introductory reflective essay

Process Work

Truth is Master

I believe that the plain truth is the key to self mastery. Once all the layers of sugar coating and lies are gone, one can truly start living with one’s self. Every year people make New Year’s resolutions that inevitably fall through. This is because they don’t believe that their problem that they are trying to fix is serious enough.

This past summer I was over at my friend’s house and we were sitting down at her dining room table and she asked me about her latest “late night adventures”. I told her flat out that I thought she was way out of line and was being stupid about everything that she was doing because her other “friends” were just using her. Well this seemed to upset her a lot and after I was done talking she promptly left and went to her room. A few days after that day, I was back over at her house hanging out with her brother, and she came and talked to me. She said that what I had told her really hurt her feelings and made her feel bad about herself, but after she got control of her emotions is caused her to start thinking. She said that everything I told her was completely true and she had never really seen it that way until I had told her. She then wanted to stop doing all these bad things and become a better person. She thanked me for being so blunt about what I had told her because it caused her to open her eyes to what was really going on.

This is just one example I have for situations just like this. I believe that being brutally honest about things is one of the few ways you can open people’s eyes to things. When people ask me for my opinion on things I tell them exactly how it is, no sugar coat, and I would want them to do the very same thing for me. If something is wrong I would want someone to tell me that I’m being stupid or that’s wrong.

I think that people need to be told when they are doing something wrong. I know that whenever I do something I do it how I think it should be done, but if someone knows that it should be done a different way, well by all means please come and tell me so. People think that what they do is right, but if they’re wrong they need someone to tell them so, otherwise they’re going to keep doing it wrong.

Like my engineering professor says, “No one wants to hear that their baby is ugly, but sometimes they need to know that their baby is ugly.”  Now I’m not saying actually go tell a new mother that her baby is ugly, that’s a suicide mission! But if you see someone who has an unhealthy habit, maybe they don’t see it as such and need someone to tell them the honest to goodness truth.

Reflection 1

This was my first draft of the This I Believe; I really didn’t know how well this draft was going to be but I tried not to sound arrogant but I don’t think I did too good of a job doing that. It was just the first draft thought so it was mostly just getting it down on paper.

Truth comes First

I believe that the plain truth is needed before someone can fix something. Once all the layers of sugar coating and lies are gone, you can actually get to the dirty work of fixing a problem.

This past summer I was over at my friend’s house and we were sitting down at her dining room table talking about her latest “adventures” with her friends that I wouldn’t consider to be good people. I told her flat out that I thought she was out of line and was being stupid about everything that she was doing because her other “friends” were just using her. Well this seemed to upset her a lot and after I was done talking she promptly left and went to her room.

A few days later I was back over at her house, and she came and talked to me. She said that what I had told her really hurt her feelings and made her feel bad about herself, but after she had calmed down, she started thinking about it. She said that everything I told her was completely true and she had never really seen it that way until I had told her. She thanked me for being so blunt with her because it caused her to open her eyes to what was really going on, and now wanted to work on fixing it.

This is just one example I have for situations just like this. I believe that being brutally honest about things is one of the best ways you can open people’s eyes to things. When people ask me for my opinion on things I tell them exactly how it is, and I would want them to do the very same thing for me. If something I’m doing is wrong I would want someone to tell me that that I am.

I know that when I do something, I do it how I think it should be done. Although, if someone knows that it should be done a different way, then I would be fine with hearing their ideas on how to make it, or to be, better. Our brains are programmed to do what it thinks is right. If it’s doing something wrong then it need something to tell them that, otherwise it’s going to keep doing it wrong.

Like my engineering professor says, “No one wants to hear that their baby is ugly, but sometimes they need to be told.”  Now I’m not saying actually go tell a new mother that her baby is ugly, that’s a suicide mission! But if someone has an unhealthy habit, then maybe they don’t realize it, and need someone to tell them the truth about it. I know that without my friends telling me the plain truth and bringing me back to Earth, I’d be a totally different.

Reflection 2

This is my second draft I started to work on the language a little bit more trying to make it a lot less condescending and a how to live paper, and turning it into a personal experience paper.

Listen to advice

I believe that the plain truth is needed before someone can fix something. Once all the layers of sugar coating and lies are gone, you can actually get to the dirty work of fixing whatever problem that was being ignored.

A few years ago I decided that I wanted to play soccer for a U14 team in the league nearby, because I was still young enough to play in that division. So I signed up for a team, but it wasn’t long after that, that I realized that the guys I was playing with were above my caliber, even thought they were younger than me. At first this made me pretty upset because I didn’t know why my team mates were so much better than me, and I felt like I didn’t fit in. At first I looked at my teammates with resentment because of this.

 I’m pretty sure my coach saw this because he came and talked me before our first game. He was worried that I was having problems with the team and wanted to know what was wrong. So I told him that I didn’t fit in because everyone was better than me. Then he told me the honest truth, he told me that yes, I didn’t fit in, but that it wasn’t because the other guys were better than me, it was because I was the first new guy on the team in four years, and that I haven’t found my place yet. So, taking all of his advice into account I started trying to be friends with everyone, and I did eventually find my place on the team and even became a captain at the end of the session.

Thanks to my coach I found out that I was wrong, and afterwards I was able to change how I acted so that I could fix my situation. Sometimes I think we all jump to conclusions and get stuff messed up in our brains. Sometimes these mix ups can cause a lot of damage. I know if I had stayed stuck in my way of thinking, then my whole experience with that new team could have been dramatically different. Because I had a coach who came and talked to me and told me what my problem Really was, I was able to turn a bad experience into a great memory of a session that I really enjoyed.

I think that sometimes everyone needs that one person in their life that can bring them back to Earth and tell them how it really is because sometimes we all see things in the wrong light. It’s those people in our life that help us get past all the little stuff that we see and turn our focus onto the real problem. So now I am coming to understand that sometimes when people criticism us that it’s not always bad, sometimes people are just trying to set our sights on the right problem.

Reflection 3

So after so many failed attempts to try and make the paper less condescending and forceful I just decided to change the whole thing and start over. I personally think this draft isn’t as meaningful as the ones before it but it focuses more on my personal experience and less on how I think others should live, and that’s what was wanted I guess.

Revised Small Stakes Writing

Jacob Lewis

English 1102

Writing that moves you

                One of my favorite bands is a group called Rise Against. I like their music because almost all of their songs has some sort of message about life or about the actual truth of things. My quote is from one of their newest songs, Satellite, off the CD Endgame.

“You can’t fill your cup until you empty all it has

You can’t understand what lies ahead

If you don’t understand the past

You’ll never learn to fly now

Till your standing at the cliff

And you can’t truly love, until you've given up on it.”

                I really like this quote because it says a lot about a wide range of topics in life such as, love, commitment, trust, and new and old ideas. The first line of text is more or less saying that you can’t start something if you haven’t finished what you’re already working on. Say you half a cup full of milk, then before your done drinking it you try and put some soda in there. Well that wouldn’t taste too good. The same with things in life, if you try and do too much everything gets mixed up and what could be good is ruined because of what you haven’t finished.

                The second and third lines have a message about the past. It’s trying to say that you should use your knowledge and experiences from the past to be able to work better in the future. Plus, like another old saying goes “If you don’t know where you came from, you can’t possibly know where you’re going.”

The fourth and fifth lines talk about commitment. No one actually learns how to do something by reading about it and watching others do it. To truly be able to grasp a concept or ability one must be do it themselves. People must make the commitment when they really want something that they have to go and “throw themselves off the cliff” so that they can truly earn what it is they are searching for.

                The last line does talk about love in one sense. It is also talking about possession. Nowadays smaller children are just given these nice new things without them doing anything to earn them. I know back when I was little I had to do work to earn money to buy my own toys, or I waited till my birthday or Christmas to get it. Now people have no sense of value though. They just throw their new iPhones around like they’re indestructible or something. What this quote is trying to say is that you really don’t know what you have until it’s gone. Once you lose something, such as love as the quote says, you find out how truly important it is to you and how much it affects your life.

                The author, Tim McIIrath, uses a few different stylistic intricacies in this quote. One thing that I noticed was that the first and last line of it has one idea on one line, while the four middle lines have two ideas on two lines each. This gives the quote a little bit of a pattern which makes it easier to say, which makes sense, since this is a song. He also puts opposite ideas together in antithesis to reinforce the ideas that he’s trying to push forward. 

Reflection for Writing that moves you.

I really liked this assignment it was actually enjoyable to do because I got to choose my own piece of work and analyze the meaning behind the words. I really got to express myself and what I thought one of my favorite songs meant for a grade.  It was a pretty easy assignment really but it meant a lot to me because it was on a piece that I already enjoyed. It also helped me start get in to the mode of finding rhetorical devices and seeing how those can greatly improve a pieces impact on an individual.  

Daily Writings/Moodle Writings

1.Response to hall and morrow
       What is good writing? Well good writing can mean different thing to many different people. In class my group defined good writing as having a clear issue, not having grammatical errors, and having enticing rhetoric that makes someone want to read it. I believe though that we missed a key part in our definition. Just like Morrow said in his paper, good writing has to have feeling, distinctiveness, and oomph! Without these things and others like it the writing might be academically correct, but it holds no substance that will make a reader actually enjoy reading what you have written. 
I like what Morrow says here, “Personally, I think good writing doesn’t have to be educated or well supported or even grammatically correct. It does have to be interesting enough that other people want to read it.” That I think is a more important than some of the things that my group said in class on this topic. I know over the years I have had some very boring papers, and excerpts that I had to read for English classes, and actually reading most of those was worst than torture. That was because the writhing didn’t have and soul or feeling put into it and that really made it painful to try and read it without falling into a coma.
Having a clear issue or topic was one thing my group said made good writing. Hall I think takes the same approach but he also put another good point across. Good writing doesn’t have to be all fancy with big words that you just learned the mean of in it. Actually being clear and getting the RIGHT point across to your readers is a huge deal. If you try and sound fancy but all you do is confuse your readers then you’re not doing anyone any good. Keeping it simple can be a big part in communicating the right message to your readers, which is key to good writing

         

        I really liked this one moodle post. it was our first introduction into thinking outside of the conventional writing box. This analyst of the two different writers showed me the differences of two ways of approaching writing and showed me that there isn't one correct way to write something.

2. O'Connor

         I think that Patricia O’Conner and Morrow are the most similar in their writings. One thing they both do in their articles is that they number it out. Numbering it out helps people’s minds keep on track and not wander off. They are also alike because they don’t really fluff up their work very much. Most of it is straight down to the point and then the examples are provided. O’Connor also relates a lot to Vonnegut though. He also list out his information but he and O’Connor share similar ideas. O’Connor says “stop when you’ve said it”, while Vonnegut goes “Don’t ramble though.” Both of these writers think that you should be clear as possible and entertain the reader. 

I think O’Connor and Hall are the most different. Hall speaking in very sophisticated speech in order to get his colleagues to become better writers, while O’Connor is speaking in very clear terms and focuse on laying down some ground rules for what writers should do.

        This writing was about how the different writers we've been reading related to each other. i think that the assignment showed me that a lot of well educated people can agree on some parts and disagree on others. This only continued to show me that there isn't one right way to write and you must feel that your writing is correct yourself.

3. Response to Last Lecture

         Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture” was such a tremendous emotional and inspirational speech that only a few very talented people could ever perform one that tops his. Many of his quotes and sayings hit some of the biggest and most overriding statements about Life. “Experience is what you get, when you didn’t get what you wanted,” that quote right there plays a big part in my life now that I look at it. Lots of things like money and open opportunities limited the amount of things I’ve been able to experience, but I never let these things stop me because if I wasn’t able to do one thing, I found something different I wanted to do more. These experiences also go with one of Randy’s other quotes, “Brick walls are there for a reason, they let us prove how badly we want things.” This is a message that can be seen almost on a everyday basis. In today’s time if someone can’t get what they want quick and easy, they usually give up on it, diets for example. Many people make a resolution to lose weight every year, but ironically most people gain weight. Randy worked through lots of brick walls in his life and I believe he is an example of working hard to get what you want.

         

            Once again this assignment helped me to understand that writing can come in all shapes. I really don't think that i gave this assignment enough effort when i did it though because looking over it it seems really hastily done, which is sad. I actually learned quite a bit from this man, not only about life but also some writing techniques too! i really wish i would of done a better job on this piece because I've used some of the quotes and lessons the Randy talked about in other assignments in school.

4. SFD

            I kind of agree with Lamott, I believe that if you go ahead and get you first ideas down on the paper you can then start working. Later on after you have your ideas on paper you can go ahead and elaborate on what you think is good and delete what you think is bad. I also believe that you don’t always have to put your shitty first draft down. A lot of times, like in college, a person doesn’t have time to write many copies and drafts of a paper. In these cases sometimes people just have to spend the extra time to do it right the first time. For example, when I did my senior paper in high school, we spent every other day writing or correcting it, but my chemistry paper I was doing at the same time I didn’t have but a week to write. I was preoccupied doing my senior paper and getting that perfect, that when I wrote my chemistry paper it had to be right. I just simply didn’t have time to write and edit two papers at the same time. Although, one thing I find interesting is the fact that I find myself doing this all the time…

“Left to its own devices, my mind spends much of its time having conversations with people who aren't there. I walk along defending myself to people, or exchanging repartee with them, or rationalizing my behavior, or seducing them with gossip, or pretending I'm on their TV talk show or whatever. I speed or run an aging yellow light or don't come to a full stop, and one nanosecond later am explaining to imaginary cops exactly why I had to do what I did, or insisting that I did not in fact do it.(Lamott)”
I guess this is one reason why I find it hard to write good first drafts, because there’s too much going on in my head.

              This assignment was kind of a trip, the quote that i included in here describes me perfectly! The piece we had to read for this one did make a lot of sense to me and i could point out all the good points and all the arguments against them if given enough time. i feel like i did put a lot of effort into writing this because i had a very good counterpoint from my personal experiences.

5.Ballenger

                When i think of a Research paper i think about finding fact after fact on the internet and in books and putting them together to make a plain boring paper about something. Ballenger had a very different way to approach a research paper. He intertwined personal stories and facts, to make an interesting story instead of just plain, boring research. He uses this collaboration of both fact and experiences to make a research paper a more personal and interesting. It's almost like the personal side added to his ethos in the paper because he can relate his subject back to himself. This is a very different way of thinking than what i was taught because I was told that you're supposed to separate yourself from the paper to make it more academic. This way i believe actually make a better paper than the way i was taught.

          I did not like my response to this too much. At the same time i had to do this assignment i had another big assignment for engineering and i feel like i kind of blew this assignment off. i didn't pay to good of attention when i read his essay which caused for my response to this to be a little vague-ish. i should of taken my time and done a good job on this assignment.

Polished Inquiry Blog

http://jacoblewis1102-008.blogspot.com/search/label/Inquiry

 Reflection for the Blog

Well the Blog was a giant pain in the butt at first, but it has slowly grown on me. At first I don’t think anyone had any clue what was going on except for maybe one or two of us. This caused a lot of trouble at first when there were deadline and stuff because we were all struggling to figure out how any of it worked; much less trying to write what was assigned us. It took a while for us to figure it out yes but I think that by the end of the class we had all found out in our own way how to work the thing. Everything worked out for the best because now we have an easy way to make our E-Portfolio, which should be way easier to make that a real portfolio. 

Polished Inquiry Argumentative Essay

Jacob Lewis

Ms. Andrews

English 1102

28 November 2012

January 30^th, 1933, the day Adolf Hitler was elected the Chancellor of Germany spelled the doom for millions of people. While many inspiring and dramatic battles were waged across the fields of Europe and the islands of the Pacific, there was something darker happening in the shadows of the Third Reich. Nazi Germany was trying to systematically destroy many races of people that they thought were “less desirable.” Today we call these actions The Holocaust, and the main targets during this were the Jews. Hitler and his higher ups used the Jews as a scapegoat for all of the misfortunes that had befallen Germany after the First World War.

            How was the German government able to justify the killings of millions of peoples including six million plus Jews? How did they receive the support from the populace to do all of these terrible things or how did they make the people of German believe and think in the same way that the government did? They accomplished all of this through their mastery of language through propaganda.  They used many means of propaganda that can all be divided into two types, visual propaganda, and auditory propaganda. Learning about how the Nazis used propaganda to make people feel same way and agree on certain topics can play a vital role in today’s time. The Nazis had a very effective way of communicating their ideals, and through studying their techniques, modern day advertisers can modify old techniques to make them relevant to today’s products.  Now even though both types of propaganda were used by the Nazis, what type was the most effective? Based on the evidence that I have found in my research I believe that the use of auditory propaganda was more useful for the Nazis than the visual propaganda was.

            What first interested me in this topic was an old project that I had been given my freshman year in high school. In my World History class everyone was given a certain topic to research from World War Two. My topic was on Kristallnacht or “Night of Glass”, where all the Jewish owned businesses in Berlin were broken into, looted, and outright destroyed. At first I didn’t really care about any of that stuff because it was just another stupid paper I had to write, but now that I have grown up and can appreciate the skill and work it took to make citizens of a country hate a certain group of people so much they would outright attack and destroy all the businesses ran by that group in a major city like Berlin. There must have been some powerful sort of propaganda that caused all these people to come together to hate these ordinary people, people who had been their friends and neighbors for years, enough to attack them.

            To start off, my first example that proves auditory was a more power from of propaganda than visual, was that Hitler and the Nazi party would have many rallies in the large cities around German. The main points of interests at these rallies were the speeches that were given usually by Hitler himself or other Nazi leaders. Hitler would always get up in front of large crowds of people and would talk, and his speeches were very powerful because of the rhetoric and the emotion that he had. People would travel great distances to come and hear the Führer speak. In his speeches we usually talked about the greatness of Germany before the First World War and how bad the state was now, which brought about great pride for the old times and distraught for the new times.  These rallies also show how auditory propaganda was more important because of the role that the visual propaganda played. These rallies that were always held in these gigantic amphitheaters would show off the power of the Nazi Government. These big stadiums along with the hundreds of large Nazi swastika flags and banner would all boast about how big and mighty the government is. But, all of these visual pieces of propaganda served only a supporting role. The visual propaganda was there to build up Hitler’s ethos, so that his speeches would seem more credible and believable.  This proves that the auditory was more important than the visual, because the visual was only there to help build up the auditory propaganda.

            Another idea that proves that auditory propaganda was more important than visual propaganda is from my own experiences. When I see a picture or a poster I look at it and go “Oh that’s a nice piece of work,” but when I hear something I have to stop and listen so that I understand. With a picture I could stop and look at it, maybe take it so that later I could really focus on certain things and analyze it all the way through, but that would take some time to do. Although, when I hear something I have to stop right then and focus onto it so that I don’t miss anything. While with a picture you can take you time to focus on certain things, when you hear something you have to start actively listening and focusing on the main topics and the supporting details. Because the human brain has to more quickly filter out the non essential information when you hear something compared to when you see it, you have to become more engaged to listening than seeing. Also, based off of the finding from an fMRI study on the McGurk effect,   what you hear can modify what you visually perceive (Jones).For example there are these certain pictures, like my favorite, the pictures of the two ladies, which are used in psychology that when they asked people what they saw they got two totally different answers. This is because everyone’s perception is different. When a group of people were told what the picture was before the picture was shown to them, they all saw the same thing. This is because they were already mentally creating the picture in their head before they saw it. The same thing was true about another group that was told the opposite answer. Groups of people can be persuaded to see different things in the same thing, which just shows that auditory language can control how someone perceives visual language.

Your brain acts in very specific ways. Not only does it filter out non-essential information, it can also react to certain key words or feelings (Pizzaro.) By hearing some more pleasant words”like soft, pillow, fuzzy”, and such other words, your brain creates a feeling of comfort because it relates those things as being comfortable. The same is true for the opposite set of words. If disgusting words are used to describe something then in turn that makes the thing being described disgusting. This technique was use by the Nazis, and can be seen her in a quote from Hitler, “...the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew. -Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)”( Adolf Hitler about the Jews.) By placing cacophonous words near or beside Jew in a sentence, the Nazis used language to bring about feelings of hate and fear towards the Jews. While this could also be done on visual pieces of propaganda, the ability to keep repeating this technique over and over again throughout a speech would make its use in auditory propaganda far exceed that of visual propaganda.

            What I believe to be the one thing that made auditory propaganda the most influential is the development of the radio and radio systems. During the Nazi control of Germany the head of Propaganda, Josef Goebbels, organized the effort that helped provide cheap radios for sale to the general public. These radios came in two different sizes a large and small version for sale at seventy-six and thirty-five Marks respectively. He also used his power in the government to have loud speakers installed in cities across the country. He believed that when Hitler spoke that everyone in the country should be able to listen to him (Trueman). This new technology sparked the interest of the public and the government alike. Just like today with the all new iPads and tablets, everything you did, play or watched had advertisements for some political party or the other. The development of new technology has always seem to get the interest of lots of people, and advertisement works best when lots of people are already open to new ideas.

            In summary, the speeches Nazi leaders gave, personal experiences on how the brain works, how the brain reacts to certain words and the feeling it makes, and the new technology of the radio are all examples of why auditory propaganda was more effective than visual propaganda. Through researching and analyzing past examples of powerful propaganda we can learn some effective advertising tips. Although Nazi propaganda and modern advertising is very different we can still use some old techniques with new modification to make some very persuasive ads for today. Anyone that wants to analyze or learn how to sway people to believe or buy something can learn from looking at how the Nazis used language to make a whole country believe the ideals of a few.

Sources

"Adolf Hitler about the Jews." Jewish Upps. Mosaisk.com. Web. 27 Nov 2012. <http://www.mosaisk.com/auschwitz/Adolf-Hitler-about-the-Jews.php>.

Jones, Jeffery. "Brain activity during audiovisual speech perception: An fMRI study of the McGurk effect."NeuroReport. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 11 2003. Web. 27 Nov 2012. <http://journals.lww.com/neuroreport/Abstract/2003/06110/Brain_activity_during_audiovisual_speech.6.asp&xgt;.

Pizzaro, David. "5 fascinating findings on how disgust affects the way we vote, grocery shop and discriminate."TED Blog. TED, 23 2012. Web. 18 Nov 2012. <http://blog.ted.com/2012/10/23/5-fascinating-findings-on-how-disgust-effects-the-way-we-vote-grocery-shop-and-discriminate/>.

Trueman, Chris. "History Learning Site." History Learning Site. (2012): n. page. Web. 18 Nov. 2012. <http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/propaganda_in_nazi_germany.htm>.

Reflection for the Inquiry Paper

This paper was actually a pretty easy paper to write. I know a lot of people in my class was struggling to find information and then finally writing the paper but I actually found the writing of the paper to be very easy. This is probably because I already knew some things on my topic and most of my research was only building on that foundation. All in all I actually did learn a lot from this paper, and I liked the format. Being able to use personal experiences and things for a research paper and putting my own personal argument into it made it so much better than all of those other boring papers I had to write in high school. I wouldn’t mind writing more argumentative papers in the future, but only if they had a topic that was less… language based.

Polished This I Believe Essay

Listen to advice

I believe that the plain truth is needed before someone can fix something. Once all the layers of sugar coating and lies are gone, you can actually get to the dirty work of fixing whatever problem that was being ignored.

A few years ago I decided that I wanted to play soccer for a U14 team in the league nearby, because I was still young enough to play in that division. So I signed up for a team, but it wasn’t long after that, that I realized that the guys I was playing with were above my caliber, even thought they were younger than me. At first this made me pretty upset because I didn’t know why my team mates were so much better than me, and I felt like I didn’t fit in. At first I looked at my teammates with resentment because of this.

 I’m pretty sure my coach saw this because he came and talked me before our first game. He was worried that I was having problems with the team and wanted to know what was wrong. So I told him that I didn’t fit in because everyone was better than me. Then he told me the honest truth, he told me that yes, I didn’t fit in, but that it wasn’t because the other guys were better than me, it was because I was the first new guy on the team in four years, and that I haven’t found my place yet. So, taking all of his advice into account I started trying to be friends with everyone, and I did eventually find my place on the team and even became a captain at the end of the session.

Thanks to my coach I found out that I was wrong, and afterwards I was able to change how I acted so that I could fix my situation. Sometimes I think we all jump to conclusions and get stuff messed up in our brains. Sometimes these mix ups can cause a lot of damage. I know if I had stayed stuck in my way of thinking, then my whole experience with that new team could have been dramatically different. Because I had a coach who came and talked to me and told me what my problem Really was, I was able to turn a bad experience into a great memory of a session that I really enjoyed.

I think that sometimes everyone needs that one person in their life that can bring them back to Earth and tell them how it really is because sometimes we all see things in the wrong light. It’s those people in our life that help us get past all the little stuff that we see and turn our focus onto the real problem. So now I am coming to understand that sometimes when people criticism us that it’s not always bad, sometimes people are just trying to set our sights on the right problem.

Reflection for This I believe Essay

The This I Believe Essay was very difficult for me. I do not usually go and express my emotions or beliefs out in public and that was what this essay was all about. Most of the time I think that expressing what I think to others is just going to get me in trouble and in this paper that held true. For me I had to do a lot of revising and editing not to fix grammatical mistakes and such, but to fix how I was saying it. This is because I’m a straight to the point, no BS kind of person, and I found it really hard to write this paper without sounding mean or arrogant. This is what took up most of my free time during writing this paper because I had to come way out of my comfort zone and tone down my beliefs a little to make my paper better suited for the assignment.

Theory of Writing and Writer’s Profile

Theory of Writing

I came into this class with a closed mind on writing. I used to hate it more than any other thing in the world and I dreaded doing it! Now I have learned that writing doesn’t have to be a terrible experience. It can also be very enjoyable at sometimes even if it is tedious at others. Writing is very important though, because without writing our world would collapse and fall into discord. Writing teaches, informs, and connects people across the globe. Our writing can bring us into contact with people from across the world that share similar beliefs, people who we would never have met otherwise.

I think that lots of things need to be considered when attempting to write. The first thing is audience, because before you start working on something you need to know who you’re writing it for. Different people can receive different messages from the same piece and you don’t want someone to get the wrong message from what you write so one must take care to word your writing so that you clearly communicate the correct message to the correct people. You also have to take into account the type of writing that you are about to do, because a journal entry is a whole different type of writing than a technical report, and the context you are writing in needs to be taken into account.

I see myself still as a beginning writer. I still have much to learn about writing and I will need to spend lots of time honing my skills before I become a good writer. Since I am studying to become and engineer I will probably have a very different style of writing than normal writers. Many of my future writing assignments will be technical reports and such and these require more detailed information and hard evidence than some other forms of writing. This will probably shape me into a writer that is very keen on strict details, and less keen on assumptions and feelings about things. This will probably cause my personal writing to be more focused on things such as feelings or private thoughts, because I already have to writing a lot about hard facts and numbers in my assigned writing that I won’t want to have anything to do with those in my free writing. This will cause a very dramatic difference in the two types of writing for me because most of my writing will either have hard facts or emotion in them but not both.

I believe that bad writing and good writing is only dependant on one thing, desired impact. The author writes things to cause a certain feeling or to get a certain point across to certain people. If the feeling or point was easy for the desired audience to get or understand then it was good writing, if not then it was bad writing. I think that one cannot actually determine if it is truly good or bad writing if the piece was not meant for them, because how can they say it was bad if it wasn’t written for them to understand it. The only thing that makes writing good or bad is if the intended audience can understand it easily. 

Writer’s Profile

Over the course of the semester I think I have grown a lot as a writer. Before coming to the class I found writing to be a horrible experience, and I dreaded doing it every time I had to. I always thought that the only worthwhile things to write were technical reports that showed a logical step by step procedure that helped someone do something or report on what was done, or as a plain expression of imagination such as fiction novels or other smaller works of that nature. I also thought that academic writing was about knocking out page after page of hard researched facts found from other people.  After this class thought I have found that writing can be more than just that, and that you don’t have to have a massive amount of pages and boring research to make a strong argument. At first this was very difficult for me especially since the first actual big assignment couldn’t be over five hundred words. The This I Believe Essay was pretty difficult for me at first because I just couldn’t fathom that I could get enough information down in that small amount of space. I think I was finally able to accomplish this feat with help from my peers and I believe that this is one of the most important skills that I learned in this course. I am now glad I did that assignment because it has helped me greatly in my skills on writing the least amount possible! This assignment also made me become a peer reviewer which I haven’t had that much experience in being before. Being able to see other peoples work helped me on my own work because it let me see different views on writing that I could use in my own. Overall I think that I did a good job in this course, I did almost all of my assignment way before they were actually due, and I haven’t stressed over this course that much compared to some others. 

Post 4 IP Research Proposal

Nazi Propaganda
Against the Jews
Nazi Propaganda
Against the Jews

. Speeches and Radio
Propaganda
. Posters and Visual
Propaganda
.Speeches and Radio
Propaganda
.Posters and Visual
Propaganda
http://www2.needham.k12.ma.us/nhs/cur/wwII/11/Brooke-JPG-p2/images/germany.jpg
http://www.universe-galaxies-stars.com/hitler.jpg

http://ww2today.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/goebbels600x798.
jpg

.Adolf Hitler
.Goebbels
.Kristallnacht
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01110/kristallnacht_1110843c.jpg

.I have always had an interest of war
history and tactics and have loved
learning about WWII.
.I really believe WWII was the first war that
used tactics that weren’t ridiculously
stupid, so this was like the beginning of
modern war.
.Anything about WWII sparks my interest.
.I have always had an interest of war
history and tactics and have loved
learning about WWII.
.I really believe WWII was the first war that
used tactics that weren’t ridiculously
stupid, so this was like the beginning of
modern war.
.Anything about WWII sparks my interest.

.Treaty of Versailles
.Hitler
.National Socialist German Workers Party
.Nuremburg Laws
.Propaganda
.Joseph Goebbels
.“The Night of Glass”
.Ghettos
.Treaty of Versailles
.Hitler
.National Socialist German Workers Party
.Nuremburg Laws
.Propaganda
.Joseph Goebbels
.“The Night of Glass”
.Ghettos

.Books –millions of books have been
written about the Holocaust and about
Nazi propaganda.
.Atkins library has a vast amount of books
at on various topics including
Propaganda of the time.
.Websites –Many government agencies
have written things about the war and
the Holocaust.
.Books –millions of books have been
written about the Holocaust and about
Nazi propaganda.
.Atkins library has a vast amount of books
at on various topics including
Propaganda of the time.
.Websites –Many government agencies
have written things about the war and
the Holocaust.

.Anyone Researching about Nazi history
or background.
.High school students who have
WWII/Holocaust projects.
.Anyone Researching about Nazi history
or background.
.High school students who have
WWII/Holocaust projects.

"This looks so bad without all the formatting and pictures that were on the PowerPoint."

Reflection for the Blog Post 7.2

Well the Blog was a giant pain in the butt at first, but it has slowly grown on me. At first I don’t think anyone had any clue what was going on except for maybe one or two of us. This caused a lot of trouble at first when there were deadline and stuff because we were all struggling to figure out how any of it worked; much less trying to write what was assigned us. It took a while for us to figure it out yes but I think that by the end of the class we had all found out in our own way how to work the thing. Everything worked out for the best because now we have an easy way to make our E-Portfolio, which should be way easier to make that a real portfolio. 

Reflection for the Inquiry Paper Post 7.1

This paper was actually a pretty easy paper to write. I know a lot of people in my class was struggling to find information and then finally writing the paper but I actually found the writing of the paper to be very easy. This is probably because I already knew some things on my topic and most of my research was only building on that foundation. All in all I actually did learn a lot from this paper, and I liked the format. Being able to use personal experiences and things for a research paper and putting my own personal argument into it made it so much better than all of those other boring papers I had to write in high school. I wouldn’t mind writing more argumentative papers in the future, but only if they had a topic that was less… language based.

Inquiry Project Final Draft Post 6

Jacob Lewis

Ms. Andrews

English 1102

28 November 2012

January 30^th, 1933, the day Adolf Hitler was elected the Chancellor of Germany spelled the doom for millions of people. While many inspiring and dramatic battles were waged across the fields of Europe and the islands of the Pacific, there was something darker happening in the shadows of the Third Reich. Nazi Germany was trying to systematically destroy many races of people that they thought were “less desirable.” Today we call these actions The Holocaust, and the main targets during this were the Jews. Hitler and his higher ups used the Jews as a scapegoat for all of the misfortunes that had befallen Germany after the First World War.

            How was the German government able to justify the killings of millions of peoples including six million plus Jews? How did they receive the support from the populace to do all of these terrible things or how did they make the people of German believe and think in the same way that the government did? They accomplished all of this through their mastery of language through propaganda.  They used many means of propaganda that can all be divided into two types, visual propaganda, and auditory propaganda. Learning about how the Nazis used propaganda to make people feel same way and agree on certain topics can play a vital role in today’s time. The Nazis had a very effective way of communicating their ideals, and through studying their techniques, modern day advertisers can modify old techniques to make them relevant to today’s products.  Now even though both types of propaganda were used by the Nazis, what type was the most effective? Based on the evidence that I have found in my research I believe that the use of auditory propaganda was more useful for the Nazis than the visual propaganda was.

            What first interested me in this topic was an old project that I had been given my freshman year in high school. In my World History class everyone was given a certain topic to research from World War Two. My topic was on Kristallnacht or “Night of Glass”, where all the Jewish owned businesses in Berlin were broken into, looted, and outright destroyed. At first I didn’t really care about any of that stuff because it was just another stupid paper I had to write, but now that I have grown up and can appreciate the skill and work it took to make citizens of a country hate a certain group of people so much they would outright attack and destroy all the businesses ran by that group in a major city like Berlin. There must have been some powerful sort of propaganda that caused all these people to come together to hate these ordinary people, people who had been their friends and neighbors for years, enough to attack them.

            To start off, my first example that proves auditory was a more power from of propaganda than visual, was that Hitler and the Nazi party would have many rallies in the large cities around German. The main points of interests at these rallies were the speeches that were given usually by Hitler himself or other Nazi leaders. Hitler would always get up in front of large crowds of people and would talk, and his speeches were very powerful because of the rhetoric and the emotion that he had. People would travel great distances to come and hear the Führer speak. In his speeches we usually talked about the greatness of Germany before the First World War and how bad the state was now, which brought about great pride for the old times and distraught for the new times.  These rallies also show how auditory propaganda was more important because of the role that the visual propaganda played. These rallies that were always held in these gigantic amphitheaters would show off the power of the Nazi Government. These big stadiums along with the hundreds of large Nazi swastika flags and banner would all boast about how big and mighty the government is. But, all of these visual pieces of propaganda served only a supporting role. The visual propaganda was there to build up Hitler’s ethos, so that his speeches would seem more credible and believable.  This proves that the auditory was more important than the visual, because the visual was only there to help build up the auditory propaganda.

            Another idea that proves that auditory propaganda was more important than visual propaganda is from my own experiences. When I see a picture or a poster I look at it and go “Oh that’s a nice piece of work,” but when I hear something I have to stop and listen so that I understand. With a picture I could stop and look at it, maybe take it so that later I could really focus on certain things and analyze it all the way through, but that would take some time to do. Although, when I hear something I have to stop right then and focus onto it so that I don’t miss anything. While with a picture you can take you time to focus on certain things, when you hear something you have to start actively listening and focusing on the main topics and the supporting details. Because the human brain has to more quickly filter out the non essential information when you hear something compared to when you see it, you have to become more engaged to listening than seeing. Also, based off of the finding from an fMRI study on the McGurk effect,   what you hear can modify what you visually perceive (Jones).For example there are these certain pictures, like my favorite, the pictures of the two ladies, which are used in psychology that when they asked people what they saw they got two totally different answers. This is because everyone’s perception is different. When a group of people were told what the picture was before the picture was shown to them, they all saw the same thing. This is because they were already mentally creating the picture in their head before they saw it. The same thing was true about another group that was told the opposite answer. Groups of people can be persuaded to see different things in the same thing, which just shows that auditory language can control how someone perceives visual language.

Your brain acts in very specific ways. Not only does it filter out non-essential information, it can also react to certain key words or feelings (Pizzaro.) By hearing some more pleasant words”like soft, pillow, fuzzy”, and such other words, your brain creates a feeling of comfort because it relates those things as being comfortable. The same is true for the opposite set of words. If disgusting words are used to describe something then in turn that makes the thing being described disgusting. This technique was use by the Nazis, and can be seen her in a quote from Hitler, “...the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew. -Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)”( Adolf Hitler about the Jews.) By placing cacophonous words near or beside Jew in a sentence, the Nazis used language to bring about feelings of hate and fear towards the Jews. While this could also be done on visual pieces of propaganda, the ability to keep repeating this technique over and over again throughout a speech would make its use in auditory propaganda far exceed that of visual propaganda.

            What I believe to be the one thing that made auditory propaganda the most influential is the development of the radio and radio systems. During the Nazi control of Germany the head of Propaganda, Josef Goebbels, organized the effort that helped provide cheap radios for sale to the general public. These radios came in two different sizes a large and small version for sale at seventy-six and thirty-five Marks respectively. He also used his power in the government to have loud speakers installed in cities across the country. He believed that when Hitler spoke that everyone in the country should be able to listen to him (Trueman). This new technology sparked the interest of the public and the government alike. Just like today with the all new iPads and tablets, everything you did, play or watched had advertisements for some political party or the other. The development of new technology has always seem to get the interest of lots of people, and advertisement works best when lots of people are already open to new ideas.

            In summary, the speeches Nazi leaders gave, personal experiences on how the brain works, how the brain reacts to certain words and the feeling it makes, and the new technology of the radio are all examples of why auditory propaganda was more effective than visual propaganda. Through researching and analyzing past examples of powerful propaganda we can learn some effective advertising tips. Although Nazi propaganda and modern advertising is very different we can still use some old techniques with new modification to make some very persuasive ads for today. Anyone that wants to analyze or learn how to sway people to believe or buy something can learn from looking at how the Nazis used language to make a whole country believe the ideals of a few.

Sources

"Adolf Hitler about the Jews." Jewish Upps. Mosaisk.com. Web. 27 Nov 2012. <http://www.mosaisk.com/auschwitz/Adolf-Hitler-about-the-Jews.php>.

Jones, Jeffery. "Brain activity during audiovisual speech perception: An fMRI study of the McGurk effect."NeuroReport. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 11 2003. Web. 27 Nov 2012. <http://journals.lww.com/neuroreport/Abstract/2003/06110/Brain_activity_during_audiovisual_speech.6.asp&xgt;.

Pizzaro, David. "5 fascinating findings on how disgust affects the way we vote, grocery shop and discriminate."TED Blog. TED, 23 2012. Web. 18 Nov 2012. <http://blog.ted.com/2012/10/23/5-fascinating-findings-on-how-disgust-effects-the-way-we-vote-grocery-shop-and-discriminate/>.

Trueman, Chris. "History Learning Site." History Learning Site. (2012): n. page. Web. 18 Nov. 2012. <http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/propaganda_in_nazi_germany.htm>.

Annotated Bibliography Post 5

"NAZI PROPAGANDA." Holocaust Encyclopedia. Washington D.C.: 2012. <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005202>.

This work starts with describing propaganda and then leads on to describe what mediums the Nazis used. It then goes on to discuss the audiences and legislation surrounding the propaganda. It discusses the peoples that the Nazis discriminated against and then talks about a few different mediums. The article finishes with talking about what the propaganda did to help cover up some of the Nazis doings. This article is very helpful because it gives valuable information about films and other live propaganda that will help me reinforce my argument.

Trueman, Chris. "History Learning Site." History Learning Site. (2012): n. page. Web. 18 Nov. 2012. <http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/propaganda_in_nazi_germany.htm>.

This article is focused on Joseph Gobbles. It talks a little about what propaganda is and then it talks about Goebbels main tasks. It then talks about how Goebbels went about controlling the Medias. I believe that this will be a Very helpful article. It has lots of information about the head of propaganda and how it was used to change how people thought.

Pizzaro, David. "5 fascinating findings on how disgust affects the way we vote, grocery shop and discriminate."TED Blog. TED, 23 2012. Web. 18 Nov 2012. <http://blog.ted.com/2012/10/23/5-fascinating-findings-on-how-disgust-effects-the-way-we-vote-grocery-shop-and-discriminate/>.

This article talks starts with a few examples of disgusting phrases. It then talks about how disgusting words can be used. It then starts talking about the 4 different ways that disgust changes ways of thinking. I don’t believe that this article will be that helpful. It does give good information that I could use to build my argument about the human brain, and how it works though.

Bytwerk, Randall. "Racial and Anti-Semitic Material." Nazi Propaganda: 1933-1945 (2012): n.pag. German Propaganda Archive. Web. 18 Nov 2012. <http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/ww2era.htm

This website isn’t one specific article but a compilation of many articles. I believe that this should become a good resource because it has many articles on both visual propaganda and specific anti-Semitic things.

Reaction to IRP Presentation Post 4

I think that my working knowledge presentation went very well. I got a lot of new information from my class mates that will help me in my paper. One thing I was told to research was the influence of radios on Nazi propaganda. Right after my presentation I went and looked into that and there is a lot of good information, I think that this is going to be one of my better topics in my paper.  This is good because with this new information I’m starting to feel really good about this paper. Hopefully my good feelings last throughout the writing process and my paper comes easy. I have a good argument now that I have some information on auditory propaganda, I think that I can back my argument up very well against the visual propaganda side and I think that I can have a very persuasive argument.