ENC 2135 section 155

My name is Christopher Sharpe, I am a freshman in my second semester with a major in biochemistry. My final goal is to go to medical school and become a psychiatrist. I hope this class will help me improve my essay writing for the future. I have never done an online class before, so I am interested. I've always enjoyed reading stories, with my favorite being "A Song of Ice and Fire". I also enjoy reading comics and spent lots of time focusing on school and I have traveled very often in the past. I am a Dean's list student and want to keep that up and my favorite subjects are history and chemistry. I always try to see what enjoy in the stories I read and follow it back to its source, like following a length of string, I use this to try to find out why I like the media the way I do. This helps me search out more media that I feel may be of the same vain.

Artifact 1: Philosophy essay: In Nicomachean Ethics Book 1: Part 2, I gravitated towards Aristotle’s idea of all good things helping towards a greater good or being a part of that greater good. Specifically, I believe that it addresses a hole in Plato’s Republic that I found. Plato’s Republic attempted to create a society with maximum efficiency and everyone being brainwashed and sorted into specific careers to maximize efficiency. Despite this, they also said that they could not get too rich or too poor lest it risk the collapse of the nation. This creates a situation where the citizens are on a treadmill running towards a future where their work is simply used to maintain the status quo, which feels somewhat dystopic. It reminded me of the plotline in animals farm where all of the animals are breaking their bodies trying to build a mill that is supposed to help them. After it is done, the pigs use the productivity of this mill to immediately move into building another mill. Going back to Aristotle (as this is what the reflection is about), I like the fact that he grounds all of the efforts to a greater good and attempts to identify it. He does not use “the greater good” for goalpost moving and attempts to find the quickest way to this elusive “greater good”. He wants to create a lasting happiness as opposed to a lasting control. He sees politics and nations as a means to an end as opposed to what is served, as Plato appears to say. While I do believe in the idea of finding the best case scenario first and whittling it down to something realistic, that actual perfect example can’t be made out of thin air and needs to be upheld by real world opinions and logic to view it as the ultimate goal, giving it more substance than Plato’s Republic.

Artifact 2: Music literature class essay: In the boygenius-EP album, it carries a somber, beaten-down tone in the songs. The songs use the piano and a slower strumming of a guitar that accompany the words, reminding me of Johnny Cash’s “Hurt” immediately. There seems to be a theme to the songs where it appears to be from the perspective of someone in a toxic/abusive relationship, with titles and words that allude to a pet or object and their owner. It alludes to the idea of being forced to suffer through a sort of punishment because the singer’s wellbeing is seen as lesser than the abuser’s general comfort. There seems to be a degree of guilt in the singer’s voice that comes from being constantly condemned as the bad guy, saying that she can’t love them the way they want or accepting herself as a monster and tearing herself away from the abuser despite the guilt. The singer seemed to have been fighting a losing battle of trying to fulfill the abuser’s impossible expectations and is now done with it, not because the singer reaffirmed her values in a healthy way, but because she can’t endure the pain anymore. The album speaks to me a lot due to my neurodivergence. There are times where I feel I can never show affection in exactly the way others want to receive affection and it seems like others can unintentionally prioritize their own comfort over my happiness. The way the singer expressed her frustrations were not necessarily raw or pure or straight from the source. It seems as if these are grievances she has suffered and has never been able to say because of a fear of being the bad guy or backlash. While the context differs, the tone and emotion spoke to me viscerally.

Reflection: This class has given me a greater awareness of how to write. While there were certain terms that I was familiar with, such as ethos, pathos, and logos, I didn’t put the same level of thought into it like I did in this class. Writing to me was a means to an end, not something I thought of much as a skill to be honed with lots of future utility. I now believe in the potential utility of writing more than I did prior. What is more? The knowledge I’ve gained goes beyond just essay writing for me. Learning about the concept of artifacts expanded how I viewed communicating what I want to say. How you can show others your ideas is not simply done through essay writing, but through finding out how the mediums used can reach the people you want to reach. That is another thing that is necessary for this level of communication: knowing your audience. What I hadn’t thought of was identifying the specific groups I want to direct my essay too. I had honestly used essay writing like a shotgun, just blasting until it hits something. Turns out, knowing what I’m aiming at makes me more likely to hit on what I want to. I can then distill my ideas into something I’m passionate about, narrowing in to make it hit rather than spreading out. This was an extremely challenging semester and class for me specifically, but was rewarding in other ways and I feel as I have become a better student as a result. I truly hope to be able to take these new skills to the future and develop them even further. This has been a unique experience and it has helped me grow into a more capable students at this university for this semester.