Analysis

In my community blog post I wrote about vaccinating your children not only for their safety and well being but for that of everyone else as well. In that post I felt like I wrote to all three appeals: ethos, logos, and pathos. I wrote to all three because the topic I wrote about allowed me to do so. I was able to make a logical appeal, an emotional appeal, and a credible appeal to readers. Not all issues may allow for a writer to do so but I chose to take full advantage of having all three available to me. In all honesty if you're trying connect with readers I do believe that it's best to make an appeal on all three levels for your reader because it makes a stronger connection. However, if I were to rank the three my list would go: pathos, ethos, logos. In my opinion all three are important however if you can make an appeal to a reader's values, beliefs, and emotions I feel you can make your strongest connection there.

The Art of Influence

I feel like personal essays can be effectively used as influential pieces of writing.  I say this because I feel like personal essays give you the best chance to not only connect with readers but persuade them too. But to do this I feel like it requires quite a bit from the writer. You have to intimate and honest with your readers. Yeah your made up personal essay might attract a bunch of readers but did it allow you to connect with them? Your power of influence in your essay is in a direct correlation with how honest and intimate your essay is. Those stories are often the ones that carry the most weight. Another key element to personal essays is the fact that are like conversations. Written in a conversational way allows for the readers to follow along smoother when you're trying to persuade them because it's as if they are having this actual conversation with you. The best writers find a way to make their essays transition as an easy conversation while opening up and sharing intimate and private details of their lives in a honest manner.

Just What Do I Want To Accomplish...

As the few of you know, I'm going to be writing a memoir soon. Two thoughts come to mind, the first being that this sounds pretty cool and the second is that I'm not sure it'll interest anyone at all. I like to think that I'm a pretty interesting person but when you get right down to it, I'm really just your average normal guy. This memoir experience has been fun, recalling different memories from my life but nothing really blows you away. But then again that's always been me. I always do just enough to get by, or I go out and do the things I consider fun but refuse to go any further. I'm more than content without anything crazy happening in my life because crazy usually leads to problems.

I hope that whoever reads the memoir I write thoroughly enjoys themselves, after all we are writing for our readers. I hope that they are able to connect and feel what it is that I'm writing. Feel the pain of scratching a cornea, feel the nauseating fear of sitting in a dentist's chair, and feel the panic that ran through my body as I was about to be handcuffed and taken to jail. It's up to me when I'm writing this to make sure that I convey those emotions for my readers to feel. Obviously though in that process I'm not going to share every gruesome detail of the dentist or eye story because not everyone likes to read about that. I'm sure no one wants to visualize all of that when they read this.

Until that day comes you'll have to just sit patiently and wait. 

Memoir Ideas...

I have recently been given the challenge of coming up with 3-4 ideas that I would include in my memoir should I write one. First off, I'm not so sure that I have lived a life worth writing about in my near 27 years on God's green Earth. Then again I could just be holding on to ideas that I don't want to share with people, let alone the possibility of complete strangers finding this. But that being said here are my ideas:

1. I know that I would definitely write about a trip to the dentist that I made when I was 6 maybe 7-years old. This is the visit that shook my view on going to the dentist, this is the reason why every time I go in for something as simple as a cleaning that I get sick to stomach. Honestly, I'm almost 27-years old, I stand 6'6" tall and weigh about about 220-230 pounds. There's absolutely no reason that a trip to the dentist should make me feel like I'm about to die and act like a scared child.

2. In school I was usually a model student when it came to behavior and grades. That's why no one ever believes me when I tell them as a junior in high school I was almost expelled and arrested. Yeah, let that sink in for a second... expelled and arrested. I was so close to being arrested that before some quick thinking saved my bacon, the school officer was literally pulling out his handcuffs to place me under arrest.

3. The time I scratched my cornea comes to mind as an interesting story. But I'm not so certain that sharing what I did that night that led to me scratching my cornea would be appropriate to share. Then again maybe it is. In a short summary, I learned that after a night of celebrating my birthday at the bar it might not be a wise idea to try and take your contacts out.

I'm going to try to think of a fourth idea, if I do I'll add it on as a comment. If any friends have any ideas obviously leave it the comments section. Some of you have lived these moments with me, why not re-live them?

If Only My Girlfriend Understood Football

I know I'm asking a lot of this post, but I really wish my girlfriend understood football, even just a little bit of it. I'm not asking her to participate in a fantasy football league with me, but I just wish she understood it so she could see why I enjoy watching it so much. Now I realize that being in a healthy relationship requires me to give a little so I can expect to watch football all weekend long from late August until early February like used to when I was single. But I do wish she could understand that the only games I really care to see is the Michigan game on Saturday and Lions on Sunday. Only two games out of the roughly 100 or more games being played on any given weekend.

The game of football confuses my girlfriend, she doesn't understand the downs, the yards, and why they run the plays that they run. All of these things are perfectly acceptable, she doesn't have to be John Madden but I'd like to see her take an interest in it. Not give me crap about how I'm watching some stupid game. I don't give her crap about the things we watch on TV during the week, this needs to be a two-way road. And I'm not always opposed to missing a game here or there so long as they aren't the important ones. So during the Michigan schedule I don't want to miss the Michigan State game, the Ohio State game, or the Notre Dame game even though they won't play Notre Dame anymore after 2014. As for the Lions, well that changes from year to year. I hate missing good games, like a Monday night or Sunday night game and I hate missing games when they're still in the hunt for the playoffs. The moment they're eliminated from playoff contention I'll skip any and all games.

The one thing I want is for her to understand it a little bit and just show some interest in football, but I know that's asking a lot haha.

I Know I Live In Michigan, But I Hate Winter

After spending all of my near 27 years of existence in Michigan, I know that our winters consist of snow and cold and more snow and even more cold. But just because I live here doesn't mean I have to like the fact that we have four seasons and especially a winter. I hate being bundled up to go places, I hate having to warm up my car to melt the frost, I hate having to scrape the snow/ice off my car, and I hate having to shovel or snow blow my driveway and sidewalks. Nothing and I mean nothing irks me more though than having to wear pants. I always feel so restricted by pants, whether they be jeans, khakis, or dress pants. Being 6'6" means I have some long legs and finding pants to fit them isn't always the easiest thing to do. Plus, as I like to joke around with my friends; with long, luxurious legs like these I just have to show them off!

But on a more serious note I am the type of person of who much rather be walking around in a t-shirt and shorts as opposed to a hoody and pants. Nothing beats relaxing after a long day of school or work like coming home, going outside to grill up dinner and leaving your backdoor open to catch the breeze while eating dinner and then enjoying a Tigers game. I hate waking up in the dark and then going to school or work only to come home in the dark. And forget grilling up some steaks or anything else for that matter. I'm not going to shovel a walkway to my grill only so I can go out there and freeze to death in our nice Arctic weather we've had this winter.

I just hate when my friends feel the need to remind me that I live in Michigan and I just need to deal with it. Like no crap Sherlock, I didn't know I was in Michigan... For a second there I thought I was somewhere tropical. Who says I have to love the weather of where I live anyhow?

What Are The Requirements To Be A Fan Anyway...

After Saturday's monumental match up in men's college basketball between the Michigan Wolverines and the Michigan State Spartans, I saw a lot of hateful comments and stupid ones too being thrown out on Facebook. Some people like to label Michigan fans as "Walmart Wolverines", while others would call MSU fans "K-Mart Spartans". Why is it that because I didn't attend a school I couldn't afford that I can no longer cheer for them? It was acceptable for us to fans of the Wolverines or Spartans while in high school, but because we didn't go to either of those schools we can no longer root for them? Does attending one of those schools make you a bigger or better than those who didn't get a degree from there?

When I first started to attend Oakland University, it would bother me when my friends would label me a "Walmart Wolverine". I cheered and suffered through disappointment, rode the highs and the lows for 18 years before passing on attending Michigan. It wasn't as if I had been rejected from Michigan State and then changed my affiliation, heck had I applied to MSU I'm sure I would have gotten in there too.

Too often today, people want to accuse others of being bandwagon fans, which means you cheer for a team when they're doing well but abandon them for another team when they're doing poor. And yes, bandwagon fans can be annoying but they're apart of sports as much as anything else. The worst bandwagon fans of all have to be Detroit Tigers' fans, I can remember being 18 in 2005 and going to see so many games that year with my friends. We would buy cheap tickets and work our way down to the good seats because they rarely ever sold out or came close to it. Then in 2006 they made it to the World Series and ever since then I think they've basically been close to sold out most games of the their seasons following. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that my Tigers are good and relevant but I just get frustrated with the difficulty I have trying to get tickets to the games I want to see.

Basically what I'm getting at here is having a piece of paper that documents where you went to school shouldn't be the only criteria used when determining who you can root for.