Argument article

In my essay I choose to argue Charles Murray article "Should the Obama Generation Drop Out?"
This article appealed to me because I think that Charles Murray makes some interesting points.
To summarize Murray states that Obama has two ideas for improving secondary education- expand the use of community colleges as well as give tuition tax credits. He goes on to state several reason why these platforms are flawed and out of reach for most Americans.The main point he is making is that a bachelor's degree should not a perquisite to getting a job and earning a living.

This argument was interesting to me because after high school I did go and get a job. After dappling in community college, I choose not further my education, but rather focus on my career. Mr Murray makes some points in his argument that I would find interesting to disprove. Some are outlandish and some have a grain of sensibility to them. I would enjoy exploring this topic on a deeper level. I have been out of the academic world for twenty years, but was in the work force for that time. I have experienced life without a bachelor degree, and made the decision to go back to school. I was successful in my career, but didn't feel a sense of fulfillment on a personnel level. I felt that I could and still can get a job without a bachelors degree, but it may not be a desirable position. Without a degree I always felt that I had to go above and beyond what was expected of me to make up for the fact I did not have a education.  Mr Murray argument is not a well rounded argument. It will be fun to explore all points of view on this topic.

Reflection

Reflection on my writing is what can cause my 19^th nervous breakdown. When I started the semester my goal for this class was simple I thought. I wanted to understand the fundamentals of writing. I wanted to gain knowledge in the elements that I struggle with. These elements are sentence structure and grammar. Since we are half way through the class I feel like a I'm struggling in general with my writing.  I have always been confident in my ability to generate ideas, it is the execution that gets complicated. So, I feel that I have not made progress on my goals. In class we have done a worksheet on grammar practice. I made the edit I though were correct, but I don't think we covered the worksheet in class. It would be helpful to me, to have a refresher on grammatical correctness.I have no idea what pronouns without antecedents means? Maybe I'm taking the wrong class for this, but I feel lost. In addition, we had the assignment of summarizing, paraphrasing and quoting. I could see this skill being so useful and very helpful in my academic writing. Unfortunately, my children were sick and I had to take them into the pediatrician on the day that we covered the assignment. So in a stroke of bad luck, again I'm left wondering if I did the assignment correctly? I did utilize the writing lab. I had high hope that the instructor would take a look at my narrative assignment as well as my ad analysis. The world of academia does not work within my time frame, I didn't get as much accomplished as I hoped. Lesson learned is I will have to schedule several appointments before my paper is due. I will say that I did find it helpful, and came away with a worksheet on how to use transition word. I have used this worksheet several times with my writing, for this class and others. This class is helpful in improving my writing skills because it forces me to actually write.  If I was not taking this coarse I would not be putting my thoughts and ideas on paper, but rather waiting until my other writing assignments in other courses were due and then fretting about it.

     Changes in the class I would like to see, is the more explanation on the rules of writing. Again, I struggle with grammar and sentence structure. I have friends who have  fancy degrees in English. They give me feedback about my writing, and 100% of the time the critique is that my idea is good, but I break alot of writing rules.I think assignments like the argument are great, because it forces me to learn what I don't know. I would love to see more worksheets and assignments based on these fundamentals. I feel like I under utilize the Rules for Writers. A book has been recommended to help me " The elements of style"  My thinking is I don't want to read it because I don't even know how to use the one I got!

My writing process has changed. I use to think that actually writing the paper was difficult. But now I see the revision is were the action is. So the process of getting  words on paper is the easy part. It is the fine tuning of the writing that elevates your writing. I have to account for this in my writing process. 

I do not think my writing has improved. It is much more difficult for me to write. I dread assignment more, and put them off. Sure my writing has improved from a grammical way, but from a personnal perscpective I don't enjoy it like I use to. In review of my writing, I was given the feedback that academic writing is different that if  I was writing something personnal. I tend to write as if I was talking and that wrong in the academic world . Everytime now when I write something, I'm second guessing myself and questioning is it too informal?
Which leaves me feeling more confused and ever before. I feel very frustrated in my abilities to write, which surprises me. My thoughts that this class would improve my skills, but now I just feel lost.

Narritive vs. Analysis

     When reflecting back on my essays that I wrote both paper have a similar tone. In my narrative essay I wrote in first person explaining my love of magazines. In my ad analysis I used the content of the ad to explain what I thought Ikea intented the ad to mean. In both cases I used the my writing skills to show and tell the reader so they would comprehend what I was trying to communicate. this was done with an informal tone. The purpose was different for each assignment. I felt with the narrative essay I was telling a story as where with my ad analysis I had to interpret what I though the advertiser was saying and support my interpretation by pointing out the what and whys of the ad, almost like creating a persuasive argument. Also I treated the audience the same in both writing assignments. I gave a lot of information about what I was writing about because as a writer I assumed my audience had no prior knowledge about what I was writing about.I also felt that the genre was the same in both essays, and I took a comical approach to writing them both.

Ikea Ad

     Here is my ad from Ikea. I believe this ad intended purpose was to demonstrate that with the Ikea Aspvik cabinet can tame your toy dragon....meaning that a little organization can improve your living condition. They show this by taking a heap of plastic toys in a form of a dragon and showing that the dragon can be tamed or in this case "cleaned up" by a piece of Aspvik furniture. I can tell this by the way Ikea used the look of surprise on the dragon face as she is looking at the office cabinet that is propt open by a thick stick! To me it symbolizes that the dragon or "mess" can be tamed.

     The target audience is anyone who has a huge mess of toys in their house. This could mean anyone who has children ages from 1-10 that live in their home. I guess it could also be targeting grandparents who would have toys at home for their visiting grandchildren. What I found interesting about this ad was that because of the generic walls that are shown in this ad, it can really appeal to any age, gender, ethnicity which I though was a smart move for Ikea because of their global brand status. The minimal use of text and elements makes it have mass appeal in a global market.

   This genre would almost be describe as action/adventure or as comical. The stick and rope along with the surprised expression from the dragon echos some Indian Jones adventure for me. It is genius of Ikea to take a boring office cabinet and turn it into a dragon slayer super hero! I have never seen a boring  cabinet advertised like this before so I would say that it can't compare to similar products which made this ad unique.
I didn't expect this from Ikea, and I think I was more willing to view this ad because of it's uniqueness.

   The tone of this ad is comical and lighthearted. When dealing with toys and the mess they can create, I don't think you want to take a tone that can be deemed to critical or serous. The idea of creating a mystical dragon out of toys and having that creature be tamed by a peice of furniture is funny.