The hits just keep on coming

3 chapters of reading and I feel like I Alec Baldwin in Beetle Juice.  You know the scene where he is given the book “The Handbook for the Dead”; reading a couple of chapters Baldwin’s character says “this thing reads like stereo instructions.” Yep that was me.  I can speak on experience that, this was much worst.  In the military I’m an electronics technician, who specializes on Radars, Communication, and crypto systems; so for me stereo instructions would be so welcomed.  However, right out of the gate, page 61 of our assigned reading I knew it was going to take more then one time to read this and understand what was going on.  I counted seven words in Latin, (at least I think it was Latin) and for someone who struggles in English, Latin was not something I was hoping to see.  I learned early in school to get by, that words in bold, italics, underlined, or Latin were important.  So I knew this section was pretty important.  Knowing me if I didn’t understand that, I knew it would snowball from there.

            Chapter 4 was interesting, it introduced “The Enthymeme”, reading it I now know it is the core argument; but at first glance it sounded like some medicine that is used to cure a weird alignment.  I was expecting to read about side effects like, dizziness, bleeding, or a third eye that grows out of your shoulder.  Instead, I was treated to examples of claims, reason, grounds, what a warrant would be, how to back it and different conditions of rebuttal.  I almost had the previously named side effects.

            By chapter 5 and my third time reading though it, I was hoping that like most things people try and keep trying that it would sudden “click”.  Wait for it…wait for it, nope, still waiting and still reading.  Here I read about STAR, even I can remember that.  Way can’t all English terms be like this, instead of quoting Aristotle.  This chapter made the most sense to me, because I think it was the most straight forward.  I understand the principle of evidence and actually learned a lot about the strengths and limitations when writing a paper.  Box score of the reading book 2 - me 1.  This is probably seen in my papers too.  I can find evidence and I feel I use them well, but the Logos, Ethos, and Pathos; that is such a struggle to read and in turn it is a struggle in my writing to fully put on paper what I’m thinking in my head.

           

Works Cited

Beetle Juice. Dir Tim Burton. The Geffen Company, 1988