Chapter 1 and Introduction Reading Response by Sabastian Stevens
When I was browsing this chapter and introduction, I gleaned over the writing process. All of that seemed familiar; inspiration, arrangement, drafting, planning and proofreading has been shoved down my throat even through elementary school so this was no surprise to me. A lot of the conventions advice also seemed painfully obvious, yet the book continued to drill me on points like noticing highlights, boldface, italics, juicy words and punctuation. I was ready to move onto something different.
I ended up being quite surprised though when I reading the introduction and saw the "What's in a name?" story by Henry Louis Gates Jr. I noted amount of power and emotional influence that one piece of writing can have. Equally surprising is the amount of depth that an essay can have and the many different responses people can have when reading it. For example, when I was reading, my main reacton was disgust. It was pretty awful to see that blacks were essentially resigned to injustice and had to endure stale names and treatment from their white brethren. My pain was amplified by the fact that they were almost always fearing danger, danger of losing jobs, income and sustenance. However, many different reactions were explained in the book, such as anger towards the white people or the author, indifference, and even happiness.
I ended up being quite surprised though when I reading the introduction and saw the "What's in a name?" story by Henry Louis Gates Jr. I noted amount of power and emotional influence that one piece of writing can have. Equally surprising is the amount of depth that an essay can have and the many different responses people can have when reading it. For example, when I was reading, my main reacton was disgust. It was pretty awful to see that blacks were essentially resigned to injustice and had to endure stale names and treatment from their white brethren. My pain was amplified by the fact that they were almost always fearing danger, danger of losing jobs, income and sustenance. However, many different reactions were explained in the book, such as anger towards the white people or the author, indifference, and even happiness.
I also learned that to a certain extent, these reactions can shape up a different story for different people. People who sympathize with the innocence of the author in his early years may take the story's events more seriously, especially if the events are in light of the author. However, these personalized interpretations can also make people miss details about the story or essay and that is why it is a good idea to read over the work multiple times, especially if you have a strong opinion about said work.
When I read over the "Let Steroids into the Hall of Fame" essay by Zev Chafets, I saw that the author seemed to have a highly biased opinion. Perhaps he read anti-steroid articles and thought that the authors were ignorant, or maybe he had a favorable experience with steroid use in his past. I don't feel like there's anything wrong with a little bias, but I felt like in this case it got in the way of presenting viable counter-arguments. He mentioned very general counter-arguments but failed to tackle the bigger and more specific issues of his claims, probably in an effort to build his counter-arguments. However, I don't think this strategy is very effective because it doesn't inform the reader very well about both sides of the issue. What exactly is so wrong about not supporting steroids in sports? There must be arguments made against specific points in the counter-argument to really leave an impact. This is something I felt that the author Brent Staples did quite well in his "Cutting and Pasting: A Senior Thesis" essay. I felt like his writing touched upon the views that students who didn't understand plagiarizing had, while explaining the true downsides of copying work from others. I'm sure Zev Chafets could learn a thing or two from him.
When I read over the "Let Steroids into the Hall of Fame" essay by Zev Chafets, I saw that the author seemed to have a highly biased opinion. Perhaps he read anti-steroid articles and thought that the authors were ignorant, or maybe he had a favorable experience with steroid use in his past. I don't feel like there's anything wrong with a little bias, but I felt like in this case it got in the way of presenting viable counter-arguments. He mentioned very general counter-arguments but failed to tackle the bigger and more specific issues of his claims, probably in an effort to build his counter-arguments. However, I don't think this strategy is very effective because it doesn't inform the reader very well about both sides of the issue. What exactly is so wrong about not supporting steroids in sports? There must be arguments made against specific points in the counter-argument to really leave an impact. This is something I felt that the author Brent Staples did quite well in his "Cutting and Pasting: A Senior Thesis" essay. I felt like his writing touched upon the views that students who didn't understand plagiarizing had, while explaining the true downsides of copying work from others. I'm sure Zev Chafets could learn a thing or two from him.
Sabastian Stevens-SDE
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