Who are We
Have you ever stopped and thought, what would I do if my kid had a disability or was dying? Or ever question, why you act a certain way or if you're strong enough? In the articles, “Notes From a Dragon Mom,” “What We Hunger For,” and “This is Water;” these authors, all share their thoughts on what makes a person act the way they do. In “This is Water”, by David Foster Wallace, Mr, Wallace shows many reasons on why everyday behavior is based off of a person's education. He speaks about the difficulty of empathy, and how education is used to learning various life lessons. These include the ability to understand other people, have deeper thought, and manners used in our everyday lives. Mr, Wallace’s speech shows that the goal
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“In This is Water,” David Foster Wallace explains how everyday behavior is based off of a person's education and how it influence their life. In “Notes From a Dragon Mom,” Emil Rapp explains why she treats her son the way she does, and that she will love him today until the last day no matter what. And lastly, in the article, “What we Hunger For,” by Roxane Gay, she writes about how her struggles in her teen years and then finding strength, are similar to a book series and how this strength can charge your own personal story for the better. All of these readings are based off of human behavior and why we think the way we do. How people adapt, love and live to make their lives full and meaningful, They may all tell different stories and have different messages but all contain similarities relating to the human mind and how we perceive life and all its …show more content…
The biggest thing about this semester that helped me to be successful was getting into a routine. With baseball everyday i had to get my homework done when i could. The challenging part of this semester was motivating myself to get my work done early and not waiting to the last minute. Throughout the semester i grew in many ways. In english i learned how to write in different ways and how to ask good discussion questions. I had english on mondays wednesdays and fridays.On mondays we usually had a reading for homework. Wednesday we usually had to bring in a topic and discussion question . And last on fridays it was kinda a tossup but usually we talked about ways to work on our writing. I loved my english professor and was always in communication with all of us students. My favorite part of the class was when we would write in class about topics. My oceanography class was on the same days as english. I again liked my oceanography professor. For me to be successful in oceanography i had to show up everyday and take good notes. On tuesday and thursdays i had history and business. History was my favorite class my
As a final point, literature informs humanity about these types of topics proven in The Book Thief with friendship, courage and perseverance. It teaches the readers that friendship relies on trust between two people and mentally help a person to live a continuing life. It also demonstrates that with courage, people will overcome that fear of doing things they have never thought of doing, but will face the fear of the outcome. Further, with perseverance, anyone can feel like they can accomplish the impossible and thrive to be successful. Perhaps, since we humans educate ourselves mostly from literature. It is the only piece of advice we can take and learn our valuable lessons from.
The speech is arranged into short paragraphs, providing an example in almost every one. Everyone is familiar with commencement speeches. They are usually used to congratulate a group of people and tend to be looking towards the future. Instead of congratulating the students at Kenyon College, Wallace challenges them. The essay opens with a metaphor about two young fish that do not realize what water is, setting the tone for the rest of the speech. Wallace proceeds to describe how completely oblivious society is to the world around us, just like the fish. Wallace supports this claim through examples within the speech. His use of examples rather than facts or statistics weakens his claim. If more facts or statistics were used his claim would become more convincing. His rationalization come in the form of the short stories that illustrate the choices people make in their everyday lives. He...
The Cerebral Penitentiary “About all a commencement speaker can really do is to suggest a couple of things that [he or] she believes really matters.” Sue Monk Kidd stated this while addressing the graduates of Scripps College. On May 21, 2005 Kenyon College graduation welcomed David Foster Wallace, an American novelist, for their commencement address. A prime example of Kidd’s statement, Wallace stated in address that “suicide’s [victims] are actually long dead before they pull the trigger” (Wallace 4). His address titled This Is Water was delivered to the graduating class of 2005 before his death in 2008.
... pedagogical arguments, such as teaching a person how to critically think, to ignore the ethics of their dogma and focus on superficial emotional appeals and easily understood logical appeals. By ignoring ethics in pedagogical arguments, the argument becomes less about teaching and more about explaining a certain viewpoint, focussing less on whether this is the right viewpoint and more on the author’s personal reasons supporting it. Second, in This is Water specifically, analysing this speech causes the writer to not only become a critical thinker like Wallace wanted, but also extend Wallace’s arguments in directions that he failed to properly explore, like activism.
Writer, David Foster Wallace, in his speech “This is Water” implies that the way schools teach kids to think these days is wrong. this is in result of his opinion on how most people think during their normal day. Explaining that most people only look at their lives, they never think about how other people’s days could be going or how they live their lives. He refers to the point that you should not get mad during traffic with a bunch of big SUVs because “It's not impossible that some of these people in SUVs were in horrible driving accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy, SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive.” He later reviews his points to try and persuade you to change your way of thinking, maybe to keep you from being selfish and thinking of others.
I began to read not out of entertainment but out of curiosity, for in each new book I discovered an element of real life. It is possible that I will learn more about society through literature than I ever will through personal experience. Having lived a safe, relatively sheltered life for only seventeen years, I don’t have much to offer in regards to worldly wisdom. Reading has opened doors to situations I will never encounter myself, giving me a better understanding of others and their situations. Through books, I’ve escaped from slavery, been tried for murder, and lived through the Cambodian genocide. I’ve been an immigrant, permanently disabled, and faced World War II death camps. Without books, I would be a significantly more close-minded person. My perception of the world has been more significantly impacted by the experiences I've gained through literature than those I've gained
In the article This is Water by David Foster Wallace, he talks about our daily lives and how important it is to notice our selfish ways by learning how to think. Wallace does this by applying scenarios to his article that show exactly how being self-centered occurs and what we can do to change our thoughts. In his article, Wallace also illustrated that our selfish ways are actually programmed from birth. For instance, ever since we were little, we all have come across a situation where we know someone who has annoyed us or irritated us. However, since we do not know their entire situation, we only judged them by the "cover of their book”. This act of selfishness does not make us happy like we want it to be though. After analyzing our self-centered actions, Wallace came up with the idea that in order for individuals to be truly satisfied with their lives, one needs to be more open-minded about their surroundings and see the world with the glass half-full.
Richard Wright, in his essay “Discovering Books,” explains how reading books changed his outlook on life and eventually his life itself. The first book that widened his horizons was an overtly controversial book by H. L. Mencken. I have a story not so dissimilar from his.
In David Foster Wallace’s speech later made in the book This is Water Wallace lectures a group of soon to be college graduates about the meaning of a higher level of thinking, and on the importance of a well-trained mind that is capable of thinking outside of your own self-centered universe. In his speech he hits a vein with me and really makes me consider how I deal with day to day life and how I view every situation that I come across. I have taken away from this speech and response a sense of self check about how my default settings work and how I place my own value in the
Similarly, in This is Water, David Foster Wallace argues a real education as offering people the choice of what to think about in life. He states that “a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about ‘teaching you how to think’, but rather about the choice of what to think about” (1). After getting educated, students obtain the basic knowledge among many subjects, but with all the information and facts being offered, people may lose conscious of what to think about. Schooling may cause students over-think things which are unnecessary because it may take over what you actually notice and care. Wallace insists “learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and
Have you ever wondered how we as a society and generation have come to know so much? We have so much knowledge not because of ourselves but by wisdom and knowledge passed down by generations. We learn very important values about life by the history of this world and by people. Values are considered a guiding principle or standard of conduct such as honesty or loyalty or responsibility for others welfare (Null). The values that have been passed down to us shape and make us into the people we are today. We learn from values such as honesty and loyalty but also learn valuable lessons such as hardships. We learn most value in life from people who have orally passed them down or they have been written out for us. There are three literary works from
At first, college life was very tough for me inside and outside of the classroom. Inside the classroom, I had to learn how to manage my test anxiety, take better notes, and focus more and not be as distracted. I learned how to manage my test anxiety and take better notes. Outside of the class room, I had to learn how to study effectively, do my homework every day, keep up with deadlines, manage my time wisely, and avoid procrastination. I learned how to overcome these challenges by learning from my mistakes and by being determined to succeed.
This semester was my very first semester as a college student. Being the first, it was probably the semester I would learn the most in. I learned the expectations for writing that I will have to live up to for the next four years of my college career. Though my high school teachers were usually demanding because I was in the Honors English section throughout high school, writing in college has still ?raised the bar? for me. Also, in high school, we would have weeks to pick a topic, create a thesis, outline the paper, write the paper, and then revise the paper. In college, the time restraints are not quite as lenient. I?ve had to learn to manage my time and be more productive with what free moments I have. Strangely enough, I?ve found the college English experience to be much more rewarding and enjoyable than in high school.
My first semester at Michigan State University was filled with many challenges that have made me a better student. It tested my ability to work under pressure, as well as encouraging me to properly plan out a healthy work schedule. Most importantly, it put the responsibility solely on my shoulders. Not only did this require me to stay on top of my work, but it encouraged me to find value in the work I was doing. All of this allowed me to look back at the semester and see drastic changes in my abilities. This was especially noticeable in my writing course, a subject that I have struggled with my whole life. Throughout the semester, with the proper resources, I was becoming an experienced writer, and learned many skills that I struggled with in the past.
The main form of literature, the book, has had a great impact upon the formation of our society today. Before the 1940’s TV had not come into being yet and there was not much else to do other than read books. Thus books formed my grandparents and to some extent my parents and, although I grew up in the generation of TV, books as literature have indirectly formed me as well.