Through the Wire of the Brewery

Throughout this semester we have responded to a variety of blog prompts. Given that this is my last blog for the class, I figured it’s time to throw in something a little different. Below is my attempt to compare the Milwaukee Brewers lineup to characters from HBO’s The Wire. I know it’s not perfect but here’s what I got:

Rickie Weeks (Michael) - Blue-chip prospect with the talent that everyone wants, starting to realize it
Corey Hart (Det. Sydner) - Doesn’t wow you, but does a little of everything to help the team
Ryan Braun (Marlo) – Running the show, the boss
Prince Fielder (Avon) – Number two in Milwaukee behind Braun, used to be the man
Mike Cameron (Lt. Daniels) – Just look at him
Bill Hall (Bunk) - “I’m just a broke Ass Mother Fucker with a big dick”, has that swagger, nicotine addiction
J.J. Hardy (Carver) - Sucked at the beginning, became an all-star, now a solid player
Jason Kendall (Prezbo) - Enough said
Yovani Gallardo (Chris Partlow) - Striking dudes out, doesn’t matter who
Ken Macha (Tommy Carcetti) – Behind the curtain pulling the strings
Brad Nelson (Jay Landsman) – 0-22 this year, fat, enough said
Craig Counsell (Lester Freeman) - Old guy that does solid work, everyone underestimates him but he comes through in the clutch

There are some major characters missing so I’ll throw in some other players from around the league

Jonathan Paplebon (McNulty) - Just watch him celebrate a postseason victory, get him a beer, I needed at least one member of the Red Sox in here
Barry Bonds (Omar Little) - A one man team with very few allies

That's All Folks

As I sit writing this final blog post, it has just dawned on me that the semester is indeed over. My table is littered with books and papers in the now nearly empty college library as I cram for my last final exam of the semester. In a little over six hours from now I will officially be on summer vacation. So yes, the semester does seem to have concluded and as I am now removed from the semester I can look back and reflect. I enrolled in English 201 in the hopes of improving my writing for the likelihood that I will be attending law school two years from now, and believe it was a great course to do that. Somewhere between that first day, after which I strongly considered the possibility of dropping, and seeing a completed portfolio in the drop box I learned a great deal. Whether the blogs, compositions, cohort work, final project, or in class discussions helped me the most I'll never know. However, I do know that having a class that allowed for the open flow of ideas, opinions, and arguments made for an outstanding semester overall. I hope everyone else enjoyed the semester as much as I did, and was able to benefit similarly. With that I'm going to return to the stack of books sitting in front of me and hopfully add an exclamation point to the real end of my semester tomorrow morning.

Thats all folks. Good luck with life!

One Last Note

Upon entering the classroom on the first day of classes, I was unsure of how this class would go. I had never had a class involving rhetorical analysis and the process behind creating an effective argument. This idea scared me a little when I first heard it as I felt that I, with more of a math mind, would probably struggle to learn new concepts involved in the writing process. As the semester wore on, however, I have learned to like the discussion of rhetoric and how it applies to various forms of public argument. As we progressed through the material early in the semester I began to realize how rhetoric affects every aspect of our lives-something I never really considered before. This idea began to intrigue me as I saw not only people who understood exactly what it meant to use ethos, pathos, and logos together for the kairos, or opportune moment, but I realized also that there are many people who just don’t seem to understand this. There are people who when trying to argue a point fail to realize that others might not come from the same situation that they are in cause a disconnect between them and their audience; even some advertisements seem to fail when it comes to creating a meaningful and memorable advertisement for certain products or companies. I have learned that realizing how to frame your argument for the situation at hand is one of the most important things behind an effective argument.

This class provided a great opportunity to discuss ideas presented in books and articles as well as granting us the opportunity to create our very own public arguments. I’ve enjoyed these discussions mostly because of the different perspectives people had on the various topics. Also, I have to admit that when I first heard that we would be blogging as part of our grade I was slightly worried just because I had never really done it before. From this experience I have found that I didn’t mind writing these blogs and for some of them even enjoyed doing so. All in all, I feel that this class has taught me a lot and I look forward to taking that knowledge and using it in the future. So with that I would like to thank everyone in the class and Christine for making it such an enjoyable one. Good luck to everyone in the future!

Closing Time

It’s been a long and rough journey throughout the semester, and the last thing I thought would keep me sane would be an English class. I have never been fond of the subject and made an effort to avoid it altogether, so far with a great deal of luck. Nouns, sentence structure, alliteration…none of it has ever done it for me. Don’t get me wrong I love a good book as much as the next guy, but I never understood the point of really spending a great deal of time on the little things. Numbers have taken the place of words for me. Which is clear to see from the major I have chosen. They just seem to much easier to make sense of. 2 + 2 will always = 4. But in the language department there are so many different ways to make something correct. I guess I need an objective answer to all life’s problems. Anyways, where was I? Oh yes. Every one of my other classes this semester has involved number crunching. And as much as I do love it, one can only look at a balance sheet or calculate a weighted average cost of capital for so long. A little after the midway point of the semester all the numbers and formulas from all my business classes started to blend together. I felt like I was losing it. But then I remembered that twice a week for 90 minutes each I could escape from the world of Wall Street. It was a privilege to listen to someone lecture, or better yet, lead or guide a class through a topic with such enthusiasm. There are few people in the world that truly love what they do, and your (Christine) passion for the subject is second to none. Thank you for helping me keep my sanity in this semester. It seemed like just yesterday I was learning the basics of how to rhetorically analyze a work or public argument, and now I’m writing my final blog. As Semisonic says in their song “Closing Time”, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end.” This is the end of the beginning of my education on public discourse, and I look forward to taking this new found knowledge of rhetoric and applying it to the new beginning and the next stage of my educational career.

Signing off, S.T.L.

How i Write

There are some guidelines that I try to follow whenever I am writing. At first I just try to get down all my ideas about the given subject that I am writing about. I just write whatever comes to my mind without paying attention to where it will fit later in the process. If I’m writing a sentence and something else pops into my head I’ll leave the initial sentence and start writing about the thought I just had. I will usually end up with a bunch of 2-5 sentence blocks of thoughts organized in no particular order. I do separate each idea by a bunch of lines, but that is about it for organization. This may seem chaotic and problematic to most people, but it is my way of brainstorming. I have trouble concentrating on things for a long period of time, so I have to skip around and then come back to my initial ideas (I have been doing this for all my blogs including this one).

Once I have all those blocks, I can mix some together, or use them as the bases of paragraphs. I mix and match until I have the base for my essay. Once I have this base, I can delve deeper into each of my thoughts to create the actual substance of the essay or whatever I am writing. I have not always used this process, but over time I have developed it, and it works well for me so I will continue to use it.

As far as rules, I don’t have any. Other than following the process described above, I just do what feels right. The rules I use are constantly changing as I go through different experiences and improve as a writer.

The Writing Tips I Live By

When I think about the rules that I implement in my writing, I find that being as simple and concise as possible really leads to clear, effective writing. When starting to write I like to outline my thoughts to make sure that I have some direction in my writing. If I think of a good line or topic sentence, I’ll make sure I jot that down so ideas will have a solid starting point. From there, I like to focus on a strong opening, with emphasis on making my argument very clear and organized. I feel like the opening paragraph to any piece of writing is the most important. It sets the tone for the entire piece, and is the best opportunity to spark the interest of the reading audience.

From there, I like to write whatever comes to my mind based on the topics of the paragraphs that I decided upon when outlining. When I was in tenth grade, a creative writing teacher advised us to write ‘shitty first drafts’ when starting to write. I like this idea because it takes pressure off of me to worry if every sentence is perfect or if every word is right. There is always time to go back and get everything right later. Getting core ideas down first gives writing a strong foundation that helps give credit to one’s writing.

The only other basic rule that I try to follow is not so much of a rule as it is a guideline: writing is a process. Writing can always be revised, edited or proofread. Language is such that there is usually no consensus for what is ‘perfect’ writing. It can always be changed, improved upon or even scrapped altogether. Good writing needs to be reflected upon and evaluated to make sure that each word is necessary and pertinent. Things that don’t fit or are forced in can be removed. I find that if I take my time and my words reflect well on my thoughts, I’ll be happy with what I write.

Best Writing Advice

As I’ve mentioned before in class, my favorite writer is the sports writer Rick Reilly. The man has been voted national sports writer of the year 11 times, so when he offers any sort of advice on writing it’s a good idea to listen. When being interviewed on how an upcoming writer could take his job Rick Reilly said, “[his] No. 1 goal in writing is to never write a sentence you’ve already read.” Now this may seem rather simplistic for such an accomplished journalist, but by following this style he makes outrageously interesting analogies, comparisons, descriptions, and the like that make his writing nearly impossible not to like. In that same interview he went on to say that, “[he sits] there for an hour sometimes trying to find another way of saying 'he beat the crap out of him.” Granted, Reilly is getting paid millions with the sole responsibility of turning in one page long weekly column for the back page of ESPN the Magazine. He doesn’t have guidelines or constraints, but has reserved for him the back page of one of the most widely circulated magazines in the country. Therefore, spending an hour on each sentence still makes for a pretty good work week.

The advice definitely has influenced my writing, especially when the writing is of a similar genre. Clearly there are many scenarios where writing a somewhat bland but succinct and to the point sentence is completely necessary. However, if creativity is involved in the piece I find it incredibly useful when both writing and editing papers to pick apart various things I’ve written and find a way to say a very common phrase in a unique manner.

It may seem strange with all the English classes I’ve taken and grammer I’ve been taught that the one piece of advice that really stuck came while reading about sports. However, this little bit of advice from my favorite author is foremost in my mind while writing any sort of piece requiring creativity.

Writing Tips

When I look back at the teachers that I have had and the advice that I have been given over the years on how to improve my writing style, I realize just how different some of my teacher’s writing advice has been. Because of the wide array of advice I have received from these teachers, I feel that I have benefited largely whether it be from seemingly insignificant advice to important concepts.

The first few lessons I find to be essential to understanding language and how to become a better writer revolve primarily around the conventions of writing. One idea, which one of my teachers required, was to take a piece of your writing and use four different colored highlighters to mark the different sentence styles that you wrote (simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex). This process allows you to adjust your paper to allow for variety in sentence structure, which helps to make your paper flow better. Another idea is to make a list of common overused words and phrases, such as these are, this was, is, etc. These words and phrases specifically often create passive voice phrases which can take away from the messages you are attempting to convey with your writing. By knowing which phrases you, as an individual, overuse, you can go through your paper after the fact and replace these phrases to create a stronger paper.

Other important words of advice are to write your paper, step away from your writing and do something else, and then come back to revise your paper. By doing this, you can clear your head and either get a new perspective when you look back at your paper or possibly rework sections with better and more focused ideas in mind. This piece of advice has help me in particular because when I attempt to write and revise all at the same time, my paper ends up rather choppy sounding because I don’t necessarily revise it as a whole because I’m too focused on the paper I just wrote.

One final piece of advice that I got was that when you begin a paper, you have to first of all know your audience and the hook that audience’s attention. To enforce this concept, this teacher would only finish reading your paper’s if the intro was enticing to the audience in question; this seemed harsh at the time, but now I realize that if you are writing a paper and the person reading it isn’t interested in it from the beginning, either they are going to abandon reading it or their mind is going to wander as they read it. Because of this, and introduction can be one of the most important way to capture the audience’s attention.

Though these pieces of advice only scratch the surface of all of information I have been given over the years about writing, these pieces of advice seemed to stand out in my mind as to what have helped me the most with my writing.