Journal Entries:

Journal Entry 1 8/28/2020

Hi, my name is Shadman Samad and I will be talking about the time I went to a barbecue with my cousin. Two weeks ago my cousin invited me to a barbecue that he and his friends were planning. This barbecue took place in Cunningham Park at around 6 pm. At first I was uneasy about going since I have never met any of his friends and I would feel like I would’ve been left out. However in the end he convinced me to accompany him to the barbecue. So we just arrived at the park but not at the location that we were supposed to meet up with his friends. At this point we are surrounded by trees and the road. We quickly got off the road and moved into the park where there was even more trees surrounding us. We can hear music being played but it was distant from where we were. So we decide let’s just go to where the music is coming from and soon enough we end up seeing an open area where there are many people relaxing with either friends or family. You could smell the flavorful aroma that set in due to their barbecues and there was a nice cool breeze that just hit out of nowhere.As we keep walking through the park we finally meet up with my cousins friends. Then we go to set up the barbecue because all of us are exhausted. We put the coal on the grill and the oil however none of us had a lighter to light the fire. So I go and ask one of the families if I could borrow their lighter and they agreed to letting us borrow it. Soon after we got the fire started it kept going out. So in order to prevent this we could putting more lighter fluid on the coal until finally it started to burn on its own. Then we started to play some sports such as football and soccer. Granted we weren’t that good in any of the sports we all still had a great time. I ended up feeling like I was a part of his friend group due to how welcoming and friendly they all were. At this point the sun has gone down and it started to get dark. There were so many fireflies out in the park and seeing them brought back many childhood memories of running around trying to catch fireflies in a jar. However soon after we got a call from our parents saying that we should come home so we ended up returning home.

Journal Entry 2 9/16/2020

It’s crazy how throughout the entire galaxy, Earth is just one little planet compared to all the other stars and planets. For all we know there may be many life forms out there that we don’t know of. Have you ever imagined what lives beyond our world? I haven’t spent one second thinking about that until I actually looked up, into the sky at night. Not in New York City but in a different change in scenery. 

All my life I’ve lived in New York City without a care in the world about what may be out there or not. I mean I’ve heard stories about area 51 but they were all just stories. I’ve never once looked up into the sky. And if I have it’s only been to try and find the moon or the sun. Right before the world got hit with this major pandemic that we are dealing with to this day, my high school senior class went on a trip to Honor’s Haven Resort. It was someplace in upstate New York. We all got there and instantly got ready to enjoy all the activities that they had over there but not one of us thought that we would be encountered with such a beautiful sight that night. 

Me and my friends just finished eating dinner and we thought wouldn’t it be great if we would’ve all gone outside to play manhunt. So we all go outside. There was no light, no cars, no noise other than that of crickets and our footsteps. Ten feet from the entrance came in the grass and a bunch of trees surrounding the resort. We were all wearing our jackets to protect us from the cold breeze that kept constantly hitting us. My friend points the the sky and tells all of us to look. What we saw was unimaginable to me at least.

It was just a sky full of stars. It slowed everything down for me. I was no longer freezing or heard any noise. It felt as if the world just stopped spinning for a second. Like there was nothing wrong with the world. We all just laid down on the grass and stared at the stars for a good amount of time. You don’t experience something like that if you’ve been in New York City all your life. It was a good change of pace which made me forget about all my troubles and worries. 

I start to actually see how little we are compared to all the other stars and planets in the galaxy. Then I start to wonder how there must be multiple galaxies in this universe and how there must be multiple universes in a multi-verse. The question popped up in my head, there must be other forms of life out there. Then I remembered that stars are a form of life itself. And that area 51 might actually not just be stories after all. That was my marginal world experience.

Papers/Self Assessments:

Paper 1/Self Assessment 1 10/12/2020

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pDe14lVuLEHvJCA9aW7akh-2geeOA4RWUPK7YirMqPM/edit?usp=sharing

I’ve never really written a narrative essay before. In high school the main focus was on writing argumentative essays to persuade the reader to support my main topic and in middle school I never wrote any essays. Not because I was lazy or I wouldn’t do any work but because in my middle school was a religious private school that never taught any academics and only taught the Quran. So this assignment was really helpful for me because it taught me numerous new ideas that I never thought of or knew before. I never knew how to add narrative to my thesis before but thanks to this and the help of my professor steering me towards the right direction and my cousin who told me what adding narrative means I was able to add narrative to my thesis. At first I didn’t know why it was so important but after rewriting my introduction and adding more details to the essay I saw the change and effect that narrative has on a piece of writing. Not only that but I also learned how to write with more imagery. In all my previous writings, my imagery was inadequate or sub par. I never understood what the purpose of imagery really was. I knew it was to make the reader feel like they were there but until all of the readings that have been assigned to me through this course and this essay I never truly understood imagery. It’s kind of sad to know that before I was very clueless however now it’s refreshing to know that currently my knowledge on narrative essays have grown. And I am grateful that I have learned so much because now when I read, whether it be books or magazines, I could look for the imagery and the lesson behind the readings. It’s interesting to see how all of these new ideas will help develop my reading and writing further and this is just the beginning for me. Going further I know that I want to increase my vocabulary and my understanding of future readings and writings. This way I won’t be limited to only one type of writing or one type of reading.

Paper 2/Self Assessment 2 11/10/2020

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z9XD88_q8Ign-J1uUwWPJ8yBhUiY4yuafVW_Paf-u2k/edit?usp=sharing

This exploratory essay taught me a lot of new things that I haven’t learned yet. This was my first exploratory essay that I’ve ever written so it was a new idea to me. However with the help and guidance from my professor I was able to learn a lot. When I first started writing this essay I was thinking that I had to implement my own ideas in the essay as well however that was not the case at all. Instead you aren’t supposed to include your ideas and thoughts in an exploratory essay. It’s just pure research. A lot of what I did or at least tried to do was paraphrase many different articles that I thought were significant to my topic which was habitat loss due to urbanization. I spent multiple hours reading the articles and looking for new ones while doing research for this paper. So I might have been a little off in my paraphrasing since I tried to do them all at once but I know now that that’s much more difficult then taking your time with one article and then moving on to the next, which is what I’ll be doing from now on. Another thing that I think I could do better is APA format. I don’t think I’ve ever used or written in APA format so this was pretty confusing for me. We did go over APA formatting in class however it was still a little bit shaky for me so I had to do some research on that as well. I know that my APA formatting in this paper wasn’t the greatest but I do hope to improve on that in the future.

Paper 3/Self Assessment 3 12/09/2020

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TYWRuDMZ0IlGlbX39QxtWaGSloF5vT1XiVtTFjPObKU/edit?usp=sharing

This was my first ever research paper that I had to do. I never once did a research paper before so this was pretty new to me. Not only that but this was the first time I had to use APA formatting. Everything about this paper was very new to me. I was never taught how to format the papers using these specific types of formatting such as APA or MLA or even how to conduct research for topics. It was always either an argumentative essay where we would have two to three articles to read and then choose a side and a thematic message or theme or it was a compare and contrast essay where we would be given two articles to read while trying to find similarities and differences between the two. So when I first heard about the research paper I started to ask around about how to go about it. My previous teachers all kept telling me that I would have to research a topic and then paraphrase it into my essay while my friends and cousins kept telling me that I need a lot of information. When I asked them about sources they said you could use any amount as long as it’s credible. Then I had trouble with the graphs which I asked about in class and both professor Nick and Dr. Padilla helped explain that to me and show me how to incorporate graphs into my essay. So for my first research paper I think that I did good but after reviewing it multiple times out of worry I think that I could still improve in how I go about writing research papers. I could include more graphs and sources for future papers. Also I need to diversify the sources that I use. I can’t just stick to one type of sources such as articles instead I could use multiple different types of sources such as journal articles and news articles and more. I feel like if I keep practicing on my writing and if I read more research papers then I will drastically improve on how I write. Not only that but my vocabulary would also increase. Overall for my first ever research paper I am glad on it’s outcome however I do feel like in the future I definitely need to do better. I will keep practicing and someday I might be able to write a great research paper that other people will use as a reference.

Discussion Boards

Rhetorical Situation 9/07/2020

According to Bitzer rhetoric is situational when speakers or writers create rhetorical discourse. In my opinion this means that rhetoric becomes situational when someone implies an action to what they are saying or what they are writing. Not only that but also the way that the message is conveyed and what is being conveyed. As Bitzer stated in his essay, ” The Declaration of Independence, … John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address — each is a clear instance of rhetoric and each indicates the presence of a situation.” Bitzer gave multiple examples of writings and each of them had rhetoric which was situational. To clear it up even more I believe that it all depends on the speaker and his audience to make rhetoric situational. After all rhetoric is just a way of speaking or writing. So it caters to the speaker or writer’s audience. If they try to convey something of importance through any of these forms of communications then that is when rhetoric becomes situational. If I were talking to my professor then rhetoric could be situational when I am talking about an issue with my understanding of the lesson. However if I am talking with my friends I would use a different form of rhetoric and it would be situational if I am informing them about the latest news on a new game update. This is my understanding of what Bitzer meant when he said rhetoric can be situational. 

Bitzer gives a seven part definition in his essay about Rhetorical Situation. They are, “rhetorical discourse comes into existence as a response to a situation, a speech is given rhetorical significance by the situation, a rhetorical situation must exist as a necessary condition of rhetorical discourse, rhetorical situations may mature and decay without rhetorical utterance, a situation is rhetorical insofar as it needs and invited discourse capable of participating in and changing the situation, discourse is rhetorical insofar as it functions as a fitting response to the situation, the situation controls the response and the problem controls the solution.” The first part means that when someone is talking about a situation to another person then immediately there will be some sort of persuasion going on. The second part means that the situation that is being discussed brings about an importance to the discussion. The third part means that without a rhetorical situational there will be no rhetorical discourse in the conversation. The fourth part means that the importance of a rhetorical situation increase or decrease at any time without the need of a special introduction. The fifth part means that a situation can be rhetorical as long as it needs to be while also having the ability to persuade others about the situation which can then change the whole outcome of the situation. The sixth part means that not all situations need discourse or persuasion, however there can always be discourse in any situations. The seventh part means that the situation that is being discussed will control the outcomes of the conversation.

Bitzer mentioned two types of constraints in his essay, artistic constrain and non-artistic constraint. Now we all know that constraint means limited or there is some type of restriction. So you would naturally assume that artistic constraint means that there are some stuff that limit people in terms of art such as graphical images to a younger audience. The same goes for inartistic constraint, meaning that there would be some limitations for people that usually speak such as cursing to a younger audience. That is what I think he means by artistic and inartistic constraints. However they may still be able to work together in a rhetorical situation. For instance one image could help persuade someone while the message could persuade another. Together they could persuade and inform multiple people about a situation or topic. This is how artistic and inartistic constraints could help each other in a rhetorical situation

Bitzer states that there is a difference between a rhetorical audience and mere hearers or readers. A rhetorical audience consists of people that are able to get influenced by discourse and end up becoming a mediator of change. However mere hearers and readers consist of people the just either read or hear the message but are still not influenced by it and don’t do anything to change the situation for the better. This shows that a rhetorical audience is more important than mere hearers or readers. For example when movies like “Rio” come out there are two types of audiences. One being people that pay attention to the movie and it’s meaning and the other being people that just want to watch a good movie. The people that actually paid attention to the movie and it’s meaning saw that there is a major issue with extinction going around and how people are caging up some of these animals. This movie opened up their eyes and they start to try and prevent some species of animals from going extinct or being caged. However the people that were there just to watch a good movie do nothing. They just go on about their daily lives as if nothing was going on in the world.

Audience 9/18/2020

When writing anything a person uses tone, language and appeal. Each person has a different way of writing which is unique to them and how they make themselves different from the rest is their use of tone, language and appeal. These three things will not always be the same in all of the writings of a person. For instance that writer can choose what tone he wants. That writer can choose what language he wants. That writer can choose what appeal he wants. They always change however when different audiences come in play. No one will write the same way to their professor the way they write to their friends. Everything would change in that situation. One may go from a more serious tone to a more relaxed tone while writing to a professor versus while writing to a friend. Not everything will remain the same let alone the writer’s choice of words.

An audience is anyone that is either reading, watching or listening to something. To write audience-centered means to write for a specific audience. Every person in this world is a writer whether they know it or not. Some people just think that they have a hard time writing. In my opinion I think nobody has a hard time writing. I just believe that they have a hard time trying to write for a certain audience and I feel like I have enough evidence to back up my claim. When kids are in elementary school they write letters to Santa with ease. When they grow up they could write text messages to their family and friends with ease. However when it comes to an essay for school, kids have trouble and blame it on the fact that they can’t write. Writing is used in our every day lives. Therefor I believe that everybody is a great writer except when it comes to certain audiences.

A lot of people have trouble trying to write for an unknown audience. If they don’t know who’s going to be reading their writing it automatically makes it ten times harder for them to write. So what I do to change it up is I write how I do when I write to myself. Basically I wouldn’t write too seriously so that way everybody could understand what I’m writing no matter who they are. I also try to add some jokes or sarcasm here or there while I’m writing because who doesn’t love sarcasm. Lastly I write in first person so that way the reader wont feel like he or she is just reading one of my pieces of writing. Rather they would feel like there is a conversation going on between me and them. Some people may not agree with writing in first person but I’ve had success writing in first person and good feedback which is why I still do it.

Mindset And Style 9/25/2020

A lot of times people wonder what a mindset really is. Well, the easiest way to understand what a mindset is, is ti break it down into two different types of mindsets, growth and fixed. So mindset is just a person’s way of thinking or interpreting information. So a growth mindset would mean that people would be able to adapt to different situations or are willing to learn from new information that they receive and expand their thoughts or how they feel about the certain topic. While a fixed mindset is basically just someone that is not willing to change how they feel or respond to something regarding new information and that person sticks to their original response to the subject no matter what. Each have their own perks as well as downfalls. A growth mindset could lead to learning more things and maturing, however it could also lead to a growth in someone’s ego or negative side of themselves. While a fixed mindset could keep someone on track and stop them from getting distracted, however it could also stop them from learning new information. So each of these in their own ways are a double-edged sword

Style means may different things. For instance style could mean a way someone dresses or a style could mean the way a writer writes. But today we’ll look at style in terms of how a writer writes and how the world perceives that writing. For simpler terms we could just combine the two meanings of style that I gave earlier and say that style in terms of writing is how a writer dresses up his or her piece of writing. I know that’s a lot of “writes” in the previous sentence but hopefully you understood it. Anyways, the global perspective of a writer’s style is basically, the rhetor being able to sense the emotion or a tone through the writing. While the local perspective of a writer’s style is basically when the rhetor tries to write professionally and make the absolute minimum amount of mistakes, whether it be grammar, spelling, or even punctuation.

Body Paragraphs 10/09/2020

A topic sentence is a sentence that controls the whole paragraph and let’s the reader know what they will be reading about in that paragraph. This makes topic sentences very important for body paragraphs. This way the reader will know which subject you are about to write about next or they are about to read next. If I could make an analogy for topic sentences it would be a spine. The main reason that I say a topic sentence is like a spine is because the spine is the main part of a skeleton. Without it a person wouldn’t be able to move let alone stand. The spine supports nearly every part of the skeleton just as the topic sentence supports the body paragraphs. This is why I say that a topic sentence is very important for body paragraphs. It has a huge significance that should not ever be overlooked.

To give a body paragraph meaning means to connect whatever is in your body paragraph to the main argument. Either how it supports your argument or goes against it. Or even if you want to dispute that information, to give your body paragraph meaning, you have to explain to the reader how that information makes sense to your topic. Without giving your body paragraph meaning the reader will not be able to credit your work or believe it. One of the most important things to do is give your body paragraph meaning otherwise you can write a fifteen page paper and the whole thing will just be thrown out the window. The readers will not be able to understand anything about your topic or why you wrote what you wrote. This is because giving a body paragraph meaning means to connect all your ideas and examples to your main topic.

P.I.E. stands for what point you are trying to make throughout the writing, what information you provide throughout the writing, and what explanation you provide throughout the writing. This relates to the body paragraph structure a lot. It relates to body paragraph structure because at first in your introduction you introduce your point. Then in each of your body paragraphs you will have a mix of information and explanation talking about your point. Also in each of these body paragraphs you will have a broken down point which you will talk about. This means that you have a main point and then sub points. In your conclusion you will explain how all of the points that you talked about all through your entire writing connect to the main point that was first introduce in your introduction. This is how I think that the P.I.E relates to the body paragraph structure.

Ethos, Logos And Pathos 10/24/2020

Ethos, logos and pathos are mere techniques of writing that someone uses to convey either a message or argument to the audience. We these in all forms of writings whether they all appear or only one or two of them. Regardless every piece of writing has at least one of these writing appeals or techniques. Ethos is when you establish trust between you and the audience. This way they will credit you much more than the other author. Logos is the logical appeal to something. So the author or speaker will be trying to use logic to suede that audience. Lastly Pathos is the emotional appeal to the audience. So the author or the speaker will be trying to suede the audience by trying to get their sympathy and attacking them emotionally. All three of these are what make any piece of writing or any speech be a great one.

Knowing your audience will have a huge impact on which rhetoric you decide to use. Say your audience is young you might not want to use logos as much. Most of the times young people won’t care much for logic however the better way to connect to them or get them to adhere to your message is by using pathos and ethos. Build trust with them so they know that your words mean something and they listen to you, and you will try to connect to them emotionally so that way they pay attention and they feel something, giving them that drive to do better and do something about the topic. However say your audience is a council of some sort, the rhetoric you’d want to use would lean more towards ethos and logos. So these are some way sin how knowing your audience helps choose which rhetoric to use. 

Ethos

* You’ve known me for a long time and so have the people of this country. So I would suggest that health care should be free for everyone. You know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt this country. 

Logos

* Not everyone has the money to afford health care and you know that which is why you should make health care free for everyone. Don’t make yourself look like someone that doesn’t care but make yourself look Ike a person that cares about the people, that will enhance your support by a lot.

Pathos

* A lot of people will die if you don’t help them by making health care free for everyone. In other words you could be saving a ton of people if you do this however if you don’t then a lot of people could die because of you. If you want the blood of all those people on your hand then don’t make health care free but if you want to be a hero then make health care free for everyone.

Organizational Schema And Logic Reasoning 10/30/2020

Before we talk about the differences between “global” and “local” organizational schema, we must first understand what an organizational schema is. Organizational schema is basically a shortcut to understanding or interpreting information. What I mean by this is that our brains use different strategies or methods to break down the information we take in. By doing that we are able to understand everything more easily. We do this everyday whenever we read something, listen to something, or even watch something. As long as we are receiving information then we are using organizational schema. Now the “global” form of organizational schema is basically when we are trying to interpret the whole entire text, speech, or video at once. Instead of taking it part by part we try to take in all the information all together. That brings me to my next point of how organizational schema is “local”. It would be considered “local” because instead of trying to break down and interpret everything as one we break down certain paragraphs or lines of the text, speech or video.

One of the types of organizational schema is known as casual order. Casual order in terms of organizational schema is basically when we try to understand why our world is how it is. We ask ourselves a series of questions like, why are things the way they are, and why did this happen, and what is going to happen if a certain event happens. We try to find out more of our world. Another type of organizational schema is given-to-new order. This is basically when you are given new information based on the information you already know. The writers try to expand your previous knowledge without giving you excess amount of information. That’s why they bass the new information off what you already know. The last organizational schema that I will be talking about today is local perspective. Local perspective is mainly used by teachers, editors and critics to edit something and review it sentence by sentence. They would look for any mistake in the writing and then correct it or at least try their best to.