Category: School Related
Definitive Response to Mr. Mike Keefe
Dear Mr. Keefe,
I am writing to you in response to one of your recent works, “The Civilian Need for Military-Style Assault Weapons.”
Here’s the thing, civilians who argue for the right to own “military-style assault weapons” are not arguing that they need to own them for hunting purposes. The reason civilians need to be able to own assault weapons is to maintain the ability to prevent and/or defeat tyranny.
It was during my second deployment that the idea struck me. It doesn’t matter how many planes/boats/tanks the US has. The reason we are running the show in Iraq and Afghanistan is because we have more guns and bullets than the enemy. Before 2003, I might have had to argue my point simply on principle (still a winning argument), but after a decade of fighting men armed only with assault rifles, I can convince you with practical experience as well. How else do you explain these last ten years during which the most powerful military in the world hasn’t been able to definitively defeat men armed only with assault weapons?
Let me state the main assumption in this argument; that is, the point on which we may disagree: every government trends towards tyranny. Our founders recognized this and put a check in place in the hope that it would be enough to prevent the tyranny from occurring. That being, governments should fear (just a little) their people. The real genius, of course, is that an armed population can actually overthrow a tyrannical government, not just threaten to overthrow it.
To sum up, your cartoon totally sets up a straw man in the debate on gun policy in America. By defeating this straw man as soundly as you do, you miss your mark. Rather than offer insight on the gun-control debate in America, you do two negative things. First, you confuse a reason for assault weapon ownership that isn’t worthy of attention for one that is. Second, deliberately setting up a straw man on an issue that restricts my everyday freedom to spend my money as I please actively promotes tyranny. No thank you, Mr. Keefe.
Sincerely,
A Mugwump
Grammar at the Edge of the Envelope
“Pilots are so much better than everyone else,” thought a young boy once. As a grown man, I think we should all agree with the boy. A few years ago, I found a spare moment hidden in Iraq of all places. That moment contained irrefutable proof that pilots are better than everyone else. Pilots are better because they live many lifetimes, while other people only live one lifetime. Confusing? Maybe it’d help if I said that pilots are better because they live many mini-lifetimes. Any better? No? Allow me to explain.
A mini-lifetime is the term I use to capture the three-part event of flight: takeoff, flight, and landing. In order for the definition’s perfection to become perceivable, you must understand that a lifetime has three key parts: birth, life, and death. To critical readers, I confess that there certainly are other professions or human activities that contain just three parts; however, I’m convinced you’ll see there is a special genius in this metaphor’s specific use of pilots.
To begin the comparison, birth and takeoff share a foundational similarity. Both initiate a sequence of events that will only ever come to an end. Next, life and flight are that sequence. They are the continuation of birth and takeoff. Moreover, during life and flight, no matter how a person lives or how a person flies, a tragic end lingers at a moment’s distance. Finally, the death (near death, at least) and landing phases offer a unique ability to look back over the life and flight phases with the express purpose of forming judgments. For pilots, these judgments, of course, are not the end–but the beginning. The end is the application of the lessons learned. Note, that pilots repeat this three-chapter cycle almost daily. And while doing so, they become very proficient at improving their flying skills through the post-landing debriefs. Grounded folk, on the other hand, are not afforded these vantage points. They must make extreme efforts to be still, take inventory, determine lessons learned, and then apply the lessons as they resume living out their lifetime. Consequently, pilots living all these mini-lifetimes–do not discount the very real threat of death this metaphor demands–are in the habit of debriefing their own grounded lives each day, week, month, year, or whatever time period and applying the lessons learned to the next iteration. That is why they are better.
Whew! Glad you’re still with me, as I have great news. That was just the introduction. Let’s not kid ourselves, it was worth it. Next up, the part of the assignment you’ve been waiting for: more meta-for. (Yep, that’s my humor.)
The assignment was to write a(n interesting) paper relating grammar to some other system in life. Naturally, it follows that if my flying-life metaphor is so perfect, grammar being a part of life, then grammar should be able to be explained via flying. As Rafiki tells newly-mature Simba in the Disney classic, The Lion King, “Eet is time.” It is time to push the metaphor further.
Clear as day, the first requirement for grammar is words. Lady Luck, beauty that she is, smiled down on me as it became clear that flying also needs one thing more than anything else: pilots. So words must be pilots. Obviously, humans don’t have physiological wings, so we invented machines that could lift us into the air. Just as all humans are not pilots, all sounds humans emit are not words. Within the sounds that can be classified as words, there are subtle intonations and pauses. When creating written language, earlier man decided these subtle intonations and pauses required special written markings, different from alpha characters. Whatever name initially given, today we call them punctuation. Like a pilot’s aircraft, punctuation is a tool to help words achieve their God-given purpose. A pilot’s purpose is to accomplish a mission and he does so using an aircraft. A written word’s purpose is to accomplish communication and it does so using punctuation.
With words and punctuation under my belt, I pressed onward. What more could I synthesize? I knew that individual words and punctuation didn’t communicate as well as a group of words, a sentence, does. Equivalently, pilots and aircraft don’t accomplish missions in a single action–they need a group of actions. So a sentence, then, is the coordinated cycle of takeoff/flight/landing. Each takeoff is the capital letter and marks the beginning of an independent, complete thought. The flight is that thought. And the landing is the concluding punctuation. (This is pretend world. It’s okay if the punctuation is both the aircraft and the landing…think how a period can be both part of an ellipses and a period at the same time if you need to.)
But wait! Stop here, and consider a new revelation. Consider how an exclamation point has varied tones. I said consider how an exclamation point has varied tones, silly! Then consider how a perfect landing would be a soft, beautiful exclamation point as in, “Man, that landing was as sublime as an outdoor professional hockey game being graced by light falling snow!” While a crash landing would be a hard, abrupt exclamation point found in, “Bam!” At first daunting, the question mark still fits the metaphor. Can you picture a student pilot attempting to land a helicopter? Sometimes the student thinks he has landed just once, when the instructor knows it was at least twice. After all, there is no place to record number-of-times-student-bounced-the-helicopter-before-finally-landing, is there?
Next, while it is possible that a mission can be comprised of just one takeoff/fly/land iteration, most missions include several such iterations. Similarly, it is true that some sentences can be paragraphs themselves. A more elementary view is that sentences need other sentences in order to be a paragraph. A paragraph is usually a more effective method of communication than a sentence or word. This, then, is the same as how missions containing several iterations of takeoff/fly/land are usually more effective missions. Specifically, if a pilot flies to a destination to pick up someone, flies to a second destination to drop them off, and then flies back to the home airfield, that is more effective than just one of those three iterations. One effective mission composed of three total flights.
This metaphor becomes ever easier as we move away from the basics, into the more subjective parts of written language. Lexicon, or an individual’s dictionary, would be the capabilities of a particular pilot, whereas diction would be his or her style. Metadiscourse, or the words and phrases that help the reader understand the writer’s meaning, would be a pilot’s clothing. Is the pilot wearing a uniform, or just dressed in plain clothes? Just as a writer’s intentional metadiscourse helps the reader understand the writer, a pilot’s clothes conveys who the pilot works for, how good he or she is, how experienced he or she is, and what type of missions the pilot accomplishes (passenger transport, combat, reconnaissance, etc.).
In the end, this assignment is over before it begins. That grammar can be synthesized into any system shows that it can be synthesized into every system. That’s because grammar is a system. That’s the point, isn’t it? The real trouble for sticklers of grammar, however, is not that people don’t use the system; it’s that life goes on whether people use or ignore the system. This, just as life goes on whether or not human flight occurs. If there is any overarching lesson this metaphor can teach us, it is that grammar is not a solution to a problem. It is a tool to be used by those who care to use it. Just like flying.
A Letter to the Editor
The NSA conducts surveillance. The New York Times commits treason. Which is worse?
In publishing what can only be described as a paid advertisement–Leonard H. Schrank and Juan C. Zarate’s, “Data Mining, Without Big Brother,”–the Times dragged itself through the gutter just to sell papers.
In their July 2, 2013 editorial, Schrank and Zarate abused the responsibility the national spotlight demands. Their piece informed us that they worked on a program—Swift—that has no practical correlation to the NSA’s surveillance program beyond the quite obvious fact that they both work with big data. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The Times should be ashamed for printing this.
Schrank and Zarate conclude, “Ultimately, the Obama administration needs to demonstrate that the programs are not only valuable and legal, but also that the government’s use of that data can be constrained and verified.” In other words, they conclude that the Obama administration must prove a negative. With all their schooling, professional accomplishment, and first-hand experience deterring terrorism, their big conclusion is a logical fallacy? Not even President Obama’s rhetorical abilities can overcome their logical error and prove someone is not doing something.
Let’s switch gears for a moment. What is the problem in this whole Snowden story? The problem is that an NSA employee couldn’t keep a secret. Are we or are we not a country who understands the value of secrecy when it comes to security? If Americans want to keep “winning”, we need to be sure our enemies do not know our capabilities. Thanks to Edward Snowden, they just became more aware. We should be asking, “What was he thinking?”
The elementary lesson Snowden somehow missed, the truth that the New York Times allowed itself to be distracted from, is that for secrets to work they must be kept secret. A secret’s power is derived from the requirement that it remains secret.
The Times, in running this editorial, demonstrated either that it never took an undergraduate course in logic, or that like Snowden, it too has committed an act of treason.
When Jeffrey Wigand revealed that Brown and Williamson knowingly included carcinogenic additives to boost the nicotine in cigarettes, it was a clear case of acting in good faith to better inform the public about a commercial product. On the other hand, revealing one method an agency charged with national security uses to accomplish its mission is a clear case of treachery. Since not everyone is able to immediately discern the distinction, an established publication such as The New York Times decidedly has the responsibility to publish writers who can.
Rather than publish a distracting paid advertisement for Swift, the Times should publish a case study on Edward Snowden. Publish the study because in every failure there is a lesson. We need to learn the events of his life which led him to the conclusion that revealing national security secrets is somehow in the best interest of national security. Our freedom depends on it.
Who Killed the New Kids?
“Censorship is murder.”
Too strong? I thought so at first. Then again, this was an assignment for college and I wanted a good grade, so I decided to run with it.
The task that lay before me was developing this radical thesis. So I thought and I thought and I thought. I asked my housemate what he thought. So he thought. Then we both thought. Here’s the result: Censorship is murder because I believe that “to be a human, as opposed to all other known life forms, requires an unfettered ability to communicate one’s value (in the form of words, images, or music) to other humans. And an external restriction of a person’s expression of value is the same as telling them they have no value. In other words, it is a malicious attempt to end their life.”
It was beautiful.
After developing my thesis, the next assignment was to write about my first experience with censorship. What I discovered was frightening. Even now, I am afraid of the implications.
187. 68. 32. Those are the amounts posters and/or pictures of The New Kids on the Block my cousin Jenny, my sister Kate, and I had on our bedroom walls, respectively, in the summer of 1990. I feel like I should be embarrassed to admit this. I would be if I led the bunch. That I was a distant third clearly showed I was just trying to fit in.
For those of you who don’t recall, The New Kids on the Block were it back then. Their top single, “Hangin’ Tough” spent 132 weeks, that’s nearly two and a half years, on the Billboard charts.
Despite the New Kids’ success, all was not well in households across America. Mine was no different. My memory gets fuzzier by the year, but this much I do remember. My sister was taking piano lessons. She was three years older than me. She was 12, I was 9. Mrs. Misty Bolton, the wife of our church’s pastor of music, was her piano teacher. Even a cool lady like her couldn’t see the storm brewing on the horizon.
I can hear the nice, neat, well-timed piano playing now. Whatever my sister may have lacked in expression, she made up for in crisp playing–just like an older sister to show how its done.
At this point in the story, it’s important that you join me in the room.
You’re already at the front door of the house? Good. Open it. Once you make your way through the front door, you see a hallway to a kitchen table straight ahead. You discover that what you thought was the right wall of that hallway is actually the left side of the staircase which leads to the second floor and a little balcony. Turning all the way to your right, you see the room where the piano is. You know the piano is in the room, not because you see it, but because you can see a reflection of it in the wall sized mirror that hangs opposite it.
This room, unlike any other in the house had a name: the “blue room”. It was named for its predominant color, beginning with the blue carpet, extending to the blue walls. The blue carpet was a plush, thick, luscious carpet that incurred my mother’s wrath if it was needlessly tread upon.
“Key-an’t you go around?,” she’d exclaim. She could be rather vain about carpet.
Do you see me yet? Good. Here it comes.
“Mom! Comeeer. Misty, I mean, Mrs. Bolton says she’ll teach me to play the New Kids on the Block songs if we buy the book! Can we? Pleeeeease?,” my sister begged.
Our mom was no push-over, but it seemed like such a simple request involving learning to play piano didn’t necessitate that kind of begging. It turned out that no amount of begging could overcome the music snobbery we were about to witness.
“Nnnnoooo, I’m not going to hee-ave you playing that garbage! It’s bee-ad enough I hee-ave to hear it and see it all dee-ay long as it is. I will not buy thee-at book for you. Nice try though.”
Crushed! Devastated! If my sister wasn’t crying on the outside, she was on the inside. Try as they might, my boy arms lacked the strength to lift her out of her misery.
-Fast forward to the next lesson-
Guess who showed up with the sheet music book for the New Kids’ latest album “Step By Step”? Mrs. Misty Bolton. This was a bad idea. She obviously had not spent much time in our house. Suffice it to say, my mom was not happy. And so after my mom let Mrs. Baldwin know she wasn’t happy, she made my sister pay for it out of her piddly allowance and then she took the book away and hid it. No piano of hers was going to play the New Kids’ music, and no piano teacher was going to defy her wishes!!
Well, there you have it. My first experience with censorship.
What’s that? You thought I was supposed to be explaining how this experience led me to believe censorship was murder?
But don’t you see? I just did. My mother censored the “Step By Step” album. You still don’t understand? Okay. Okay, quick reminder then. How did the New Kids follow their “Step By Step” album? Don’t remember? That’s because the New Kids on the Block never released another original studio album. By the time those five guys did release another original studio album, they weren’t the New Kids on the Block anymore. They were NKOTB. Still not with me? Fully connecting the dots now– a simple writing assignment in which I was asked to defend my original thesis, that censorship is murder, led me to stumble upon the frightening revelation that the New Kids on the Block died after my mom censored their “Step By Step” album. Therefore, my mom killed them in an act of what appears to be cold-blooded murder! This is the same woman who raised me to do the right thing and all these years she’s been hiding this secret! She, too, must pay for her crime. And I have to turn her in. But how do I turn in my own mom??!
I guess, I’ll just have to take it step… by… step.
How To Live Uncensored
(If you’re short on time, skip to the bottom for numbered instructions.)
A professor of mine recently led a classroom discussion on censorship. I am embarrassed, therefore compelled, to admit that this is a hot-button issue for me. I cannot stand censorship. Why should one human being have power over what another human being is exposed to?
Just the same, I can surely see the other side of the story. Wait, no I can’t. What is the problem again? Has there ever been any data to support that uncensored living is problematic? Sure, there seems to be well established correlations between those who watch violence and those who perpetrate it, and the like. But causal?
There has to be an identifiable problem before we can start solving it! What is the problem?!
So this got me thinking. What, even, is censorship?
Censorship definitions refer us back to the word ‘censor’, which is a noun. By noun, we mean a person, place or thing. In this case, a censor is clearly a person. This is extremely important to the following philosophizing or interpretation of life. (Why is it important to spell out that a censor is a person? Because as free and alive men and women, we should want to live uncensored. Since we don’t right now, we need to know what that would even look like.) So a censor is another person. This makes sense because fundamentally censorship really can’t be imposed on oneself. By definition, a censor is someone who views/hears/reads something, deems it objectionable and then suppresses it. If I view/hear/read something, I can’t reverse that. I can’t censor myself. So we’ve learned something: The minimum number of humans required to bring forth the concept of censorship is two.
Why is this important? Because now we’re getting to the heart of the concept. There must be two people in order for one person to act as a censor.
Furthermore, it seems to me that censorship deals exclusively in the realm of surprise. As in, people clamor for censorship when they’ve been surprised. Or the well-intended censor believes if he doesn’t act, the audience will be unpleasantly surprised. Are you with me? Taking a page out of history, picture this: a well-tailored family sits down to watch the Ed Sullivan show. Everything is as it should be. Then, surprise! A man humps the air! This isn’t what they were expecting at all. Oh, boy. What are they ever to do?
Well, what did happen? What did they do? Maybe some turned off the TV. Maybe others wrote letters. Maybe others discussed it. Maybe others ignored it.
Could the surprise have been avoided? YES! Most definitely. When in history did adult men and women give other adult men and women control over their life in the way that those parents did with TV? As if there was something inherently congenial about what was broadcast on TV? “There was up until that point…”, you say? Well then, lesson learned.
What lesson? Don’t believe there is another living person worthy of control over your life.
The good news is, the information age is here. Not a single human being alive should be surprised by what they see or hear. If you value the freedom you have, and want even more of it, you’ll recognize this as a good thing. If censorship is inherently about limiting surprise, and surprise is coming to an end, the end of censorship is therefore near. Without the ability to be surprised, individuals have regained some of the control they gave up with the advent of TV and other forms of mass communication. And anytime we as individuals gain back control, it is a victory for freedom.
Censorship is about controlling life in the present to promote a desired future. Am I being clear? The thing being censored must really exist in order to be censored. Something not yet real cannot be censored. For example, whether fiction or non-fiction, censored violence is still violence. It still was brought forth into reality. How foolish are we to expect that life, inherently full of unknowns, should have a moment where we can for sure know the future? How did people ever make it to this, “Alright children… For the next short while, we are all going to stare at this optical illusion. Unlike the rest of the day, we should be totally safe from surprises. You see, there are men and women behind the scenes making sure that nothing we don’t expect will happen.” Are you kidding me?
For me, the burden of proof is on the censor. What is he trying to protect? I hope to have shown his answer is irrelevant. It isn’t about protecting. It is about control. Why does he want control? Because ‘he’-the censor and ‘he’-the individual calling for censorship don’t know how to live in the present. They are captivated by the notion of the future. They only know how to live in such a way that demonstrates their denial of the present. They simply put up with the present, in hopes for a better future. If they’re children, we need to teach them. If they are adults, they should be embarrassed.
Ask yourself, “Do I want a better future?” or “Do I want to live life?” They are not the same thing.
Instructions for How To Live Uncensored:
Step 1– Stop believing you can influence the future.
Step 2- Understand that there is only one step.
How To Philosophize
I recently took an undergraduate philosophy course for pay. (Highly recommended if you get the chance.) Martin Heidegger was the thinker we studied the most. That man knew how to philosophize. The professor had us read Heidegger’s, “Phenomenological Interpretations with Respect to Aristotle: Indication of the Hermeneutical Situation.” Quite the title, no? Apparently, this paper put him on the map.
It is extremely difficult to read. Supposedly this was purposeful. It seems Heidegger’s intent in everything he did was to get people to live in the moment. He wrote with such depth and complexity that his readers can’t be thinking about something else and understand what he was trying to communicate.
So what made this paper so important? In it, Heidegger argues that the time has come for someone (himself in this case) to remind humanity that no matter how smart we think we are, we don’t actually want to find answers to our questions. We don’t actually want the ‘seeking for truth’ to conclude. As in, we think we do, but that’s only because we have a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be human.
That might not sound radical upon first reading. Think about it this way. There are several problem-solving techniques. One in particular has six steps. 1. Recognize the problem. 2. Gather the data. 3. List the possible solutions. 4. Test the possible solutions. 5. Select a solution. 6. Implement the solution. Heidegger was given a place at the table because he convincingly argued that life is always and only about step one, or recognizing the problem. He wrote this while other great thinkers of his day (and today) made arguments regarding how to perform step six, the final step. “Implement the solution.”
There are some thinkers today who concern themselves with prescriptive philosophy. They recommend things like censoring children from religion because research shows that once people internalize the scientific method they don’t return to their childhood faith. In his paper, Heidegger questions this whole concept. He basically argues that the idea of doing everything according to a logical system which centers around adding longevity to our lives is an escape. We shouldn’t be trying to build Utopia. I take his writing to argue that this Utopia some seem to be striving to create would rob life of meaning. What is more important, more difficult, and more worthy is continually defining our existence. Why do we want to live forever? What is appealing about world peace? What does a world of well-fed people actually look like? This is because no matter what answers the past has given us, the very nature of the questions demand continual asking. For all I know, the Greek philosophers didn’t even exist. What do I care what their answers were?
Thousands of years into our existence one man was still able to gain notoriety by simply reminding us that the fun part of living, or what might be more easily understood as the ‘being’ part of human being, is step one. That is, recognizing the problem. And that’s how to philosophize.
My Idea of Fun
I’ve been taking writing courses at UCD since January. One class ended with a pass/fail writing assignment. Failing would also mean failing the course. Below is my passing paper. The assignment was to convince the professor which grade we deserved using by analyzing our previous coursework. It was a class in rhetoric, or the tools that a speaker/writer has at his/her disposal to persuade an audience. The general topic the professor chose to use was the ever appropriate “Gun Control.” We read and analyzed the rhetoric used in several articles including the chapter from Steven Levitt’s Freakonomics which correlated the legalization of abortion to falling crime rates 20 years later. The three types of rhetoric we studied were 1. Logical- if A then B. 2. Ethical – if I you are to be persuaded by me, I must demonstrate credibility to you. 3. Pathetic – An argument can be more persuasive if it literally causes you to have a physical reaction, such as fear, crying, nausea etc. With that said, enjoy the paper. Oh, and I changed the professor’s name. Enjoy.
I’d like you to close your eyes. Visualize with me a day in the not too distant future. The year is 2021. It is Spring. You arrive at the university as always. You notice the air lacks the usually pervasive petroleum scent. You excitedly think, “They did it. They really did it. Clean cars are everywhere.” As you walk to the building, the sound of fabric flapping in the wind rouses you out of a pleasant daydream. You find yourself staring at Old Glory. Wiping away the start of a nostalgic tear, you overhear students discussing Hillary’s inauguration speech indicating to you that she has been reelected President. A smile forms. Nearing the building, you begin to notice several of the students and faculty looking at you and smiling. Worrying first that they’re noticing a fashion faux pas; you give yourself a subtle once-over only to breathe a sigh of relief that everything is as it should be. Walking further you notice the smiles have a certain quality to them; a level of envy, if you will. “I could get used to this.,” you think.
“Is it true?,” one particularly stunning student asks.
“Uhh…,” you stammer.
“Is it true?,” the student repeats, apparently star-struck.
As you search for some clue about what is going on, you see it. How could you not see it? A banner across the entirety of the building reads, “Admits Pete, the ‘Humble’, ‘I wish I could take the credit. But the truth is I owe everything, the skills, the money -everything- to my first English Writing professor, John Smith, who can still be found instructing the art of writing at the University of Colorado Denver.’”
Okay, now open your eyes.
How would you like to live in that future? The university would surely give you a raise. They’d also permit-not just permit-but expect you to capitalize on all the talk show invitations you’d surely receive. There would definitely be a book deal. Heck, maybe my future self would even be gracious enough to be your co-author to ensure you’re rewarded for all your efforts.
There’s a catch though. My future self can’t possibly find it in his heart to pay back people who helped him achieve his dreams if they didn’t actually help. As a professor of mine, there is only thing left for you to do in order to help me make my dream a reality. I need my grade in your class to be a solid “A”. Not a skin-of-my-teeth “A-“; not a what-exactly-did-he-do-to-deserve-it? “A+”; just an “A”.
There are only two data-points from CANVAS (the web-based syllabus) relevant to this discussion. First, I actively participated in every assignment save one. Not just participated mind you, but actively participated. This was best demonstrated by my usually being the first person to post. On top of that, the points that I brought up in student discussions caused people to actually think, while demonstrating that I actually had to think to develop them. No “CTRL C” then “CTRL V” for me. There was even one student who consistently praised my posts for their ability to make her think outside the box. “Pete- Your post’s always stimulate other thoughts for me. I didn’t think about this approach to pathos.” Second, my average to date is 85.9%. If you run the numbers you’ll discover that even a passing grade on this paper leaves me in need of one percentage point in order to mathematically achieve the “A” I think I deserve. Here’s where the 1% comes from: This paper. It is a demonstration of my command of ethical and pathetic rhetoric wrapped in a bow called logical rhetoric. Assuming the paper clearly proves to you that I understand those two types of rhetoric, the only conclusion for you to draw is that I also understand logical rhetoric at an “A” level. When you reach the end of this paper, ask yourself, could other than an “A” student have written this paper? Seriously, to take just one example, could any self-evaluation of my Pathetic Analysis paper better demonstrate my understanding of pathetic rhetoric than this paper’s opening? We’re in agreement then.
Returning to the task at hand, the way ahead, as I see it, has two paths. First, stick to the description of this assignment you offered, in which I’d evaluate my previously demonstrated submitted works in defense of the letter grade argued for in this paper. BO-ring. Or second, accept the challenge you offered in those papers to develop a truly intriguing argument. You see, in my training to become an instructor pilot I was taught that “learning” is defined as “a change in behavior based on experience.” “Learning” therefore is about change, not past performance. This definition is at odds with colloquial peanut-gallery commentary (a southern accent works best), “Ya’ larn somethin’ new every day, don’t ya’?,” isn’t it? Higher education is about learning. Accordingly, I’m choosing to use my 2000 words “gloves off” to make the most persuasive argument I can that I deserve a solid “A”.
The fact that I nearly aced all the minor assignments, makes discussing the big three papers the appropriate place to start. Scoring an 80% on the Logical Analysis gave us (you-professor and me-student) a baseline to work with. That grade and the associated commentary taught me three key things which resulted in raising my respect for you. One, you clearly were going to be reading my papers. Two, you know what you’re doing. Three, I clearly misunderstood the assignment. Oh well. In either case, I found myself very motivated to really try to impress you with my Ethical Analysis.
The 80% I received on the Ethical Analysis could communicate that I didn’t learn from before, but that is not how I interpreted it. This time I was mentally arguing with your stated reasons for the 80%, rather than thinking, “Wow. I totally misunderstood the instructions.” Nothing to do with changing that grade, but rather persuading you that I demonstrably performed at an “A” level in this class, I’d like to discuss your feedback to my Ethical Analysis paper a bit. You wrote, “In the end, I have a hard time seeing how these two threads (he’s wrong, but he’s incredibly persuasive) come together.” The truth that your comment captured was not that these two threads are irreconcilable. Levitt can indeed be wrong or irrelevant on the whole, and at the same time a master of ethical (/logical/pathetic) rhetoric. Where I failed in my analysis was in spelling out that there were two different categories. See the difference? In the first paper, I didn’t understand that there were different types of rhetoric. My previously acquired logical abilities carried me to an 80%. Paper number two showed I still had far to go, but I now understood that there were several nuanced types of rhetoric. In order to develop an intriguing thesis in my analysis of Levitt’s use of ethical rhetoric, I needed to venture to a more abstract analysis of Levitt’s argument than ethical rhetoric. That I did so without explanation is reflected in my grade. In the film “Boondock Saints,” there is a scene where a mob-peon is trying to convince two newly-vigilante brothers that they should let him help them track and kill the bad guys because his position in the mob has given him intimate knowledge of the bad guy’s lifestyles. As he makes his case, he erupts with such passionate reasoning that he starts buying wholesale into the idea himself. In a moment of unmatched hilarity he has the epiphany, “We could kill everyone!” It’s a funny moment precisely because it’s illogical. Killing everyone wouldn’t leave anyone to enjoy the new crime-free society. Similarly, Levitt implies (he is never assertive regarding how his conclusions should be used) either that abortion is okay because it acts as a crime-reduction strategy, which is totally contradictory; or that we need to really make sure that we make babies only when we can care for them according to some standard. This second reason being nothing more than what various groups of people have been saying since the beginning of time. My conclusion remains, Levitt is wrong. Yet, his status as an author of a best-selling book-turned-movie proves he is a master of at least ethical rhetoric. (Along with all the reasons we can single out in an analysis of his use of ethical rhetoric). To be clear, I am not attempting to persuade you that I am right about Levitt here. Instead, my point is that despite the same 80% number grade, I argue that your commentary responding to my analysis of Levitt as “wrong but persuasive” inherently demonstrates that I changed my behavior due to the experience of reading your feedback to my Logical Analysis. Put more simply, your commentary revealed that I had learned.
Then there’s the recently graded Pathetic Analysis. 89%. Oh, and on top of the fact that you thought it nine points stronger-a-paper than the other two, you even wrote, “I do think this is easily your best paper yet.” The result of you teaching is me learning.
How to most effectively use my remaining 500-ish words? One way might be to point out that I am more than aware that this entire paper has been about me. While I’d like to, I can’t take full credit for this. The assignment is to persuade an English Writing professor what grade I’ve earned this semester. I am more than aware that I am taking a tremendous leap of faith by challenging the posted standards for grading this assignment. Just the same, it is worth highlighting that everything in this paper is still applicable even if the student wasn’t me. In fact, I would argue this is one feature of the online English Writing program that I find to be ingenious. I don’t know if anyone thought it through beforehand, but the value of a professor grading a student purely on the student’s written word in an English Writing class is priceless. Over the course of the semester you probably have come to imagine that I am a charismatic, charming and good-looking man. Guilty, all true. And I cannot deny that I normally take full advantage of these qualities in attempting to get what I want in life. I’d be a fool not to, right? But with this online format all those qualities are nullified. I’m left with my words. Throughout, I have only been pleasantly surprised to receive immediate feedback from you and students alike, saying that points I took to be obvious, to my chagrin, actually need explanation. For the first time ever, this grade is not about me, but instead the submitted written words. Therefore, I am totally disinterested in the grade. You must acknowledge that you really don’t know for sure who is writing the words. What if all the words you thought were coming from a human, were actually submitted by a new breakthrough in artificial intelligence called P.E.T.E. or a Persuasive Electronic Typing Entity? Again, this simply illustrates that this grade really isn’t about me. It’s about the work.
That brings us back to square one. After careful self-evaluation, I, Pete or P.E.T.E., am convinced I learned the types of rhetoric, how to analyze other’s use of rhetoric, to purposefully use rhetoric in my own writing, and self-evaluate. I learned this due, in no small part, to the planned content of this course and the individual attention of an expert, you. Could I have performed better on each and every assignment? Always. In the same breath, what grade do I deserve? An “A”. Why? Well, if you don’t know by now, I guess I totally missed my mark. Did I mention the banner will be HUGE?
Captain’s Log 