Timex

Chapter 6, hum…I read this after being introduced to my three favorite Greek words, so at the time I was very surprised Kairos made a lot of sense.  I think it made so much sense because it is basically common sense.  Kairos for those who don’t know is basically the timing of your argument.  The book on page 116, describes it as “the timing, its appropriateness for the occasion.”  It went on to explain the meaning of the word and how it is rooted in the Greek language, but the bones of the paragraph were in those seven little words.  It gave a great example on page 118, about how news has a shelf life of a couple of days before it is old and out dated, so I would not wrote a letter to the editor today talking about the government shut down, instead I can wrote about what’s next for America since we killed the face of world terrorism.  If I wanted to still write about the government shut down, based on my position I would use it as an example of how Congress works, or doesn’t work in a more formal paper.  Applying Kairos or even practicing it is useful in everyday situations without even writing.  For example, I am at work and want to leave early, its Friday, sunny, and the beach is calling my name.  I don’t play all my cards at first and ask my boss if it is cool if I sneak out early, she of course says no.  Now practicing correct Kairos, I throw in that last week I stayed late 4 days for a total of so many hours, my worklist is done, and if anything comes up I can be recalled within 30 mins.  She now has more to think about regarding her decision. 

            Using Kairos correctly in a paper, especially a proposal, I will introduce each idea that is in favor with mine and the gains regarding it starting with the smallest.  Each one introduced after that will of course be a little more complex but the gains or rewards, would be much harder to turn down.  By building up a case and having a strong foundation strengthens the overall work; vice introducing my best idea first with nothing more to support it and then slowly falling back to smaller ideas.

            The best example of Kairos, was on my first ship, I had this Chief, who was amazing.  He was the Chief you see in all those Navy movies, a big guy, dipped, cussed, and was not politically correct at all.  One day the Captain, ran into our shop and was going on about how the “Electronic Technicians” (ETs) were going to do this, because of X, Y, and Z.  My Chief listened to the Captain and every so often would say “no sir can’t do it”, nothing more then “no sir can’t do it.”  See my Chief knew his audience, he knew by explaining why we couldn’t before my Captain got done venting, he would never get his point across, so for about five minutes of going back and forth shaking his head and saying “no sir we can’t do it and won’t,” the Captain started to break.  Finally, the Captain, stops, paused and said, “ok Chief, why can’t this be done, I just explained to you why I wanted it, so you better have a good reason for saying no.”  Sitting that entire time, with a hand full of ammo, my Chief finally unloaded.  “Captain, the ET shop will not do it because, A, B, C, D, and F.”  His timing was prefect, he listened to everything the Captain said and in his mind he was developing a counter punch.  The Captain was left with nothing and left the shop.

Works Cited

John D. Ramage, John C. Bean, and June Johnson. Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings. Pearson Education , Inc, 2010.

Drinking the Kool-Aid

So I decided to write about my unit one/chapter two reading.  I choose this because I feel like I have come along way in this course.  Chapter two for me was like reading a foreign language, just explaining to co-workers about a “rhetorical argument or paper,” left them with a glazed looked in their eye.  For example, page 32 of our reading, “To help you reconstruct a reading’s rhetorical context, you need to understand the genres of the argument as well as the cultural and professional contexts that cause people to write arguments.”  So rewind 4 units and you can imagine the first words out of my mouth were WTF, but now I can read this and understand what that means.  I now know that if I want to write a letter to an newspaper editor, giving him 4 papers of how much I hate pot holes, will never be published and not a proper use of writing; but maybe I can change the tone, add some details, use that same 4 page structure and maybe send it to my district representative.

            Another area that was a struggle to understand was the “thinking dialectically” on page 45.  I mean, I still struggle at times to create a strong thesis in my writing, and now I am leaning about an anti-thesis.  Why…why do people do this to me, so after a days worth of exploring different ways of learning this; i.e drinking (didn’t work), sleeping on the book (didn’t work), watching the Yankees (totally didn’t work, plus they lost); I knew applying this to a paper was going to be a challenge.  However, after our first paper and my fifth revision on it, I figured out how to apply both sides of an argument without showing favoritism to either side.

            Now I know I still have a lot of work to do.  My grammar is still behind where it should be, I will always ask how to spell words that have more then five letters (just to make sure), and I will still need someone else to proof read what I wrote because I can’t see my own mistakes.   I will also have to try to write more formally and with less imagination.   However, looking at the quality of my writing from my first paper to my last one, I think I have improved atleast 10 fold.  Any investor would be satisfied with their return, if I was dividends from stock, and it all started with chapter two.

Works Cited

John D. Ramage, John C. Bean, and June Johnson. Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings. Pearson Education , Inc, 2010.