Reactionary paragraph to "Fahrenheit 59"

Temperature changes of the body are caused by certain reactions, but not only does the body of mammals react with temperature changes. Audrey Schulman’s essay, “Fahrenheit 59: What a Child’s Fever Might Tell Us about Climate Change,” reveals how the body of a human, in this case Audrey’s son Corey, and the climate of the earth are very similarly related. The body of a human will adapt if the body’s active or even out in the cold. The adaptive nature of the body will cause the body of the human to maintain a very precise temperature of 98.6 degrees Celsius or very close. Just as the body adapts, so does the earth’s climate. When the earth’s climate becomes too hot or too cold it will use a feedback that will create a gas that will either reduce the temperature if it is too hot, or increase the temperature if it is too low. The body of a human and the climate of the earth react this way to maintain its ideal temperature and chemistry. Also when the body of the human is under attack, or sick, the temperature of the body will increase allowing more of its defenders to help fend off the sickness. Just as the body reacts like that, so does the earth. The earth may sometimes form white ice which will reflect sun back off into space, which is bad. To stop this from happening, the earth’s climate will heat up to melt ice sheets to drip underneath the white ice. The water that drips from the ice sheets causes the white ice to slide into the water disappearing so the water can absorb the sun instead of reflect it. Both the body of a human and the climate of the earth use feedbacks to control their temperatures and adapt to any changes. Also, both the body of the human and the earth’s climate change their temperatures in order to defend themselves from harmful effects in order to fend it off.

Schulman, Audrey. “59: What a Child’s Fever Might Tell Us about Climate Change,” Models for Writers: Short Essays for Composition. A. Rosa and P. Eschholz. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2010. 495-8.

Reactionary Paragrap to "Some Lessons from the Assembly Line"

It’s so worth going to college and holding off on working full time for a little bit in order to obtain a degree. Andrew Braaksma’s essay, “Some Lessons from the Assembly Line,” reveals how he himself worked full time over the summers in between school years to make money. During these summers he worked to the bone, early mornings to late nights. Instead of taking a normal job for college kids, like being a waiter or a cash register, he chose to go home and work in a factory with huge machinery. In doing this he started to really cherish going back to school when summer ended. While he would love to finally be back to school in the fall, his friends would be pissed that the summer is over. Not because Andrew hated summers, but because he just couldn’t stand working in that factory day and night for such low wages. He started to realize that if he never gets a college degree he’d have to do that for the rest of his life. Maybe not that job in particular, but a job similar. He’d be working at a job where he would be working very long hours for such a low pay. Now whenever Andrew goes back to school he always has an incentive to work harder because he knows what it would be like if he doesn’t do good in college.  Andrews learned from his summer days and is going to work hard in college to get his degree. After getting his degree he’ll be able to get a nice relaxing office job where he’ll be able to work on fine hours and receive a nice salary unlike those without their degrees.

Braaksma, Andrew. “Some Lessons from the Assembly Line.” Models for Writers: Short Essays for Composition. A. Rosa and P. Eschholz. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2010. 484-6.

Humorous Narrative

When I was around 10 years old my father used to limit how much video games my brothers and I could play. We had a couple types of video game systems, but I only really played on my gameboy, which was a handheld videogame player. The main game that I played on there was Pokémon. I was addicted. I thought it was the greatest thing ever, so when my dad said my brothers and I could start playing video games I would quickly rush to go get it and play. The only downside with this system and playing Pokémon was that you had to save the game before you turned it off or everything you had just done would be lost and the game would reset. Not only that, but in order to save your game you had to be out of an encounter in the game, so if you happened to be in an encounter when you were told to turn it off you had to quickly end the encounter or be forced to turn it off and lose all that you’ve just done. Most times I got lucky and I was just finishing an encounter every time my dad told me to turn it off, but other times I would get unlucky. I would just be getting into an encounter in the game when my dad told me to turn it off, so I would try to end the encounter as soon as I could, which sometimes worked, but other times it wouldn’t and my dad would rip it out of my hand and turn it off immediately and I would lose everything. One time in specific, which I will probably always remember, was when I was sitting down at the kitchen table enjoying a nice session of Pokémon on my gameboy when I entered an encounter, so I got ready to beat the opponent when all of a sudden my dad walked in and said, “Enough Michael you’ve played enough today. Turn it off.” Quickly I responded and said, “Okay I just got to save it, it will only take a second.” But right when I said that I realized my dad was in one of his angry moods, so I panicked and started running away from him with the gameboy, playing as I ran to try to get out of the encounter. Once he realized what I was doing he started yelling at me and next thing I know we were both running around and around my kitchen table in a circle. The whole time he was just behind me screaming at me and telling that he was going to break my gameboy, so I could never play it ever again. While he was running behind me yelling, there I was just running and playing with my gameboy, rapidly pushing the buttons as if it would make it work any faster and panting for my life. When he finally got to me, which seemed to me to take forever, but in reality only really took a short period of time, he took my gameboy and threw it against the wall and said that was it, no more gameboy for me. I just looked at him and cried. I was crushed, but to this day me and my brothers still talk about that event and laugh more and more every time.

Reactionary Paragraph to "Forty Acres and a Gap in Wealth"

Can the whole reason that some African Americans are wealthier than others be explained by one simple factor? Henry Louis Gate’s essay, “Forty Acres and a Gap in Wealth,” reveals that there’s a close relationship to the reason why some African American families are wealthier than others. Henry Louis did a lot of research, he looked at a lot of successful families and studied their family trees a long way back and in doing this discovered that the families that were given the property promised to them after the Civil war were more successful. During the last stages of the Civil war the American Government came up with a policy called “40 Acres and a Mule”, where they would give forty acres of arable land and a mule to each former slave, but once the war was over, the policy was not really enforced and hardly any former slaves were given what they were promised. Henry Gates states in his essay “…25 percent of all African Americans owned property.” Referring to the fact that only twenty five percent of all the former slaves after the Civil war were given their property promised by the policy created by the American Government, which is not even close to half! Although you may think it means nothing now, but as Henry researched the families whose descendents received the property promised by this, he discovered that they were all successful families with wealth. Where on the other hand, whenever he researched a family that he found had descendents who didn’t receive the property, he discovered that those families were not doing so well and not wealthy, especially like the ones whose descendents got the property. One may wonder what America would be like if all one hundred percent of the former slaves had in fact received their property promised, instead of just a mere twenty five percent.

Gates Jr., Henry Louis. “Forty Acres and a Gap in Wealth.” Models for Writers: Short Essays for Composition. A. Rosa and P. Eschholz. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2010. 519-522.

Reactionary Paragraph to "Why and When We Speak Spanish In Public"

What’s the harm in talking in a foreign language in America? Myriam Marquez’s essay, “Why and When We Speak Spanish in Public,” reveals how there is really nothing wrong with speaking Spanish in public amongst your Spanish speaking family or friends as long as there are no only English speaking people amongst the conversation because that would be rude. If you were in a conversation with two other people speaking Spanish and person who only speaks Spanish comes up to you and your party then it would definitely be very rude to continue speaking Spanish and keep the person who only speaks English out of the conversation like that. Although it might seem rude to some people when they see a group of people near them speaking a foreign language, but if you think about it, you’d be asking them to drop their family’s heritage if you asked them to stop and that’s not right. Seeing people in public speaking Spanish is not affecting anyone else’s life in a negative way, unless there was a person in the conversation that didn’t speak Spanish, but besides that who cares? That’s their family’s language passed down from generation to generation, so why would we ask them to not do it. The United States is considered the ‘Melting Pot’ of the world anyway, we should encourage all the other different types of cultures to express themselves as however they’d like, well only if it doesn’t harm or affect anyone else negatively of course. So next time you see a Spanish family or a group of Spanish people talking in Spanish, don’t seem annoyed or tell them to stop, instead almost examine them and enjoy what you observed because we should be proud of having their culture blending in with yours.

Marquez, Myriam. “Why and When We Speak Spanish In Public.” Models for Writers: Short Essays for Composition. A. Rosa and P. Eschholz. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2010. 511-3.

The term lying truly only has one meaning, but when people say that someone is lying, the meaning can have a range of power behind it. For example, a person could tell a lie when he’s playing a trick on a friend where he holds both hands behind his back with an item in one and when the friend guesses the right hand the person just lies and denies it. A lie could be as small as that. That is truly a lie, but its meaning has little power. On the other hand a lie can be very powerful. Let’s say a person lies and the lie has severe effects and causes problems to everybody, like in the novel Othello by William Shakespeare, where the main character Othello lied throughout the whole story and deceived everyone. His lies and mischief caused all the other characters to hate and kill each other causing chaos. His lies throughout the novel caused deaths and terrible things to happen. The crimes Othello committed represented the worst types of lying that could be done by anyone.

Lying has all levels of strengths which makes the definition so hard to make out, but the true meaning of lying is when a person tells another person something that isn’t true or that never happened, usually used to hide the truth from someone because the person could be embarrassed, scared, angry, etc. Also could be used to shield another from the truth in order to save them from knowledge that would disappoint them or cause grief. Whether a lie be if you’re sick or not to get out of school, or that you’re innocent even though you committed a murder, there are many different forms of lying, but all share one meaning.

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Definition Paragraph

The term lying truly only has one meaning, but when people say that someone is lying it can have a range of power. For example, a person could tell a lie as small as which hand he had the dollar in when playing with a friend. If the friend guesses write and the person denies it, they’re lying. That is truly a lie, but its meaning has no power. Let’s say a person lies and the lie causes severe problems and affects everybody. Like in the novel Othello by William Shakespeare, the main character Othello lies and deceives everyone into hating and killing each other causing so much trouble and chaos. The crimes Othello committed in that novel represented the worst type of lying that could be done by someone. Lying has all levels of strengths which makes the definition so hard to make out, but the true meaning of lying is when a person tells another person something that isn’t true or that never happened. Whether it be if they’re sick or not to get out of school, or that they’re innocent even though they committed a crime to get out of jail, all these are examples of lying.