Miya Tokumitsu Do What You Love

A. Attention getter: Why did the art student cross the road? Because she decided to pursue a more useful degree. I sincerely wish the cultural artifact I was here to present was a list of potential job prospects for graduating art students, but unfortunately, no such thing exists.

The author makes very valid points throughout the whole essay and even uses someone else’s story to back up their information. The information given during the text is quite significant to the back up the points the author is making. Like stated earlier, using someone else’s story is a good way to make sure the information is correct. Throughout the text, the author will use words that may not seem clear at first, but Kolbert does a respectable job of clearing things up for the reading and making it easier to follow along. Since the author based their essay of the basis of another person’s writing, it is safe to say that the author used and interpreted the information very well. Quotes were used frequently throughout. Kolbert did a lot of wonderful things with the text, however, not many times did you feel the sense of an argument. The sense of just a general summary was felt the whole time. Overall the author did a very nice job gathering this information and giving it back in a way that the audience had a good understanding on where she stood with this issue.

A college education is valuable and its quality is of the highest importance to most Americans. In his essay, “On the Uses of a Liberal Education: As Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students,” Mark Edmundson utilizes ethos, pathos, and logos to effectively deliver his argument that the current educational system, especially in college, revolves around consumerism which in turn has negatively impacted students, teachers, and universities in general. However, although Edmundson presents an overall logically sound argument, there are few instances throughout the article that may hinder the reliability of his claims to the audience.

Higher education in modern day America has become a debated topic, with some saying that it is not worth it due to the debt it leaves upon leaving, and some saying that it opens opportunities that surpass the results of obtaining one. A resulting view from this conflict is that certain forms of education aren’t as beneficial as others. A primary example of one of these less valuable educations is the study of Liberal Arts. Author Sanford J. Ungar discredits this view in his article The New Liberal Arts where he discusses the many misconceptions that have come to form this interpretation. To convince the reader of these misunderstandings, Ungar uses the appeals of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, with heavy appeal to logic (Logos) over the other two. Each misconception uses and focuses on more of one appeal than others, and by doing this, he is very successful in influencing the reader into considering that these misunderstandings are present.

Published in Harper's Magazine’s September 1997 issue, Mark Edmundson’s essay, “On the Uses of Liberal Education: As Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students,” presents a very personal argument for an apparent crisis in liberal education–the lack of passion in students. According to Edmundson, a professor at the University of Virginia, “liberal-arts education is as ineffective as it is now…[because] university culture, like American culture writ large, is, to put it crudely, ever more devoted to consumption and entertainment, to the using and using up of goods and images” (723). He believes that consumer culture is responsible for students’ dispassionate attitude towards his class because they view liberal education as a paid service or product that should cater to their wishes. Further, he writes that universities feed into consumer culture, maintaining a “relationship with students [that] has a solicitous, nearly servile tone” (725). In this way, Edmundson lays out the reasons for why he thinks liberal education is failing.

The essay “A New Liberal Arts,” which was written by Sanford Ungar, first appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education on March 5, 2010. In his essay, Ungar uses many different rhetorical strategies to convince his reader that a degree in the liberal arts is not a lost cause but can actually be very beneficial and lead to success. In Ungar’s opinion, there are many wrong ideas and misunderstandings about the usefulness of a degree in the liberal arts. In the essay there are seven specific misperceptions that he addresses specifically. By listing out these misperceptions, Ungar is addressing them individually in order to give each one proper attention. He offers explanations to why people may think these things and why he believes that they are incorrect. Ungar’s use of style, format, and emotional and logical arguments help him to create a persuasive and influential essay for his audience and convince them to agree with his opinion.

In his work entitled “The Shock of Education: How College Corrupts”, journalist and author Alfred Lubrano poses the question of how receiving education can lead to a harsh reality. Lubrano explains that as a child works toward a higher education, there are certain aspects of life they are forced to leave behind as they enter into a new existence. According to Lubrano’s statement, “At night, at home, the differences in the Columbia experiences my father and I were having was becoming more evident” (532). Additionally, Lubrano states, “We talked about general stuff, and I learned to self-censor. I’d seen how ideas could be upsetting, especially when wielded by a smarmy freshman who barely knew what he was talking about” (533). In answering this question, Lubrano must explore the types of conversations that occurred with other family members, the disconnection from his peers, and how segregating himself from his family

“You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We’ve sacrificed the higher art” (Huxley 226).

Mark Edmundson, the author of “On the Uses of a Liberal Education”, is an English teacher at the University of Virginia who expresses his concerns about the trajectory of the universities and colleges in America. Edmundson depicts how college students today have “little fire, little passion to be found,” towards their classes (4). In an effort to find the source of this lack of passion, Edmundson describes contacting other professors about this issue while refining his own ideas. Ultimately, Edmundson comes to a conclusion. He believes that the consumer mindset of college students has hindered American universities as a whole. My target audience is my professor, Professor Chezik. Looking closely at his wording, formation of sentences, and idea structure, one can see a recurring theme throughout Edmundson’s essay. Edmundson uses fragments, specifically at the beginning of his paragraphs, to start his point, pose counter arguments, and to have a poetic refrain.

The first five paragraphs in “Why Poor Students Struggle” are an attempt to show her credibility. She shows the audience how she is a professor in college and some of her students leave her class, yet they want to come back. The reason why they left? Because they can not afford to attend college. It is a form of Pathos, which is an emotional attempt to grasp the reader’s attention. In paragraph five Vicki tells us how, “ another former student came out from behind the cash register at a grocery store Brooklyn to hug me and reassure me that she would be back in college in

​"Education is the movement from darkness to light". In The Closing Of The American Mind, by Allan Bloom, Bloom argues that higher education has been drastically modified over the years and has ruined the psyche of today 's students. Once upon a time Americans dreamed of a better and brighter future, one that could transport them into a perfect utopia of societal bliss. Higher Education was the enthralling stepping stone for happiness. It inspired students to find their voice, while drawing from the past. It was a place where they could make mistakes and change their major once or twice. Today, higher education has become more about the career path and how it is more necessary than before. Higher education is no longer an adventure that allows the student to embark upon a journey of discovery and self-expression as it once was. This is due to the vigorous demands of the general society and how students today are required to maintain focus on a career that is valuable and not adventurous. Basically, we have lost touch with what makes this country so great; the impossible becoming reality. The creativity is gone. The belief that our imagination can grant us happiness if we work hard enough and believe is nonexistent. Higher education has separated the extraordinary and left us with dedicated, intelligent drones working towards the path that pays the most and will always have job security.

In the cynical article, In the Name of Love, featured in Jacobin magazine, the author, possessing a PhD in art history from the distinguished Ivy League University of Pennsylvania, Miya Tokumitsu opens up the age-old discussion of social and economic class distinctions. Tokumitsu manipulates the revered “do what you love, love what you do” mantra which many Americans live by today to argue her point that elitists are controlling the working class through this inspirational ideology. Primarily, by targeting today’s generation of collegiate youth hoping to one day enter the work force, Tokumitsu, once in the hopeful and optimistic position of her audience, hopes to convince readers, future proletariat members,

In 2017 our thoughts and actions are guided and molded in large part by social media, reality television shows and pop culture. Without realizing the extent to which constructed reality and self-curated life exhibitions shape how we see the world, we form perceptions and establish standards of what our lives should look like based on stories and photos posted on Snapchat and Instagram and find ourselves reflexively belting out song lyrics that directly contradict our values. Joan Didion, a unique and relatable but brilliant author, seems to have an understanding that the challenges she faced as a freshman in college in the 1950s would still be relevant and problematic for college students almost 70 years later. In Didion’s essay, “On

Firstly, the theme love has the potential to change people 's opinions towards each other is evident in the novel the help. The author of the novel, Kathryn Stockett has shown this theme through the character Skeeter who is a white person and her whole family believe that white people are better than black people and that black people should not have equal rights. However, the person who was paid to bring up Skeeter by her family was a black person named Constantine. Because Skeeter loved Constantine who was a black person, her views were different to the views of her family and her opinion towards black people 's rights was that they should be equal to the rights of people with white skin. The author teaches the reader that love has the potential to change others opinions towards each other through this example by showing how Skeeters love for her black caregiver Constantine changed her opinion towards black people because her family and society taught her to believe that white people are better than black people but Constantine believes that everyone should be treated equally regardless of their

Further elaborating this example, a senior leader criticized the merit of this course and the General Studies degree. The argument was that it had little value to the department. The remarks bruised my excitement and motivation adding to the disappointed of not completing my architectural engineering degree in my youth. To meet my employer’s concern, I decided to create a win-win by transferring to a better-suited degree meeting both our needs. I contacted my Drexel advisor, however, I was quickly disappointed to learn that my career in construction management barely qualified me as a sophomore. This meant I had to forfeit more than half my credits. Keeping my eyes on the prize is now challenged and a reminder of my superstition of jinxing the outcome by envisioning the end. However, to exercise Stephen Covey’s second habit, I reflected on our unit-5 assignment that highlighted Prof Kitao’s, The Usefulness of Uselessness where she states; “The substance lies more in the studying done than in the lessons the courses teach” (Kitao, 1999). Acknowledging her wisdom, I forge ahead with the end in mind and intent to combine my fulfilled personal, and very successful professional life-experiences with the learning skills gained in my earned degree.