Assignment 9

As I write my essays I am building relationships with my audience who read my essays. I want my audience see how I care about them and would try to persuade them on why I am writing the way I do. Although my second conference went on well, I felt I needed to maintain my controlling purpose and relate more with my audience.In my second conference which we met as a group, I was a little bit confident compared to my first conference which by then was not very good as I was still having a lot of "commonplace."

I have now learned what I need to do address the challenges going into the second conference.I have also learned to follow instructor's recommendations as I feel they are useful in looking at my essay at different angles.Additionally,the in-class activities including the group and peer interactions have been of tremendous help. For example, in the first essay I realized i fell short in a lot of what I needed to include. It turned out that I was fond of writing using "common place" instead of personalizing the essay. For example in my essay Lifelike, I thought it was an underworld trade just because I had never come across the word "taxidermy" and I backed my assumption with Susan Orlean's quote, "It was usually regarded as almost a black art, a wholly owned subsidiary of witchcraft and voodoo" (Orlean,2).

The instructor wanted me to identify my controlling purpose and writerly choices and expand on them. Her guidelines were helpful as I used and eventually helped me in my essays.So it was after I read Orlean's article that I came to appreciate the work she did and eventually broadened my understanding of what taxidermy is. I also understood Susan Orlean's strategy of writing on taxidermy which not many people write about it. Her strategy becomes clearer when she put it in New Yorker magazine to enlighten people on this profession not many people know. The author wanted us to see taxidermy as a business as well as art of preparing, stuffing, and mounting the skins of different animals onto a mannequin for various reasons. Among the writerly choices I picked from this article are:- zoology nerd, stillborn, and PETA.

 I will keep working on my controlling purpose and explain further my writerly choices citing quotations and examples from the essay. I will as well follow the guidelines on DK handbook pages 194-199.

Assignment 11

 Analysis of the essay
When I think and see how technology has taken toll on us makes me say wait a minute, where are we headed with these gadgets? I can't agree more that the computer technology have adversely affected the functionality of human beings in the way we use it. Even simple arithmetic or logical stuff that we used to do by putting our own brains to work seem to have been taken over by the computers. When I don't know the answer to anything, I google it. It has indeed brainwashed us as Sarah Stein puts it in her writing.Lots of car accidents have been caused by drivers who are driving while surfing the apple products. Many lectures have been missed by students who instead of paying attention, get preoccupied with the twitter, facebook and all sorts of social during lecture. I blame the arrival of technology that has deprived the attentiveness that was being witnessed before the arrival of these goodies.

So what do we do when everybody seem to be doing it and getting updated with the technology? I am not against the technology as I am in it as well. I believe these are some of the issues that Stein was confronting and the dilemma of this innovation cannot be wished away! The commercials are as well in the rise yet people know what they want even before it is advertized.

[Group Work] Reflection

It was a well thought idea for our instructor to organize the class into groups as this resulted in a successful and engaging discussions with each other. I was personally impressed with my group which came out with creative ideas as to what Sarah Stein implied in her theoretical framework. The group input was phenomenal as attested by other classmates.I believe when people get involved in creative assignments, something good comes out of it. We were able to come up with an Ad within an Ad essay! Isn't that cool?

My peers in other groups did exceedingly well. What caught my eye is the Rhetorical history of the Macintosh. The question: " since Apple was a small company at the time, do you think this helped in their revolution?"I believe Apple did their homework knowing very well that they were starting a fight with a Big brother, a Goliath and they understood the risks involved including being vilified by their business rivals-the IBM. Apple's resilience has proved over the years to be a company to beat in a modern day personal computer technology.Their 1984 Ad during the Super Bowl also introduced a different kind of marketing the products. As it turned out, that was only the beginning as various companies started spending millions of money especially during the subsequent Super Bowls.

The other Ad that caught my attention was the creative artistic piece, the Rhetoric context of the 1984 Ad. I learned from this Ad that the terminator by Arnold Schwarzenegger was released in 1984. Furthermore, Ronald Reagan became the president of the United States of America in 1984 and was credited for having brought down the Soviet Union bringing about democracy and freedom in the communist republic. Sarah's capture of Ad resonated well to the many viewers of the 1984 Super Bowl as an icon of revolution at the time.