babysitting."
5-"When I talk to the Freshman Mentoring office about my predicament, they advised me to take Writing 150 through them and a political science class outside of the program to fulfill the half the American Heritage requirement that I was missing." switching tense in the middle of the sentence
"When I talked to the Freshman Mentoring office about my predicament, they advised me to take Writing 150 through them and a political science class outside of the program to fulfill the half the American Heritage requirement that I was missing." 

Yippee for Commas!!

Ha ha! So this totally fits with the punctuation apocalypse that we had today.  

#1 Fallacies and E/P/L

Fallacy

“The BCS is a bunch of crock. A championship cannot be determined by computers, sportscasters, coaches or college presidents. An honest championship should be decided on the field, by the players. College football fans ought to be ashamed. They should be screaming the loudest. They should be demanding an honest playoff system. Is honesty and integrity not important? When did we lose sight of what is right, what is good, what is great?”

This is from the Opinion/Letters section of the Deseret News. This is a red herring fallacy. Red herrings try to cover up the real issue by bringing up more emotional issues. The writer’s last sentence is talking about society’s moral decline and claims that people no longer care about what is right and good. The real issue is whether or not the current playoff system is fair. The writer obscures the real issue by asking about the values of humanity which are a much more emotional issue than college football.

Ethos/Pathos/Logos              

Ethos 1- “I am a soldier” 2- “The gates of mercy shall be shut” –by saying this Henry suggests that he has the authority to choose when to extend mercy.

Pathos  1- “With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass/ Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants. 2- “your pure maidens fall into the hand/ Of hot and forcing violation?”

Logos 1- “will you yield, and this avoid,” 2- “If I begin the battery once again,/ I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur/ Till in her ashes she lie buried.”

Why I am So Cool

First off, I am super humble. Next, I'm from Burley, Idaho. If that's not cool I'm not sure what is. But, really Burley was a way awesome place to grow up. There seems to be endless recreational opportunities around the Burley area. Happily my dad is a recreation enthusiast so we have a whole garage full of various outdoor equipment. The Snake River offers some really good boating. My favorite boating activity is skiing, but I also enjoy kneeboarding, wakeboarding and of course tubing. Kayaking is good stuff too. In addition to the river, the mountains close by are chuck full of amazingness, like a ski resort, mountain bike trails, good places to snowshoe & cross country ski, rock climbing and camping spots. So, yeah, I like the outdoors.

Before you write me off as a granola or something like that, I also really enjoy theatrical productions. I would hate being in play, but I love watching them. One of the highlights of my Christmas season was seeing BYU's production of White Christmas and one of my favorite summer traditions is going to the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City with my mom and sisters. I also really love Georgette Heyer novels. Seriously, they are wonderful. 

Now is the point where I move onto my special skills, such as bow hunting and nunchuck skills. Unfortunately, I have neither of these, but I can make pavlova. I consider this a far superior skill to either of the aforementioned ones. I've done the Spudman triathlon twice. It consists of a one mile swim, a 26 mile bike and a 10K run.  I'm not sure if this counts as a skill, but I'm putting it here anyway. 

Well, now you know why I am so cool. See ya in class!