WEEK TEN TOPIC TWO

·         Is job satisfaction the most important measure of career success?

o   In your paper, you will need to discuss definitions of job satisfaction and career success.

**WEEK 11: SCENARIOS TO TEST YOUR DEFINITIONS AGAINST:

1)  A tobacco company employee hates the addictive effects of cigarettes, but he makes a very high salary.  According to your definition of job satisfaction, can he be satisfied?  Why or why not? Does this make you reconsider the ranking of your criteria for job satisfaction at all?


2)  A journalist has to write an article about something she disagrees with.  Her editor wants her to be in favor of the issue.  Instead of satisfying herself and doing what she believes in, she does what her editor wants.  Does this make her successful in her career?  Why or why not?  Does this make you reconsider your definition of career success at all?


3)  John has always loved drawing and wants to be an artist, so has majored in Visual Arts.  However, he was offered a job at his dad's law firm and took it.  How could he be satisfied with a job he didn't want (think about juggling the importance of the criteria for this definition) and will he ever be successful if he sticks with it?  (Does this make you rethink your definition of success at all?

WEEK TEN, TOPIC THREE

·         If an employer is looking for a candidate with “good problem solving skills,” is she looking for common sense or analytical skills?

o   In your paper, you will need to discuss definitions of common sense and analytical skills, but you will focus most of your time detailing the definition of the one you are arguing for.

**FOR WEEK 11: SCENARIOS TO TEST YOUR DEFINITIONS AGAINST:

1)  A cop has a crime to solve:  A man's wife has been killed, and he went to his neighbor's house to report the crime to the police.  Will the cop use common sense or analytical skills to solve this crime?  Which common sense or analytical skills specifically will he use?  How does this correspond with your definition?


2)  A boss forgets to turn in his paperwork and asks his employee to complete it for him and turn it in within the next hour.  The employee is unfamiliar with what information goes into the answering of the questions, so does he use common sense or analytical skills to get this form filled out?

WEEK TEN, TOPIC FOUR

·         Is a mastery of writing skills required for a student to be considered an exemplary student? (Think dean’s list, merit based scholarships, applying to grad school, being chosen for an internship).

o   In your paper, you will need to discuss what a mastery of writing skills means, before you can decide if the skill fits into your definition of an exemplary student.

**FOR WEEK 11 BLOG: SCENARIOS TO TEST YOUR DEFINITION AGAINST:


1)  A youth is a finalist for a merit based scholarship.  The finalists all have to write a four page essay on a prompt Given to them by the scholarship selection committee.  She is one of five finalists.  All five of them are straight A students with ACT scores of 25+.  This youth does not really have good writing skills.  Will she win the scholarship?


2)  A professor is sifting through requests from students for letters of recommendation that will help them get into graduate school.  Because he doesn't hasn't had any of them in his courses recently, and doesn't remember these individuals with a lot of detail, he decides to compare their letters against the guidelines that the university posts on the website to tell students what they should expect to put in their request letters.  Since they are all seniors in college, their letters are all pretty "correct" in terms of grammar and spelling.  Here, he is looking to see if they pay attention to the genre conventions of the request letter.  Does this mean that genre conventions are more important than expressing ideas and intentions clearly in writing?

WEEK 9: Adrienne Rich

Discussion questions for “Taking Women Students Seriously” by Adrienne Rich

(The Reader, pg. 273)

1)      In the beginning of her essay, Rich states that her experience at an all girls’ school was that her teachers gave her great “content” (hard skills, actual booklearnin’) but that they didn’t teach the girls how to “survive as women in a world organized by and for men” (soft skills, in my opinion).  Later in her essay, she hints at some ways that teachers can give women more soft skills in education.  What are they?  How crucial do you think they are?  Are they still relevant to today’s students? (Her speech was given in ’78, remember).

2)      Rich outlines the questions for teachers, and makes it clear that she feels issues of race and class are pretty much the same as issues of gender, with regard to discrimination in the university setting.  Do you agree?  What are some key similarities or differences that you feel are important?  Does the university still have work to do in remedying this area?

WEEK 8: Gains and Losses

#8 Discussion questions for “Gains and Losses” by Richard Rodriguez  (The Reader)

 Please answer each "a" "b" and "c" with several complete sentences, and clearly identify each one.  You may want to actually label them a, b, c, but you don't need to copy and paste the questions over, otherwise it will be more time consuming for your peers to find and comment on the ideas that are yours.

1

1)       Rodriguez uses terms and phrases like “private language/ public language,” “mine to use,” and “pushed away/I belonged” with regard to language use and the difference between using Spanish and English. 

a.       Have you experienced similar experiences with a language or dialect spoken at home that is different from the one you are expected speak at school?  If not you, do you know anyone who has, or can you think of an example from a tv show or a music figure? Explain.

b.      How could you compare the experience of speaking one language at home and another at school over to the idea of having to learn the “language” you must become literate in to for your career field? 

c.       Will “belonging” with regard to language use be important for you in your career field? How so (think about ethos, respect, credibility?

2)      Rodriguez feels that by becoming literate in English, he “lost” something with his family at home.  He refers to “intimacy” several times. 

a.       Don’t families change anyway when kids grow up?  Is success ever attainable without a sacrifice?

b.      Can you have intimacy with language in academic disciplines and career fields that would be fulfilling? 

c.        Do you think Rodriguez feels like what was “lost” or sacrificed was worth it?  

Blog Post #7: Assessing your Essay Author's Rhetorical Situation

This blog entry is designed to help you assess the Rhetorical Situation of the author and essay you choose to work with for Paper #2.

Remember that since this is the first step of completing a Rhetorical Analysis, this is the work that you do initially and later base the various points of your analysis on.  And like we discussed in class, this is the information that gives a context to your analysis, your paper overall, and thus, it should be what your Intro Paragraph discusses. 

So, view this blog entry as a way to get that Intro Paragraph drafted.  In that respect, the comments from your peers will be kind of like a bonus Peer Review, also. 

For this blog entry, pull out your Rhetorical Situation Memo Outline, pull out the article you choose from the reader (Delpit, Anzaldua, or King) and work out the Rhetorical Situation that you feel the author is working from.  Create THEIR Rhetorical Situation and draft it into paragraph form, as you did for the ones you turned in with your draft.  Complete all the aspects of the Memo that are on the Outline.

“On Self Respect” by Joan Didion

Once again, we are working with the same article for Monday analysis and Blog Week.   By the time that you get to working on this blog, hopefully your answers will be informed by some of the discussion that we have had in class.  Well thought out, detailed paragraphs will let me see how you are synthesizing the reading with the discussion and putting that to work in the blog.  Happy Weekend!

 Discussion questions for “On Self Respect” by Joan Didion

1)       Didion uses allusions to literature (that we may or may not have read) in order to support or illustrate her points.  What effect does this have on the reader?  Is it helpful? Is it alienating?

2)      List some statements that she clearly makes about having, or not having, self respect.  Are these based on assumptions that people would generally agree with?  For instance, she uses the example of committing adultery without asking forgiveness to illustrate “courage of their mistakes” and “character”.  What do we make of that?

3)      She maintains that having self respect is a “discipline,” a “habit of mind”.  She says that having self respect is a discipline “that can never be faked but can be developed , trained, coaxed forth”.  She also says that disciplines represent values that lie underneath them.  How are her statements about self respect as a discipline connected to the idea of building writing skills as a discipline or a habit of mind?