About the Author
My name is Paul Elden. Throughout my normal schooling, from kindergarten to my senior year of high school, writing never interested me. Every time one of my teachers would announce a new essay or writing assignment, I would instantly think, “Ugh, another awful waste of my time.” It wasn’t that I didn’t like writing, or was bad at it. Actually, I considered myself a good writer; I always got A’s on my papers, usually without trying. But I think this very thing is the reason why I never wanted to write. Each essay was the same in each class. “Write about this, in this way, include these things, and make it this many pages.” There was never any freedom to choose my writing style, or my topic, or most anything else for that matter in my grade school papers. As a result, writing came off as boring and tedious to me.
In addition, throughout my school years I disliked the institution of education, and even hated it at times. I felt like some of my teachers were incompetent, taught us pointless information, and the general atmosphere of schooling. However, as time went on, and I eventually got to my senior year, I started to value education more. I realized how important it is, and why it is necessary. I even wanted to learn. In fact, these days it mildly upsets me to see how many people are disregarding education and the need to learn and better oneself. I suppose my thoughts about school were realized in my senior year of high school. I enrolled in my school’s advanced placement biology course, and had the best educational experience of my life there.
The cumulative final exam for this class had the lowest pass rate of any test in my school. There was more homework in one trimester for that class than all my other classes combined. We would have numerous tests, more quizzes than I can count, and endless hours of notes. This was all discussed by my biology teacher on the very first day of class. The next day, there were half a dozen less students in the class than before. As ridiculous as this class sounds, and as hard as it was, it was the best class I ever had. I think the fact that is was so hard and challenging was half of what drew me to it; the other half was that I never had a teacher who made a subject so interesting. I enjoyed every day of that class. The final exam covered a whole year’s worth of material, and cost nearly eighty dollars just to take. The reward for passing would be credit for college biology classes. It would be taken on a scale of one to five, five being the highest possible grade, three being passing. That year we only had ten students pass the exam. Three got fives on their exams. I was one of those three.
This was when I started enjoying learning. After high school, I enrolled in Wayne State University. Currently I am a freshman there, studying biology. During my first semester, I took a writing class that showed me how interesting and entertaining writing could actually be. This class was heavily based around rhetoric, rhetorical techniques, and persuasion. I learned many things in this class, and in my opinion began to develop an even better writing technique. Rhetoric is very interesting, and can be seen in a variety of ways. A reading we did for this class made me think about the relevance of rhetoric to today's media.
http://as1020.pbworks.com/f/saunders-braindead.pdf After reading about half of Saunders’ text, I began to realize that what he was saying was absolutely true. In my opinion, the media overdramatizes most everything, and makes mountains out of molehills on a daily basis. The example given by Saunders was the O.J. Simpson trial. This was one of the largest media stories ever, and for no other reason than because it was interesting for a little while. But the media kept beating the dead horse, so to speak. I especially liked his comparison of the trial to a piece of dog crap in a bowl. Quite witty. I’m going to offer another comparison, in the form of the Casey Anthony trial. This case, out of dozens of murders that happen daily, was chosen for God-knows-why, and absolutely covered to death by news groups. They must have interviewed everyone that ever even saw the woman. They had covered this so much, it practically brainwashed the viewers. There were people who were totally unrelated in any way to this case, whose lives would have no differences whatsoever because of the outcome, in a mob outside the courtroom where the trial was held. For nothing. In my opinion, this is one of the occasions where “bad rhetoric” takes over. This trial was recycled countless times with the same information for no reason. This, like Saunders said, limits the thoughts of the audience. Pretty soon, everyone was talking about Casey Anthony all the time, merely because media made them feel like it was important. Don’t get me wrong, analysis of anything is good. I analyze everything I plan to do, or say, or make, before I do it. I analyze how I’m going to do these things. But months straight of the same thing? That sounds to me like a lot of wasted energy that could be better put to work elsewhere. However, media isn’t all bad. “Good rhetoric” is just as important and prevalent. A very prominent source of information for many internet users is Reddit. Reddit is a place where people post anything they like, and if the audience feels it is important they can “upvote” it. The more votes something gets, the more attention it gets. In this example, the votes are a form of good rhetoric being used by the audience, not the man with the megaphone, to increase the popularity of a piece of information. Most of the posts that get heavily upvoted tend to have legitimate stories, articles, or opinions in them. So in my opinion, good and bad rhetoric is everywhere. I feel that we should be more careful with how we choose to use our rhetoric, and analyze our analysis of things (Xzibit anyone?), because what starts off as good rhetoric can become overwhelming, and turn into bad rhetoric.
That is how I view rhetoric, and also how I shape my technique as a writer. Obviously this blog is about science, health and technology, but I wanted to share my writing viewpoint as well.
In addition, throughout my school years I disliked the institution of education, and even hated it at times. I felt like some of my teachers were incompetent, taught us pointless information, and the general atmosphere of schooling. However, as time went on, and I eventually got to my senior year, I started to value education more. I realized how important it is, and why it is necessary. I even wanted to learn. In fact, these days it mildly upsets me to see how many people are disregarding education and the need to learn and better oneself. I suppose my thoughts about school were realized in my senior year of high school. I enrolled in my school’s advanced placement biology course, and had the best educational experience of my life there.
The cumulative final exam for this class had the lowest pass rate of any test in my school. There was more homework in one trimester for that class than all my other classes combined. We would have numerous tests, more quizzes than I can count, and endless hours of notes. This was all discussed by my biology teacher on the very first day of class. The next day, there were half a dozen less students in the class than before. As ridiculous as this class sounds, and as hard as it was, it was the best class I ever had. I think the fact that is was so hard and challenging was half of what drew me to it; the other half was that I never had a teacher who made a subject so interesting. I enjoyed every day of that class. The final exam covered a whole year’s worth of material, and cost nearly eighty dollars just to take. The reward for passing would be credit for college biology classes. It would be taken on a scale of one to five, five being the highest possible grade, three being passing. That year we only had ten students pass the exam. Three got fives on their exams. I was one of those three.
This was when I started enjoying learning. After high school, I enrolled in Wayne State University. Currently I am a freshman there, studying biology. During my first semester, I took a writing class that showed me how interesting and entertaining writing could actually be. This class was heavily based around rhetoric, rhetorical techniques, and persuasion. I learned many things in this class, and in my opinion began to develop an even better writing technique. Rhetoric is very interesting, and can be seen in a variety of ways. A reading we did for this class made me think about the relevance of rhetoric to today's media.
http://as1020.pbworks.com/f/saunders-braindead.pdf After reading about half of Saunders’ text, I began to realize that what he was saying was absolutely true. In my opinion, the media overdramatizes most everything, and makes mountains out of molehills on a daily basis. The example given by Saunders was the O.J. Simpson trial. This was one of the largest media stories ever, and for no other reason than because it was interesting for a little while. But the media kept beating the dead horse, so to speak. I especially liked his comparison of the trial to a piece of dog crap in a bowl. Quite witty. I’m going to offer another comparison, in the form of the Casey Anthony trial. This case, out of dozens of murders that happen daily, was chosen for God-knows-why, and absolutely covered to death by news groups. They must have interviewed everyone that ever even saw the woman. They had covered this so much, it practically brainwashed the viewers. There were people who were totally unrelated in any way to this case, whose lives would have no differences whatsoever because of the outcome, in a mob outside the courtroom where the trial was held. For nothing. In my opinion, this is one of the occasions where “bad rhetoric” takes over. This trial was recycled countless times with the same information for no reason. This, like Saunders said, limits the thoughts of the audience. Pretty soon, everyone was talking about Casey Anthony all the time, merely because media made them feel like it was important. Don’t get me wrong, analysis of anything is good. I analyze everything I plan to do, or say, or make, before I do it. I analyze how I’m going to do these things. But months straight of the same thing? That sounds to me like a lot of wasted energy that could be better put to work elsewhere. However, media isn’t all bad. “Good rhetoric” is just as important and prevalent. A very prominent source of information for many internet users is Reddit. Reddit is a place where people post anything they like, and if the audience feels it is important they can “upvote” it. The more votes something gets, the more attention it gets. In this example, the votes are a form of good rhetoric being used by the audience, not the man with the megaphone, to increase the popularity of a piece of information. Most of the posts that get heavily upvoted tend to have legitimate stories, articles, or opinions in them. So in my opinion, good and bad rhetoric is everywhere. I feel that we should be more careful with how we choose to use our rhetoric, and analyze our analysis of things (Xzibit anyone?), because what starts off as good rhetoric can become overwhelming, and turn into bad rhetoric.
That is how I view rhetoric, and also how I shape my technique as a writer. Obviously this blog is about science, health and technology, but I wanted to share my writing viewpoint as well.