A Look Back...

This is one of the very first essays I wrote in my Writing 2010 class, enjoy!

Writing has never been something that I have really understood. I am not very good at it, so I have learned to dislike it. A lot. All through high school I had teachers that would read and scrutinize my essays as if their lives depended on filling the paper with “revising suggestions” in red pen. It was terrible; it looked like my poor words that I had written were bleeding. Thanks to high school, I find writing a very challenging task.

In 10^th grade my English teacher was a bigger guy with a beard that would always wear a Hawaiian shirt. He never buttoned it up all the way though, so it always looked like his chest hair was trying to escape. He was more into the reading side of English but would always make us do online writing tests that he would swear his life on. The online writing tests were free response questions like, “Describe your summer experience,” or, “Write about yourself.” I would tell the computer about my summer, or tell it everything it needed to know about me, and I would fail. Every time. I had friends that I hung out with all summer that would write about the exact same thing, and they passed. I didn’t understand how I could fail when I answered the question. Although it was a pretty frustrating thing to fail every online writing test, it helped me to learn how to structure an essay.

Apparently in the summer the teachers at the high school get together and talk about the “trouble students.” On my very first day of 11^th grade English the teacher called me over to her desk and tried to kick me out of her class. “According to your previous English teacher, you do not take this subject seriously.” Even though she was absolutely right I answered back, “I take English VERY seriously.” She believed me and let me go back to my table where I shared my story with my classmates. In this English class she focused on grammar and sentence structure and she made us write essays to show our knowledge of the two. I wasn’t failing the essays anymore, but I still wasn’t getting the score I wanted to and I realized that I was one of the weakest writers in the class. The teacher did not appreciate my humor that I tried to put in my essays to spice them up, and told me to stop.

She caught on by about halfway through the year that I did not take English seriously at all and that’s when she started to grade my essays as hard as she could. She gave us an assignment one week to write a persuasive essay about Wal-Mart and when I had finished, I felt very good about it. I was excited to turn it in and finally get a good grade on an essay. When I got the essay back I held the poor thing in my hands; she had killed it. It looked like it had been murdered; red lines and words everywhere. But the one phrase that stuck out the most was at the very bottom of the essay; written in big red letters and circled several times was the phrase, “You will never be persuasive.” That wasn’t a big confidence booster for my writing, but I kept on trudging through the essays and assignments and I passed the class so I was happy.

When I walked into my AP English class my senior year in high school and saw the teacher, I had no idea what to think. A lady shorter than me with red hair that went every direction with blonde streaks in it wearing glasses that made her look like she always had a crazed look on her face. To top it off she was wearing a maroon sweatshirt with William Shakespeare on it and a matching pair of sweat pants with “Utah Shakespearian Festival” written on the legs. It was in that class that I learned the most about writing. We had to write about two essays a week for the whole year. But out of a grading scale of one to nine, I never scored above a four. It was passing, but not good enough for me; I at least wanted a five. I could write the essay just fine, but now I had to look for the deeper meaning and how it applies to life and it was so hard for me. She tried writing suggestions on the paper, which were in purple, not red, but I couldn’t read them most of the time due to her use of fancy cursive that looked to me as if she had taken two seconds to write them. The very last essay we wrote before the final test was probably the best essay I have every written. I finally got that five that had been avoiding me all year, and I passed the final test.

During those three years in high school I learned so much about writing essays and their structures and how to answer different types of essays. But I never mastered it, or got very good at it. I do the very best I can on every essay and give it 150 percent every time, but it never seems to be enough. Thanks to those high school teachers, I am not very confident in my writing skills but I will always try to write the best essay that I can produce.

A Rhetorical Analysis of “The Private War of Women Soldiers”

In “The Private War of Women Soldiers,” Helen Benedict, the author uses logos, pathos, and ethos to tell the story of women getting raped in the army. Although she gives shady information and her point of view is somewhat biased against men, the article is powerful and will be an aid in raising awareness about the issue.

Benedict’s purpose in writing this article is to raise awareness about the issue. She uses examples of women getting raped as an appeal to ethos and pathos. Benedict writes, “Many female soldiers say they are sexually assaulted by their male comrades and can’t trust the military to protect them. ‘The knife wasn’t for the Iraqis,’ says one woman, ‘It was for the guys on my own side.’” She informs us of these brutal situations that happen in our own army to try to raise attention to the issue. How can you read about a woman getting raped and not feel any emotion? Because this is such a serious subject, it automatically will stir up some emotion whether good or bad. Because Benedict is writing about such a strong subject, her writing can be weak and she can get away with it. She tells us that, “Comprehensive statistics on the sexual assault of female soldiers in Iraq have not been collected,” but then goes on to give us numbers and statistics from polls she has found. Even though her writing is a little weak at times, and she contradicts herself, the article is still very powerful.

Benedict has many audiences that she reaches with her article. Her intended audience is women that are in the army or those that want to join. Benedict portrays the army as a scary place where is you are a women, chances are, you are going to get raped. This appeals to the logos because who would enter a scary place willingly? Benedict writes, “ As (a woman) told me, ‘It’s like sending three women to live in a frat house.’” Although that is a major exaggeration it gives an idea of how girl-crazy these soldiers really are. Another one of Benedict’s audiences is America. Benedict wanted America to hear the story of some of these women and wants America to take a stand. The article will appeal to people’s ethos because most people will want to help. One of Benedicts unintended audiences would be rape victims. As scary as this article is, it gives hope to those that have been raped and feel alone. They can realize that they are not the only ones and there are girls everywhere in the exact same situation. It gives them a sense of unity and will hopefully give them enough courage to start reporting and crime instead of keeping it inside.

Benedict’s stand on the issue is illustrated by the quote, “I can’t help wondering what the women among those troops will have to face. And I don’t mean only the hardships of war, the killing of civilians, the bombs and mortars, the heat and sleeplessness and fear. I mean from their own comrades – the men.” She is scared for these women in the army and wants America to be scared for them too. She portrays men as being the bad guys, giving few examples of platoons that don’t have a raping problem. This is a little off-putting for men reading this article, thus making them uninterested in what the author has to say. She could have given a couple examples of men getting raped in the army or gave more examples of men doing the right thing, to keep men more interested in her article.

Benedict gives her information in the form of an online article. Because it is an online article, not a newspaper article, or one for a serious magazine, she can get away with being less professional. She said she interviewed, “them for up to ten hours each for a book I am writing on the subject.” She loses some credibility there and makes her article seem more like a preview for her book rather than a serious article. The online article is easy to read with short, to the point paragraphs that keep the reader interested. Because it is online it is easily accessible, unlike newspaper articles where you would have to find the newspaper that you were looking for, if you still had it. The article will be on the Internet forever, letting millions of people read it through many generations. This is probably something Benedict was thinking about when she was writing this article.

Although Benedict’s article, “The Private War of Women Soldiers” lacks in some areas, it is still very good. Benedict appeals to logos, ethos, and pathos throughout the entire article. She gives facts and numbers and stories that keep the article interesting and make it powerful.

Erasure Poem Using “Dispatches” by Michael Herr

Map of Vietnam on wall,

Lie on bed,

Look at it,

Too tired,

Just get boots off.

Map was old,

A marvel,

Left for years,

Made in Paris.

Paper buckled in the wet heat,

Laying a veil over countries depicted.

Vietnam separated into older territories.

That’s old, that’s a really old map.

Maps didn’t reveal much,

Reading them was like trying to read the wind.

Iraq in Fragments Film Analysis

In the first third of the film, “Iraq in Fragments” we are shown effects on Iraq from the war through a unique perspective, a child’s. Through his eyes and narrations we are able to see and hear about what Iraqis think of Americans.

While watching the movie you can tell that Americans aren’t very popular in Iraq. They don’t agree with the war and want us out of there. The majority of the people on Iraq are poor and by bombing their cities we are taking away what little they actually have. One man even says, “I’ve never liked this thing from the start… Only the rich will benefit.” All of the wealthy Iraqis have fled and they think we are only there to get oil. If a country is bombing and sending troops into your country supposedly just to make money, it would be easy to harbor anger towards them.

In the beginning of the movie it gives a view of two different Iraq’s; one before American troops and one after. The main character, Muhammad said, “It was beautiful, the bridges, the river. Now there is nothing, it was so beautiful.” America is portrayed as the bad guy; bombing a poor country that has nothing. Some Iraqis preffered to be ruled by Saddam Hussein. One man even says, “Saddam took everything, the Americans will be worse. (Saddam) would never leave us in this situation.” We may be over there trying to help them in our own way, but it seems like that way isn’t working and the Iraqis don’t want us there.

This film is trying to open the eyes of America to what is really going on in Iraq. You know the situation is bad when you hear from a little child, “Our home trembled and shook. The war was overhead.” When the war is shown through the perspective of a child it makes it even more scary. In the end the boy says, “It’s not safe here. It is scary. There is no security.” This movie shows the effects of war and how much more severe they are that what we thought.