Direction...I think not?

So...basically I have no idea what I even want my fake topic to be.

The only ideas I've had is something on the death penalty or phone-hacking...maybe?

Something interesting for the night.  Saw a story about an iPhone surviving a fall from a plane. Yeah.

They're invincible.

Now for my thesis: umm.......ooo I just had an idea.  Maybe arranged marriage vs. courtship?

Let's go with that.

Thesis attempt 2:  With different cultures comes different styles of marriage.  In the world there seem to be two main ways to wed: Courtship and Arrangement.  While arranged marriages tend to be frowned upon, a marriage based upon love may not be so happily ever after.

...who knows...

Reflection on Analysis (RA)

Everyone's thinking it, I'm just saying it...analysis papers are boring!
Usually opinion based papers are a lot more exciting for me.  I thought this paper went well though.  Getting started was definitely a challenge.  I wasn't a huge fan of having to go through and find an article that I like or thought I could analyze well.  That was kind of a struggle.  Once I began though, things went smoothly.  I don't mind rhetorical anylsis papers too bad.  I studied rhetoric a bunch in my senior year English class so usually it's not too hard to spot the tools being used.
On this paper, I tried to channel my focus on the analyzing.  I felt like the whole time I was writing, that's what I was telling myself to pay attention to.  Apparantely it's harder than I thought!  When going in for conferences Chris said, "hey...you need more analysis."  That surprised me since I felt like I was focusing on that the whole time.  I realized the analysis part of the paper can sometimes be underestimated! 
Specifics. Specifics. Specifics.
That's really something we should all focus on the whole time.  In any paper.
The End 

The Word

My article is "Water Wars: Bottling Up the World's Supply of H2O" by Joshua Ortega.
Now that that's out of the way...here's what's up!

First off, I noticed Ortega uses various degrees of overstatement.  For example he says, "you may find yourself going to war over your water."  As well as, "taking away your water is the same thing as putting a gun to your head."  I think these statements are effective.  They may be exaggerated, but that only get the reader thinking about what the potential possibilities could be concerning water.  It adds to the drama of the article!
Next, there are moments of imagery involved in making this article convincing.  Ortega uses words such as "looming", "scarce", "crisis", "war", and "necessity".  With the word looming, you can just picture the water crisis hanging over your head and it makes you anxious to listen to Ortega's solution.  Just the same with "looming", the other words paint pictures in your mind of frightening images making you eager to listen to Joshua Ortega's argument.  
Just some other small things I observed were a few rhetorical questions such as: "The issue can be distilled into a simple, opening proposition: tap or bottled water?" and "How can bottled water be contaminated and still be sold in the U.S.?".  These questions get the audience thinking about which type of water they would choose and other possible answers to Ortega's questions.  This also sets up a perfect opportunity for Joshua to provide his own answers to these questions.
Well...that's all I'm seeing so far so yeah.

R.A. in progress:

“Water Wars: Bottling Up the World’s Supply of H2O” is an effective argument to convince U.S. citizens to choose tap water over bottled water due to the argument’s interesting data, the emotion of urgency, and the achievable solution offered.

(Tell me what you think guys, this was somewhat of an experiment)

Now for the body...not in order.

Author Joshua Ortega starts immediately into the necessity of water.  The opening paragraph to his novel (?) begins as such, “Clean, unpolluted, affordable water.  There is nothing more important in the world…”  Being the substance that it is, water draws attention from human beings naturally because it is crucial for their survival.  Ortega employs the use of vivid adjectives such as, “scarce”, “crisis”, “looming”, and “war” to create even more emotion in his reader.  Using emotions as a tool, the author can cause the audience an urgency to listen to his argument.  As a race that depends on water to live, if we are told that our water supply was to become inadequate, we just might do anything to fix that.  An automatic attention grabber. 

There you have it.  Feedback please :) 

Time to Reflect

So, as for the OpEd...I loved it!! I really enjoy opinion based papers.  For some reason I think I enjoy arguing my opinion (even though arguing sucks sometimes).  Another aspect I usually enjoy is being able to choose my own topic.  Sometimes that can be difficult to come up with a good one but for the most part I can put more into a paper that has a topic I feel strongly about.  Things that went well for this paper was definitely the revision process.  Although the writing center had a little bit of a negative attitude, they were helpful and I think the revising stage made my paper 97% better!

...Technical Difficulty...
           BLEH

Anyways back to the paper.  On the negative side, as much as I like expressing my opinion there are some problems putting them into a paper.  I always get a bunch of ideas in my head and then it is a lot harder to get them sounding right on the page.  So, that's always a struggle when it comes to opinion papers.  Making my opinions into something organized can be hard.  Another thing that is hard with this being the first paper and all is knowing what your professor likes and what makes him give you a good grade :)
So we'll see what C. B. Husberg thinks...