The Reflection Letter

Dear Professor

I want to start off by say think you for giving me that opportunity to write about my performance through out this semester.First of all, it was my first time to use MLA format, so it was new for me. At the beginning, i had some difficulties writing a formal paper. By revising my papers, i got little better and comfortable writing. Surely i still have some areas of weakness like develop my thoughts in the essay, support my arguments, introduce a quotation and finally my grammar needs some improvements. Therefore, i feel satisfied about my work on my final paper, where i saw some improvements on my writing skills and i definitely feel better about my writing in general, thing that i wouldn’t have been able to say before.

Before this class, i was an ” anti-writing” person because one english is my second and two i don’t like to write. To be honest, i was afraid to write because i didn’t know how to properly present an essay neither how to make a solid argument including quotations nor how to cite a document. Now, everything look different in the way i approach writing and developing ideas when i have to write something like essay or letters. So i am very thankful to have you as professor because you helped me improve my writing skills and you gave me a lot of confident on myself and now i have the ability to do a much better work when it comes to write for example an essay.

Concerning my writing and my reading about higher education, i feel like the subject was very catchy and inspiring. it got me thinking many times about the  situation that i was into before i resume my education a year ago. i left college so seven years, i spent four years in the military and after my time was up in the military i decided to go back to school and finish my education. but i was a challenge for me in the sense of it was for me the first time that i attempt college in the United States and in a different language that i wasn’t costumed to. The reading gave me that extra motivation and boost my envy to pursuit my education in the United States. The reading and writing on higher education are for the starting point of my personnel challenge on higher education.

In the process of learning how to write properly, i was involved in terms of class  participation and peer review as much as i could. I was learning about the expectations on the writing process so i couldn’t efficiently judge the papers of my peers.

Sincerely

Cyrille Guede

Response to David Foster Wallace

            The article from David Foster Wallace is about the commencement speech. he is talking how the most obvious et simple reality can appear to be to most difficult thing to see or understand. assuming that, the author proves that every single person comprehend differently and what could be easy to understand of one can be difficult for another, but everything reside in the speech and the way you formulate what your try to say.

            Giving a speech should at least attrack the audience first of all and then then audience will be the judge. How it is going to judge a good speech from a bad  speech? by the way they respond to your speech, it could be by cheering or by applause which mean the speech was good or either by not respond  at all which mean the speech was not good. The article raises some good points like saying that  there are “whole parts of adults life that nobody talks about it commencement speeches” which include “boredom, routine, and petty frustration.” the whole idea here is to compare the life of an adult to a speech and how he does that? by showing that the commencement speeches is just a routine like an adult life is.

 

The Art of Metacommentary

Cyrille  Guede

Professor  LaPiana

English 110

22 October 2012

Higher Education: Call for Motivation

My desires to go to college and to get a degree began many years ago when I was in the fifth grade. My mother kept telling me that I would need a higher education if I wanted to be successful in this lifetime.In order to understand what she meant by that, one must recognize that we were poor and she was in the strugle and she wanted a better life for us. So I did make a commitment to education because I wanted to set an example for my brothers and sisters and accomplish the dream of my uncle. Why am I in college? This question seems mediocre, but in my view it takes a little more reflecting and reasoning to understand why we make the choices that we do. There are some particular reasons why I made the decision to attend college. The decision consists of two factors, most of which I was aware of before I was here. Most would like to agree that the reason for attending college is for the pursuit of some higher education. Since this seems a consensus; I will give my point of view of what it means to be educated incorporate with my reasons for attaining the education.

For what I know, being educated is having a general and particular knowledge and to develop the powers of reasoning and judgment for preparing yourself for mature life. To put in other way, higher education is the cement of a better mature life. Added to that, the motivations that guided and convinced me to take that next step in my education were pursuing my uncle’s dream and secondly being a guide, a model for my sibling. I will start off with pursuing the dream of my uncle who was my mentor, my teacher, in one word; he was the person that I was look up to. He was so brilliant in school and at that time, he was the only one in the family to reach that level of education. It might not mean anything right now for some people but he was in college. College was everything for him and his dream was to have his PhD and become politician. He used to tell me:” nephew, your education will be the key of your success for you and your family, also make sure you go as far as you can in your education to live a better life. I know I will be the one that take the whole family out of misery with my education because it is the key.” Unfortunately, my uncle died a year after he had his bachelor degree. Since that day, I promised to him from where he is that I will pursuit his dream and if God let me I will reach it. My uncle is surely right because if you don’t have high education, you are going to play life like lottery; higher education improves an individual’s quality of life. College graduates have greater economic stability and security, more prestigious employment and greater job satisfaction, less dependency on government assistance, more leadership and less criminal activity. Even more important, the motivation that I have being in college is that I have young brothers and sisters that look up to me and I want to be a leader, a model for them. As a leader, I want to set the tone by pursuing my education, by stay away from anything that can turn me away from my main focus which is my degrees, my education. In one word; I should lead by example in order to guide them to the right direct, the direction of success but it start with a good education. So for them to have a better life in the future, they have to have a higher education. That reminded me the article we read in class where Louis  Menand in his article “Live and Learn: Why We Have College.” Which was about  the reason why people decide to go to college and the benefit going to college lead to a career path. Menand states that “Higher education is widely regarded as the route to a better life.”(5) This piece of statement supports the idea that higher education gives a successful life. In other words, Menand didn’t realize how right he was by saying that because 93 per cent of the wealthiest person in the world has higher education.

On the other hand, several reasons can be offered in defense of the claim that higher education isn’t the key to success. There are many people that live free and very satisfying lives without even attending an institution of higher learning such as a college or a university. Indeed, some of the greatest contributors to society have been men and women who received no post-secondary education. Thus the idea that post-secondary education is needed to maintain a reasonable quality of life is not a notion that can be justified, which makes it likely that higher education is not necessarily the key of a successful life. Essentially,i am arguing not that higher education isn’t the key success, but that we should realize that in some cases post-secondary education did not play a good part in some people success.In that same note, an article written by Mike Rose “Blue-Collar Brilliant” which is about his family, his mother and his uncle. Both of them had never been in college but lived a successful live with his uncle end up being supervisor at General Motors. Rose states that:” He lacked formal knowledge of how the machines under his supervision worked, but he had direct experience with them, hands-on knowledge, and was savvy about their quirks and operational capabilities.” What Rose is saying here is that there are people who become successful with less education or no education. As athletes, musical artists, actors and people such as Bill gates have proven many times over.

My conclusion, then, is that higher education is nowadays harder to get but it will make you life better in the future. Ultimately,then, my goal is to demontrate that higher education teaches you how to be disciplined yourself, financialy and socialy. With the rise in technology, it is becoming harder to even work if you are not properly educated. To receive a higher education you must discipline yourself to turn in papers on time, set aside time to study and to arrive to class on time every day. These are the recipe to have a better life in the future and a successful professional career.

Connecting Parts

Cyrille  Guede

Professor  LaPiana

English 110

22 October 2012

Higher Education: Call for Motivation

My desires to go to college and to get a degree began many years ago when I was in the fifth grade and my mother kept telling me that I would need a higher education if I wanted to be successful in this lifetime. So I want to make a commitment to education because I want to set an example for my brothers and sisters and accomplish the dream of my uncle. Why am I in college? This question seems mediocre, but in my view it takes a little more reflecting and reasoning to understand why we make the choices that we do. There are some particular reasons why I made the decision to attend college. The decision consists of two factors, most of which I was aware of before I was here. Most would like to agree that the reason for attending college is for the pursuit of some higher education. Since this seems a consensus; I will give my point of view of what it means to be educated incorporate with my reasons for attaining the education.

For what I know, being educated is having a general and particular knowledge and to develop the powers of reasoning and judgment for preparing yourself for mature life. Added to that, the motivations that guided and convinced me to take that next step in my education were pursuing my uncle’s dream and secondly being a guide, a model for my sibling. I will start off with pursuing the dream of my uncle who was my mentor, my teacher, in one word; he was the person that I was look up to. He was so brilliant in school and at that time, he was the only one in the family to reach that level of education. It might not mean anything right now for some people but he was in college. College was everything for him and his dream was to have his PhD and become politician. He used to tell me:” nephew, your education will be the key of your success for you and your family, also make sure you go as far as you can in your education to live a better life. I know I will be the one that take the whole family out of misery with my education because it is the key.” Unfortunately, my uncle died a year after he had his bachelor degree. Since that day, I promised to him from where he is that I will pursuit his dream and if God let me I will reach it. My uncle is surely right because if you don’t have high education, you are going to play life like lottery; higher education improves an individual’s quality of life. College graduates have greater economic stability and security, more prestigious employment and greater job satisfaction, less dependency on government assistance, more leadership and less criminal activity. In addition, the motivation that I have being in college is that I have young brothers and sisters that look up to me and I want to be a leader, a model for them. As a leader, I want to set the tone by pursuing my education, by stay away from anything that can turn me away from my main focus which is my degrees, my education. In one word; I should lead by example in order to guide them to the right direct, the direction of success but it start with a good education. So for them to have a better life in the future, they have to have a higher education. That reminded me the article we read in class where Louis  Menand in his article “Live and Learn: Why We Have College.” Which was about  the reason why people decide to go to college and the benefit going to college lead to a career path. Menand states that “Higher education is widely regarded as the route to a better life.”(5) This piece of statement supports the idea that higher education gives a successful life.

On the other hand, several reasons can be offered in defense of the claim that higher education isn’t the key to success. There are many people that live free and very satisfying lives without even attending an institution of higher learning such as a college or a university. Indeed, some of the greatest contributors to society have been men and women who received no post-secondary education. Thus the idea that post-secondary education is needed to maintain a reasonable quality of life is not a notion that can be justified, which makes it likely that higher education is not necessarily the key of a successful life. In that same note, an article written by Mike Rose “Blue-Collar Brilliant” which is about his family, his mother and his uncle. Both of them had never been in college but lived a successful live with his end up being supervisor at General Motors. Rose states that:” He lacked formal knowledge of how the machines under his supervision worked, but he had direct experience with them, hands-on knowledge, and was savvy about their quirks and operational capabilities.” There are people who become successful with less education or no education. As athletes, musical artists, actors and people such as Bill gates have proven many times over.

In conclusion, a higher education is nowadays harder to get but it will make you life better in the future. A higher education teaches you how to be disciplined. With the rise in technology, it is becoming harder to even work if you are not properly educated. To receive a higher education you must discipline yourself to turn in papers on time, set aside time to study and to arrive to class on time every day. These are the recipe to have a better life in the future and a successful professional career.

 

INDENTIFICATION OF SOME “NAYSAYERS” IN GRAFF ARTICLE “HIDDEN INTELLECTUALISM”

On page 380, the first sentence of the first paragraph say: “EVERYONE KNOWS SOME young person who is impressively street smart but does poorly in school”. Also on page 380 to page 381, where he says: “WE associate the educated life, the life of the mind, too narrowly and exclusively with subjects and texts that we consider inherently weighty and academic. We assume that it’s possible to wax intellectual about Plato, Shakespeare, the French Revolution, and nuclear fission, but not about cars, dating, fashion, sports, TV, or video games.”. On page 385 as well, Gerald GRAFF says:” Here is the flip side of what i pointed out before: that there’s no necessary relation between the degree of interest a student shows in a text or subject and the quality of thought or expression such a student manifests in writing or talking about it.”

OBJECTION

Yet is it necessarily true that schools missed to the opportunity to capitalize on an element of drama and conflict that the intellectual world shares with sports? Is it always the case, as i have been suggesting, that “street smart ” are not less intellectuals than “school smart”. My point here is to present both “street smart” who excels for example in sport with a high “IQ” and “school smart” who excels in mathematics for instance. The two of them are using their brains as much as they can to perform in what they do best. SO it will be foolish to think or call the “street smart” non-intellectuals, because intellect by itself is the use of the brain. Therefore the “street smart” is as well an intellectual.

I think the author view will be the classic aspect of seeing an intellectual which is view an intellectual exclusively as some one in school or college with potentials and who has good knowledge about Shakespeare, Plato or history of Human for instance.

Summary of ” Blue-Collar Brilliance”

Mike Rose introduced his essay by a brief description of his childhood and the time he spent at his mother’s work place. He then understood the physical and mental efforts his mother was going through every single day. At the very young age,she quit school to take care of her siblings. All of them had a different fortune trough out their course of study. Mike Rose, who stumbled at first, got back to his feet after his freshman year.                                                                     Mike Rose brought an assumption up saying that “Intelligence is closely associated with formal education”. In his article,he is trying to clarify the misused of the word intelligence by politics, white-collar and the scholar, who often defined the blue-collar as illiterate and less intelligent. The author is clearly opposed at this thought. Using his uncle Joe experiences to illustrate his point of view, who left school in the ninth grade and become supervisor at General Motors. Mike Rose is arguing that blue-collar workers often use the same tools in order to solve problems as white-collar do. He even shows that his uncle went from working on the assembly to make vital decisions for his department. Mike Rose went further more by compare scientists, lawyers, entrepreneurs intellectual dimension of their work to the working-class people.He is making the case that even the plumber, the hair stylist, the carpenter,the waitress use strategy and management to perform their daily duty which are opposed to the Cartesian fashion of defining intelligence. Blue-collar also use mathematics function to perform. Mike Rose definitely shows in his essay the variety of tools the blue-collar are working with make them as effective as the white-collar.

Analysis of a Visual Text

OBSERVATION LIST

1) I see trees

2) I see two boys walking with backbags and they are in uniform

3)  I also see 25 sheep

4)  I see the sun light

5)  One of the boys has an hat on

6)  I see a path

7)  They both have shoes on

8)  the sheep aren’t afraid of the boys

QUESTIONS LIST

1) Where are the two boys going?

2) Where are they coming from?

3) Why are they in uniform?

4) Why the sheep don’t seem scared?

5) Where this takes place?

6) Why do they have their backbag?

7) Are they brothers

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