Reflection of English 101

                Writing can be really easy at times, and really hard at others, what makes the difference is what I am writing about.  I would like to think of myself as a more creative writer, when I am on to something it flows on to the paper in no time.  However, this semester has had a lot of rhetorical analysis and research writing which has been a huge struggle.  My writing over this past semester has grown an immense amount, even when the grades have not been the best I still have learned how to be a better writer and why it can benefit me in any job field I choose.

            The very first rhetorical analysis I wrote on my own was on an article written about poverty in the United States and whether it was making people literally sick.  The rhetorical analysis is supposed to be on one specific thing the author or writer did well, such as egos, logos, pathos, their tone, diction, or voice.  Instead of one I wrote it on three, and because the writing could not be that long it was too spread out and too short of an explanation, making the analysis too hard to understand.

            From that point on I spent each rhetorical analysis, whether it be in class or on my own, determining one specific thing about the writing and spending about a half an hour on the thesis and quotes from the article.  Each one got better in my eyes however I was still getting a C+ here and a B- there.  I didn’t know what exactly I was doing wrong, even in some of the other writings that involved research and a strong thesis. 

            My professor then said that each thesis my class was writing was a “parallel thesis”, which is a thesis all students were taught in elementary school, to give your opinion and three reasons why.  Those three reasons would then turn into each body paragraph.  He said that a parallel thesis was to broad and a real college thesis was one that focused on one thing, and the many parts that made that one thing something to talk about.

            This “college thesis” would be the one thing in this class that made my writing that much better.   It forces the writer to think more in depth about the topic and really focus specifically on each little piece involved.  Overall as each assignment came and went in this class, my writing got better and with each little blog assignment it showed how writing will be a part of my job for the rest of my career.  

Bring in a new Wrestling Room

To whom it may concern,

My name is Devin Winn, I am a freshman here at Bridgewater State and am also a starter on the varsity wrestling team.  During the first week of practice I noticed that as a team we have to roll out the mats we practice on every day before and roll them back up every day after practice.  This takes time away from our practice and there has been an occasion where practice had to end early because there was a class being taught in the Kelly small gym.  Now this is not that big of a deal, however, it would be easier on a lot of faculty and students if the wrestlers had our own room dedicated to us where the mats could stay rolled out and we were able to show up, mop, then practice. 

Along with having to roll the mats out in the Kelly gym, each year around January for a certain number of weeks the team has to rent a truck, load up the mats, and move them across campus to Tinsley Training Center where practice is held.  I don’t know if you’ve ever had to move mats before, but it is a huge pain to deal with and it takes away from some teams who also have to train in Tinsley.  Having a separate place specified for the wrestling team would take away that hassle and keep each practice for all teams running smoothly.

Not only would this benefit the wrestling team in a tremendous way, it would benefit some of the staff in Kelly gym as well.  For example, the custodian who cleans the gym at the start and end of every day can not clean the floor completely with our mats rolled up in the way, this also causes the dust and dirt that he can not sweep up to get caught on our mats in the creases and could bring the spread of skin infection and/or sickness. 

Also, if there was a separate room dedicated to wrestling, any yoga or similar classes could use that space to run the class.  Instead of rolling their yoga mats out on the hardwood floor, where if someone loses balance and falls over they could hurt themselves, they could roll the yoga mats out over our wrestling mat and have a safer more comfortable yoga experience.

CPDC runs every Saturday in Kelly, sometimes they swim, other times they play basketball, and other times they use our mats when the smaller kids are running around or climbing on things to build motor skills and again, if they fall on the hardwood floor they could get seriously injured.  Having this padded room could prevent and injury happening to a younger kid as well as any kid who is messing around.

Overall having this room would greatly impact many of the faculty, staff, student, and anyone else who choses to take advantage of it.  The wrestling team has had its downfalls, however with 11 new freshmen joined this year, the program is on the spiral up with many more students and much more success to come.  I would hope that you please consider this option as it could have a very positive impact on the University’s campus as well as the lives of everyday students like my team and me.

Thank you for your time,

Devin Winn

Class of ‘21

Voice Technology on the Rise?

           When going to any party, music is the one thing almost always playing. A playlist is necessary to “liven” the party. Every time I go to a party at my aunt’s house, music is always blasting. Except it didn’t always stay the same the station would change in the midst of people talking without anyone taking out their phone or walking over to the speaker.  The way she was able to change the music by speaking was really cool.

            “Hey Alexa, play Pink radio” and right away, the Pink Pandora station would start playing. Seeing the confusion, she explained that it was a voice recognition speaker and just by saying an artist name or station, Alexa would automatically start playing it. After that, commercials for these speakers started to pop up all over television and it seemed as if almost everybody had one.

            Voice enabled technology is becoming a large part of society. Everyone is starting to use Echo and Google speakers mainly for the convenience of it and now almost every phone has voice enabled tech in it. “hey Siri, how is the weather” and your iPhone will instantly pull up the weather for the next 7 days for you.

            This new technology changed the way we are able to listen to music.  Speakers have been changing forever, they have gone from stationary large plug in stereo systems to now small wireless speakers. Amazon began to come out with different types of these Echo speakers and not too long after, Google came out with one of their own versions.

            According to an article on USA Today, Alexa, what's the most popular voice-enabled speaker?, the number of Americans who use the tech, like echo, at least once a month has doubled since last year.  One of their sources, eMarketer, has said that millennials are the ones driving this surge with more than one-third of them using them this year. 

            The amazon Echo speaker holds a 70% share of the speaker market, and the Google assistant holds 24%.  Combine these voice enabled speakers hold 94% of the speaker market.  The need for this tech comes from the need for a more personalized experience, not only are these convenient speakers to use at a party or when you’re too lazy to change the station remotely, they revolutionized the consumer market.

            Businesses needed better ways to connect with consumers and almost everyone wants to have an easier way to do everyday activities, ordering food for delivery instead of cooking yourself, buying things online instead of going to the store.  With Echo people can now order one click items online just by saying it, or place their dominos easy order without even moving.  Having these abilities caused the surge of consumers for these kinds of tech.

            According to Consumer AI — Voice Enabled Technology, an article posted by chatbotslife.com, people look for new ways to save time and money.  Once Siri came out consumers started looking for the next big thing to help them save more time.  Amazon responded with Alexa the Echo speaker, and now there are “No more customer care issues, lack of sales, inefficient inventory management, Time consuming Supply Chain, lack of Omnichannel and data analysis. Businesses have data, consumers have data all they need is Voice Technology to map the two together.”

            The advancement in speaker system has recently made major changes in how we are able to listen to music. Technology like Siri and the Echo speaker was created to make life simpler. Having a resource to help us out allows us to save money and time. Voice technology for speakers has impacted so many aspects of the consumer industry that the large need for these products was bound to happen.

Film Review

The Last Time, a short film directed by Christine Hooper, is about the struggles of quitting smoking.  A woman whose name was not portrayed in the film narrates her battle with smoking cigarettes. 

            The film opens with a scene between the main character and a random man standing at a bus stop.  The man is smoking a cigarette and when she sees that he is, she flips quickly into her sudoku booklet to try and distract her from the cigarette.  The narrator, who is also the main character begins to reminisce about her beginning interaction with a cigarette that started her on the path of addiction.

            She believed it made her look cool and gave her a new set of friends, yet it also gave her a way to escape from an awkward situation.  From there this escape plan turned into an addiction.  An addiction that she couldn’t get away from where cigarettes were the only thing she could think about and it began getting in the way of her social life.

            The narrator talks about how she began to quit, and the short film ends with her back at the bus stop with the man.  The bus drives by and pics up the man and when it leaves his half-finished cigarette is on the ground. The woman walks over picks it up and takes a draw from it saying, “one last time” before she runs away, and the screen goes black.

            The film was a great way to show how many people battle this addiction with cigarettes, with a fun twist to it.  The director turned it into this sort of love story between the main character and the cigarette and the way it was shot helped keep audience interested to some extent.

             There were some week points in the film however.  The way it was shot made it seem like a long commercial instead of an actual film, and with there being no name to the character it didn’t allow this sort of connection that some people would like.  The plot line of the “love story” seemed to be the only thing really going for this film.

            Adding a sort of comedic element to a not so comedic problem makes it something that people would want to see, especially people battling the same addiction.  Many people who smoke do not like watching commercials or videos on quitting because they would say “oh well it’s not that easy”.  However, this film showed that yes, it is not that easy, but it is a struggle that one can overcome.

Why Does Ice Float?

Why Does Ice Float?

            A lot of substances in the world can be formed into three different states, solid, liquid, and gas.  Normally each state the substance is in changes its density with solid being the most dense, then liquid, then gas.  Density is the degree of compactness in a substance, water for example has a density of about 1g/cm³, anything with a larger density will sink, and anything with a smaller density will float.

            Ice is the solid form of water, so why does it float?

            Theoretically ice should sink, it is the solid form for water, and it technically should have a larger density.  When tossing rocks into water they sink, the rocks are able to displace the water around it and sink to the bottom. According to Anne Marie Helmenstine, who has her doctorate in philosophy in biomedical sciences from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville with a bachelor of arts degrees in physics and mathematics with a minor in chemistry from Hastings College in Nebraska, in her article “Why Does Ice Float? Ice and the Density of Water”.

            Dr. Helmenstine explains that water becomes the most dense at about 40^o Fahrenheit and as it gets colder and starts to become frozen, it actually loses its density.

            Wouldn’t it make sense that when water is frozen its particles would stop moving and stack closer together? That doesn’t happen because of Hydrogen Bonding.  Dr. Helmenstine explained that hydrogen bonding is when a positively charged hydrogen atom from a water molecule meets a negatively charged oxygen atom from a neighboring water molecule and they form a bond.

            According to George Zaidan, a science communicator who created, wrote, and hosted National Geographic’s webseries Ingredients; and co-wrote and directed MIT’s webseries Science Out Loud, also, he has several viral TED-Ed videos, in one of his TED-Ed videos he says that Hydrogen bonds form all the time even in waters liquid states.

            Zaiden says that in liquid form however the hydrogen bonds form and break every second with the water molecules moving around forming a new bond each time.  This causes the molecules to seem more compact because they are always moving and connecting with each other.

            Zaiden continues by showing a diagram in the TED video that shows the difference between the liquid molecules and solid ones.  The liquid molecules move around, attach and detach in a more compact way, while when ice is formed the molecules attach forming a hexagonal spacious look, causing there to be more molecules per cm³ in the liquid form than the solid form.

            Dr. Helmenstine explains that in conclusion Ice floats because it is about 9% less dense than water, or ice takes up 9% more space than water.  The heavier water displaces the lighter ice causing it to float to the top.

What Family Means To Me

           Family has always been known as the group of people with whom you are related to, “a basic social unit consisting of parents and their children… whether dwelling together or not” (dictionary.com), but family does not have to be restricted to that.  Family can be people who you feel closest to, the people who you can rely on when times get tough, the people you put the most trust in.

            In a New York Times article called “The Changing American Family” written by Natalie Angier, the author focuses on family as in the exact definition. She explains that people are starting to marry those whom they would’ve never married if born in an earlier time.  However, marriage plays a role in how I interpret family, it is an amazing thing.  You find someone whom you connect with on a special level and then invite them to merge their family with yours and begin to create your own family.

            Angier proves that as a family comes together they don’t pay attention to any differences no matter how big or small.  “In increasing numbers, blacks marry whites, atheists marry Baptists, men marry men and women [marry] women, Democrats marry Republicans and start talk shows.” A member of one’s family can come from anywhere so long as the trust is there in the relationship a bond is created that almost cannot be broken.

            My father has been best friends with someone since senior year of high school, they went into the marine core together and haven’t separated since.  From the time I was born I have always known him as my uncle, I never even questioned whether he was my dad’s brother, or if we related at all.  All I knew was that he was family and him and his family would be there for me and my family, he was at our family reunion, and even was at the funeral services when my grandfather past away.

            That was a long time in the making, he has been a part of our lives for almost 25 years, for me becoming family does not have to take that long.  Freshman year of high school I met a friend who within a couple months became a brother to me.  I recruited him to join the wrestling team, only because he could fit in the weight class we were missing.  Over the few months we became friends through wrestling and we found out that we lived near each other.  Ever since our families have become close and they were a second family to me.

            Both my uncle and friend are not blood related to me yet they still are family, there is this sort of mental bond that forms throughout a time of knowing someone.  In a lot of cases blood relation doesn’t mean anything, my mother’s entire family lives in Washington state, she was born and raised there.  Her parents had a bad divorce when she was at an early age and my Papa Tony stepped in to help raise and support my mother’s family.  Ever since “Pa”, as we call him, has been a huge part of my family’s life.  My mother battles with conflicting emotions being all the way on the other side of the country having to hear about all the stuff that is happening.

            All three different scenarios have completely different backgrounds and topics about them, however, in each case I explain another part of my family.  Family as in the people I can count on when times get tough.

Dictionary.com
"The Changing American Family" (Angier, 2003) http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/health/families.html?pagewanted=all

Portrait

            Almost a hundred fireworks lay by the side of the house.  I sat swinging by the lake on the 3^rd of July watching my father pace back and forth with anxiousness and excitement.

            The fourth of July was always my father’s favorite holiday, not because it was the day America gained independence from Britain, but because he gets to “blow up the sky” with the insane number of fireworks him and his buddies buy.

            Brandon Winn is a firefighter from Brockton MA, he was always the outgoing type which helped him in many aspects of life however firefighting turned him into a bit of a pyromaniac.  In Massachusetts fireworks are illegal however on the fourth of July the police give some leeway. Allowing the little things like firecrackers and the cool little race cars,

            In Maine however fireworks are completely legal, including the big stuff like roman candles, and mortars, with this type of freedom Brandon was able to go crazy.  The number of fireworks got bigger each year each friend that came around to watch would put in money for more and more pyrotechnics.

            This year was exceptionally exciting for Brandon, one of his friends tagged him in a video on Facebook of a man with two roman candle “hand cannons”.  Brandon being Brandon replied “I can do that shit way better, that all fell apart, we are breaking out the big guns for this one”.  And so, they did, buying almost 50 roman candles to set it all up.

         
            Brandon was never the smartest kid, he fooled around too much in high school and did not go to college he chose the military life joining the marines.   Yet he still is very smart when applying himself, although this may not be one of the smartest decisions he has made it showed how when he applies himself he can make a hand cannon out PVC piping, roman candles, and duct tape.

            As the day went on Brandon was getting more and more anxious by the second, the closer it got to dusk the more he was pacing.  Showing off his creation to everyone that was around.  He never put the thing down, everyone was getting in position for the test of if this thing will actually work.  With a tall can labeled “America” in one hand and the hand cannon in the other he waded into the water with two lighters by his side to help set this thing off.

            There were no injuries and everyone thought it was absolutely awesome, Brandon never fails to give a show and even though the idea wasn’t the smartest it went off without a hitch.  He always knows how to be just crazy enough where people say “wow ok” but don’t get pushed away.