Semester 1
Daily learning questions:
1) -What can we control? What can’t we?
I think it’s not a matter of CAN you control your live, but Will you. We’ve all had a moment of vulnerability where we feel a lack of control in our lives, and sometimes the best way to regain control, is to accept the things you can’t change, and focus on the things you can.
Loss of control is a broad feeling we all experienced at sometime in our lives. All though we all have a certain amount of control, for some people more than others, this amount of control may be slightly less. Depending on your situation, the amount of change in your life you can make is different from person to person. Nevertheless, I think having choice is a large form of control. Still, there is a large portion of our lives which we have no control over, like what other people may do to you and how you sometimes can’t change your surroundings. In this case, you may not have a lot of control over what happens, but even in the times you think you don’t have control, you usually do. Because how you let yourself react to what happened is up to you. We all have control over how we react to people or bad situation, and we can all decide to not let the actions of others affect us.
In May 1985, Steve Jobs, who formed Apple in 1976, was fired from Apple by the company’s CEO, by the people he helped recruit. However, Jobs didn’t let this get him down, instead he started a new computer company, called NeXT. The same year Jobs started NeXT, he also bought a struggling computer animation studio, now famously known as Pixar. In 1997, Steve Jobs was re-hired as interim CEO. So even through all this, Steve Jobs came up on top by not letting the situation take the best of him. “I’m pretty sure none of this [NeXT, Pixar, his return to Apple, the iPod, and iTunes] would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple,” Jobs had said. “It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.”
The most important thing I discovered is that the choices we have and make in our lives are the ways in which we have control. I believe that if you accept the things you can’t change, and choose to focus on the things you can, then you can turn your life around and make any situation in your life better. Don't feel defeated by the things you can't change, but be empowered knowing there are some things you can. Now it’s up to you to choose to change your life and take control. The choice is yours.
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2) Why is personification a valuable tool for writing?
Personification gives movement, emotion, and characterization to an otherwise lifeless thing. There are more ways to describe something when you talk about it like it’s a person or living thing, and that is how personification can be used to improve a story. Personification brings a story to life, and stimulates the reader's imagination. For example, ‘The bread jumped out of the toaster.’ with these words I imagine the bread excitedly springing out of the toaster, and jumping high up in the air, reaching the top, and then falling back down. Of course, the toast can not jump out of the toaster because it does not have legs, that’s where personification comes in play. By using personification, the toast is very vivid, more dramatic, interesting, and very much alive in my mind.
It is also a very good and easy way to make your readers feel for a certain object, and perhaps become emotionally attached to it, if it possesses human qualities. Personification helps us to relate more to an object or idea because it is easier for us to relate to something that has human attributes. Some good examples are “The run down house appeared depressed.” I start to feel sad for this house with it's capacity to feel emotion. “The door protested as it opened slowly.” I can just hear it’s whining complain, the squeaking of it’s hinges, and it’s restlessness as I pry it open. Both these examples show how personification can truly bring a story to life by applying it to objects, but you can also use personification to describe intangible ideas. In many songs, poems, and stories, love is described as being blind and stupid because when in love, logic and common sense don’t seem to have anything to do with who you love. Those are some of the ways in which personification can be valuable in writing. You can use personification like so, to bring your stories to life.
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3) How do we persuade?
You may not notice it, but persuasion is very important in life and you’re doing it all the time, in the way you talk in order to win an argument, and especially when trying to get someone to do something for you, you have to first persuade that person before they’d do it right? Well how do you go about persuading someone? it's quite simple really, there are three main components, Ethos, Pathos, and Logos.
First let’s start with Ethos, the ethical appeal. You wouldn’t want to read something by someone you think is a bad person or doesn't seem to know what they’re talking about right? That’s why Ethos is so important, to make them see you as a likable person with valid ideas and so they’ll listen to you.
Next is Logos. This is the reasoning behind whatever you said and are going to say. I couldn’t stress enough the importance of Logos, because if there is no evidence that backs up what your saying, then for all the readers know, you could be making up everything and there’s no real logic behind what you’re saying.
Last, we have Pathos. In the previous paragraph we talked about Logos, the use of logic, but now I want to focus on what sometimes fights the logical mind and is more delicate than facts and proof. "The mind can calculate, but the spirit years, and the heart wants what it wants." -Stephen King. When you can capture the emotion of your audience and play on their heart, that’s when they can start to feel something for your subject and find how they relate to what is being said. It’s very important to make a connection with yourself as well as your audience, but don’t stop there, take it bigger and connect with something bigger than you and I.
By using these three simple ways of persuasion, you will change the way people think with Logos, and influence your readers with emotional connection by Pathos, backing all of this up with evidence of Ethos. By using the same tricks that good persuaders use, you can become a better persuader yourself and hopefully will be able to sway people in your direction with each word.
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