Ryan: Blogging for a grade.

Posts

Anny’s Advice that I successfully followed …and one I didn’t.

Steven Colbert at Northwestern University https://www.cnn.com Anny Murphy Paul’s article “Secrets of the Most Successful College Students” cites multiple revered people that have advice on ways to reconsider how success in college can be defined. I have experienced some of these mindsets with both positive and negative effects. Anny Murphy Paul claimed that successful students “get comfortable with failure”. This advice sited to come from Steven Colbert might be good advice for some people, but not for me. Constant iteration following failure can lead to extraordinary breakthroughs and superior results, but in my case, failure just ended my hopes and dreams. I may have become a little too comfortable with failure. I had aspirations for my time in college to result in a career as a mechanical engineer. Being comfortable with failure led to me failing calculus three times. This...

Entering the Conversation

Op/eds seem to appeal to specific audiences but not to others Journalists are supposed to be objective when reporting the news to the public…supposed to be. Based on where we get our news, it can come with a bias. Many news broadcasts these days tend to be sensationalized , giving us outrageous headlines and pundits that persuade our opinions this way and that way. Forming our own opinion can be difficult when this happens, but with so much happening around us, some of us might welcome a strong opinion. Op/ed columns cut out our need to filter the biased from the unbiased and lets the reader agree or disagree with the opinion of an author that already knows or has researched a given topic. The public that has a strong ability to analyze and interpret information and value free and independent thought may not feel attracted to what Op/eds have to offer. These people may prefer news to be as straight to the point and unbiased as possible. An author’s opinions i...

Being my best...probably not possible

James Paul Gee My entire life has felt like one big fake. As a child of divorced and remarried parents, I may have developed two personalities. Linguistics researcher James Paul Gee , claims that personalities are Discourses; “Discourses are the ways of being in the world” , ways in which we combine our body language and clothing with words in order to convey certain “values, beliefs, [and] attitudes” that makeup identities we present (Gee, "Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics", 6). Gee wrote, “ a primary Discourse constitutes our original…identity [and] becomes a “carrier” or “foundation” for [other] Discourses acquired later in life” (Gee, "Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics", 8), which makes me feel like I may have formed two early Discourses; one to engage with my mother’s household and one for my father’s. I am not sure if this is true, but I think that being in two distinct environments during the developmental years of a child might cause this...

I’m here because I got fired: A Six-Word Memoir

I’m here because I got fired Before I started my path toward earning a degree, I was a construction worker. My father and his father were union construction workers. To be more specific, we were all union sheet metal workers; sheet metal workers design, build and install various types of sheet metal products. In San Diego, where we all worked, sheet metal workers mainly build and install air conditioning duct and architectural components. I started this type of work as soon as I graduated high school because I had no idea or plan for my future and my dad could help me join his union. I worked in this industry for 11 years and went through a five-year apprenticeship and night school. I worked hard. I found a union company that valued loyal employees and worked for them for 5 years. Some small jobs were made my responsibility and I started to expect an official promotion to Foreman. Unfortunately, my expectations for the future did not become a reality. I wa...