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The Legless Man The little legless man wondering around the city on a skateboard, moving and dodging everyone on the sidewalk proves quite hard. Kevin Connolly rides around everyday on his skateboard, throughout tough terrain and busy streets. He takes pictures of people reacting to him and loves it. The entitled article, “Kevin Connolly Will See You Now” by Christopher Solomon, tells the story of a man living independently and without legs. Kevin Connolly shows bravery, intelligence and independent throughout his challenged- filled life. To begin, Kevin shows how brave a legless man can be without any support. For instance, Kevin went through a two week trip to Tobacco Root Mountain by himself. Although Kevin’s life is harder than most people in the U.S., he finds a way to make his life even better than most of americans. In fact, Kevin wrestled in high school for a whole semester and never gave up. Overall, even after never winning a single match of wrestling in high school. Kevin still showed bravery and participated in the X-Games, winning a bronze and silver medals. Even tho, Kevin still finds skiing to be very fun. In other words, Kevin shows bravery in tough events in his life when people would not (84-87). …show more content…
While living an adventurous life, Kevin used his intelligence to his advantage.
For example, Kevin Connolly publishes a memoir Double Take in 2009. In fact, Kevin got a full scholarship to Montana State University in Bozeman for his intelligent mind. After all, he also figured out how to arrive at point A from point B without having stress. Kevin rides on his skateboard to go from his apartment to the store just to buy food. Kevin eventually shows all the pictures he takes of people staring at him and displayed them at the Smithsonian Institution called “The Rolling Exhibition. To conclude, Kevin Connolly may not appear as smart as he looks, but he shows his intelligence he is by making everyday his best and always keeps his head
up(86-87) Even so Kevin Connolly, who can be very intelligent and brave, independent for everything he has done. Even so he has a skateboard to get around places, he also has a Toyota RAV4 that has custom gas and brakes on the steering wheel. On the other hand, Kevin Connolly travels from country to country alone, to capture images of people's faces staring at him. Kevin Connolly also has been skiing since he was a teenager and even has a carbon-fiber-and-titanium mono-ski complete with a snowmobile. Kevin even goes home everyday and cooks for himself and no one else unless he has company over. Therefor, Kevin does a lot for himself that not a lot of legless people would do or even attempt to do(86-89).
If someone asked you which was more important, street smarts or book smarts, what would be your answer? Gerald Graff, the author of an essay called Hidden Intellectualism, contemplates on what he thinks because there are pros and cons to being street smart and being book smart.
Is it better to be book smart or street smart? Is it better to be happy and stable or unhappy and ‘rich’? Blue-collar jobs require you to learn skills that college cannot teach you; Rose points this out in his essay, stating: “It was like schooling, where you’re constantly learning” (277). In the essay “Blue Collar Brilliance” written by Mike Rose, he talks about how his mother worked as a waitress and how his uncle Joe dropped out of high school, eventually got a job working on the assembly line for General Motors and was then moved up to supervisor of the paint and body section. Rose suggests that intelligence is not represented by the amount of schooling someone has or the type of job they work. In this essay I will be explaining why Rose
In the essay ”Hidden Intellectualism” by Gerald Graff, he discusses different types of intellect, more specifically the ways they can apply to us in our lives. He discusses the different types of “smarts” referred to in his paper as street smarts, and school smarts. Graff hints upon the missed opportunities by colleges to embrace the form of intellect called “street smarts” because of a preconceived idea that there is no way to use this form of knowledge in an academic setting. To quote Graff directly “Colleges might be at fault for missing the opportunity to tap into such street smarts”. We then learn some of Graffs personal experiences pertaining to this very thing. He shares a story about himself which reviews his underlying love for sports and complete diskliking for books or any form of intellectualism, until he became college aged. He shares that he now believes, his love of sports over over school work was not because he hated intellectualism but perhaps it was intellectualism in another form. He shares his
Terry knew that aches and pains are common in athlete’s lives. At the end of his first year of university there was a new pain in his knee. One morning Terry woke up to see that he could no longer stand up. A week later Terry found out that it was not just an ache he had a malignant tumor; his leg would have to be cut off six inches above the knee. Terry’s doctor told him that he had a chance of living but the odds were fifty to seventy percent. He also said that he should be glad it happened now fore just 2 years ago the chance of living was fifteen percent. The night before his operation a former coach brought Terry a magazine featuring a man who ran a marathon after a similar operation. Terry didn’t want to do something small if he was going to do something he was going to do it big. "I am competitive" Terry said, "I’m a dreamer. I like challenges. I don’t give up. When I decided to do it, I knew it was going to be all out. There was no in between Terry’s sixteen month follow up he saw all the young people suffering and getting weak by the disease. He never forgot what he saw and felt burdened to thoughts that died to run this marathon. He was one of the lucky one in three people to survive in the cancer clinics. Terry wrote asking for sponsorship " I could not leave knowing that these faces and feelings would still be here even though I would be set free of mine, s...
A huge part of the story showed how a person could overcome all the odds to become successful is feats such as sports and other activities. Most sports champions show great endurance to win many competitions. Similarly, Hillenbrand indicated that Louis, a competitive runner, trained until “he (had) rubbed the skin right off one of his toes, (leaving) his sock bloody” (Hillenbrand 23). As a result of all the hard work, Louis overcome struggles such as a bleeding shin, broken ribs, and a damaged toe to set time records for many races. In my experiences, I see many people take sports and other extra-curricular activities as a burden without embracing the challenges. In contrast, Louis illustrates the rare athlete and human being who seeks solutions to
In “ Blue Collar Brilliance” Mike Rose argues that intelligences can’t be measured by the education we received in school but how we learn them in our everyday lives. He talks about his life growing up and watching his mother waitressing at a restaurant. He described her orders perfectly by who got what, how long each dish takes to make, and how she could read her customers. He also talks about his uncles working at the General Motors factory and showed the amount of intelligence that was need to work at the factory. Rose goes on talking about the different types of blue-collar and how he came up with the idea that a person has skills that takes a lot of mind power to achieve.
In “Hidden Intellectualism,” Gerald Graff pens an impressive argument wrought from personal experience, wisdom and heart. In his essay, Graff argues that street smarts have intellectual potential. A simple gem of wisdom, yet one that remains hidden beneath a sea of academic tradition. However, Graff navigates the reader through this ponderous sea with near perfection.
This issue of having real world smarts as well as book smarts is especially relevant to the modern day higher education student. With all the pressure surrounding schoolwork, it is easy to get caught up in academics and lose sight of the world around you. Achieving a balance between school work and real world education is key to success in this world. College students these days must try to find their own personal "Manley Pointer", in order to remind themselves of the balance necessary in life.
Intellectuality needs to be redefined; what does the word intellectual mean? Typically one would describe someone as either “street-smart” or “book-smart,” in other words someone who knows how to live in the real world versus someone who has knowledge about academics. But is one more “intellectual” than the other? In the article “Hidden Intellectualism,” Gerald Graff addresses this issue and brings to the audience’s—the audience being experts about the subject along with himself—attention that schools are missing the opportunity to fuse together street-smarts and book-smarts to increase overall academic performance. Graff definitively presents his opinion on this topic by manipulating ethos, pathos, and logos. Through ethos his credibility
A famous quote by Martin Luther King states “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.” The two articles “Hidden Intellectualism” and “Blue Collar Brilliance” both emphasis the author's opinion on the qualifications and measurements of someone's intelligence. “Hidden Intellectualism” focuses on students or younger people who have trouble with academic work because, they are not interested in the topic. Today, in schools students are taught academic skills that are not very interesting, the author mentions this is why children are not motivated in schools. The main viewpoint of this article is that schools need to encourage students
In “Hidden Intellectualism”, author and professor Gerald Graff describes his idea of what book smarts and streets smarts actually are. He details how new ideas can help to teach and build our educational system into something great and that perhaps street smarts students could be the factor that traditional education is missing that could make it great.
“Hidden Intellectualism” written by Gerald Graff, is a compelling essay that presents the contradicting sides of “book smarts” and “street smarts” and how these terms tied in to Graff’s life growing up. Graff felt like the school was at fault that the children with more “street smarts” were marked with the reputation of being inadequate in the classroom. Instead of promoting the knowledge of dating, cars, or social cues, the educational system deemed them unnecessary. Gerald Graff thought that “street smarts” could help people with academics. In his essay, Graff confessed that despite his success as an “intellect” now, he was the exact opposite until college. Where he grew up in Chicago, Illinois, intelligence was looked down upon around peers
In the minds of many, intelligence not only excels your experience in education, but is also the key to a successful career. In Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell refutes this thought by expanding on the belief that intelligence can only take you so far, and that creativity and innovation tend to lead to just as much success. This thought process applies to many different levels of life including our interview and acceptance into the ACTION program.
Co-author of “They Say/I Say” handbook, Gerald Graff, analyzes in his essay “Hidden Intellectualism” that “street smarts” can be used for more efficient learning and can be a valuable tool to train students to “get hooked on reading and writing” (Graff 204). Graff’s purpose is to portray to his audience that knowing more about cars, TV, fashion, and etc. than “academic work” is not the detriment to the learning process that colleges and schools can see it to be (198). This knowledge can be an important teaching assistant and can facilitate the grasping of new concepts and help to prepare students to expand their interests and write with better quality in the future. Graff clarifies his reasoning by indicating, “Give me the student anytime who writes a sharply argued, sociologically acute analysis of an issue in Source over the student who writes a life-less explication of Hamlet or Socrates’ Apology” (205). Graff adopts a jovial tone to lure in his readers and describe how this overlooked intelligence can spark a passion in students to become interested in formal and academic topics. He uses ethos, pathos, and logos to establish his credibility, appeal emotionally to his readers, and appeal to logic by makes claims, providing evidence, and backing his statements up with reasoning.
“We Should Hang Out Sometime” is a nonfiction memoir by Josh Sundquist. In this book we explore several of Josh’s romantic endeavours and failures throughout his life. The story begins with Josh telling us about how he’s never had a real girlfriend before, and his newfound goal to discover why his singledom had reigned over him for so long. He decides to embark on some “semi-scientific” research as he looks into why exactly he has never acquired a girlfriend, specifically, what was wrong with him. As we go through this novel we see Josh’s slow realization that nothing was wrong with him, not his prosthetic leg, his personality, or his looks. Instead, as we meet several characters, go through many scenes, and discuss Josh’s thoughts, we discover