Does anyone know how many papers we should have on the CD? I don't want to miss any!

The reading on developing paragraphs thankfully was very short. That was about the only good thing that the reading had going for it. The reading gave VERY general information on organizing paragraphs. For example the reading stated that in academic writing a paragraph is composed of five or more sentences. However, the very next sentences state that the paragraph can be shorter or longer than five. Why wouldn't they just say the paragraph can vary in length? The reading did stress the need for coherence in the paper, but I'm pretty sure everyone knows that they shouldn't wander off topic in their writing. The one thing I like about this reading (besides the fact that it was short) was that it touched on parallel structure in a paper, which I think is very important.

Scoring The Perfect Score

The movie The Perfect Score describes the plot of six high school seniors in Princeton, New Jersey to steal the answers for the SAT exam in order to achieve a perfect score on the test. The lead character Kyle, played by Chris Evans, comes up with the scheme when he and his best friend, Matty Mathews, played by Brian Greenberg star of the TV series “October Road,” fail to earn the required SAT score to be admitted into their colleges of choice.

The pair enlists the help of four other students to help them pull off their scheme of stealing the answers from the nearby Educational Testing Service headquarters. Each teenager is from a different background, ranging from the school’s salutatorian, Anna, to the class pothead, Roy. Each of them has their own reason for trying to beat the system and score well on the exam. It just so happens that the father of the character Francesca is the owner of the building in which the answered are stored. Through this connection the team is able to gain access to the blueprints of the building and a way inside. What seemed like a long-shot becomes a feasible plan, and the group pledges to execute their plot to steal the answers to the SAT and achieve, “the perfect score.”

The Perfect Score begins as a light-hearted, teen comedy movie. With the intro credits establishing the common teenager’s point of view of the SAT as the “Suck Ass Test,” the target audience effectively established. Jokes about smoking pot, sex, and high school relationships are strewn throughout the movie. For example, when asked what type of people score the highest on the SAT Roy replies, “Asian chicks. Middle-class Asian girls who watch less than an hour of television a day. They can't drive, but they can kick the shit out of the SAT.” The humor of the movie is fit for fans of other teen movies, such as American Pie, and Scary Movie.

Although the humor is a little predictable, the acting in the movie was surprisingly well. The movie has a few big name actors such as Scarlett Johansson who also starred in The Horse Whisperer and The Prestige. Scarlett performed exceptionally well (as always) in the movie as the “rebel teenager,” Francesca. Chris Evans and Bryan Greenberg also performed rather well in their role as best friends. Although I wouldn’t call any of the performances in this movie “memorable,” I was disappointed in Erika Christensen’s job at playing Anna Ross the class Salutatorian. The role seemed too forced and almost painful to watch at some parts in the movie.

Being produced by MTV films, I didn’t really expect too much out of this movie when I began to watch it. My initial suspicion seemed to be supported by when the character Matty stated, “The SAT did this. The SAT is pimping on my girlfriend,” after he found out his SAT scores were not good enough to join his girlfriend at Maryland University. However, as the movie progressed my opinion of it quickly changed. The rude humor was offset by rather insightful quotes such as, “I hate to say it, but there’s more money in filling bubbles than reading these days.” As the characters began to mesh and bond through their common struggle to steal the test scores in a style reminiscent of The Breakfast Club, I found myself becoming attached to the story and rooting for their success.

Although the script is a little predictable and cheesy at points, I was overall, pleasantly surprised with this film. As I mentioned earlier, I was not expecting to get very much out of this film, but in the end was glad that I had watched it. If you put aside the teenage humor, and Hollywood heist planning, the movie makes a fairly good case on the limitedness of standardized testing. If you are in the target audience, as I am, the movie is the perfect “no brainer” to watch in between study sessions, and I would recommend it to any high school or college student looking for a way to wind down after an exam.

I've attached my movie review for the film "The Perfect Score," which is about six teenagers who try to steal the answers to the SAT!

I LOVED the reading for today. It was probably the shortest reading that we will have all year, but is also a very important reading. I have had to do many research papers for my past English classes and I found that it was very helpful to organize the paper through the notecard method described in the book. It will be very easy to write your annotated bibliography if you make a bib notecard for each source when you first look at them as this reading describes. I also thought it was interesting how the reading stated that you should become an expert on your subject just by finding your sources. From my own past experience, I have always learned a lot when doing research papers and found it was very easy to remember a lot of the information, whether I used it in my paper or not. I know that I personally will be making notecards for my sources and would encourage others to do so as well. Not only does it keep everything organized, but it is much easier to just copy down info from a notecard into the paper than having 3 books open and printed out articles spread throughout your room as you try to find that quote you read last week.

I thought this was a very insightful reading on how to begin researching a topic. The information contained within will definitely help when researching for our final paper. I thought it was interesting that the book stated, "with online research in particular, sometimes people get side-tracked very early in the process by overly particular information and never get to see the 'big picture' that books and magazine or journal articles offer." I think this is a very accurate observation. A lot of times journal articles and books will give the necessary background information and correct definitions needed to fully understand a topic. I also thought it was a good idea to note names that you come across often when researching. For example, you may get several sources that mention a certain study conducted by Dr. John Doe. When you notice this you can look up the study yourself and make sure your interpretation of the results matches those of the authors citing the study, and also use the study itself as another source in your paper. I'm not sure I agree with the idea that you should "talk like an insider." This may be a good idea if your audience knows a lot about the subject, but if they do not, the terms may confuse them. I also thought it was interesting that the book suggested using Wikipedia! Many of the classes I have taken strongly discourage this because anyone can edit the pages and the information has been shown to be inaccurate in some cases in the past. The research journal seemed like an interesting idea, but may be more time consuming than it's worth.

While the reading did look intimidating, I, unlike my peers, thought the reading was very interesting. Although I venture that most if not all of the people in class did not read every word of the reading, I hope you guys don't do the same with my blog post and stop reading it after two sentences. The first thing I learned from the reading was that we form an identity through rhetoric. I never really thought about an identity as something we can change, but more of as something that is definite and unchanging. I also thought the part that stated that many of the questions we ask when we first meet people are asked to figure out their identity and stereotype them was very intriguing and for the most part true.

I like the definition of "essence" as some part of us that makes us who we are, that if removed would change our identity. I thought this to be a great definition and realized that my essence is flying. If you were to remove the fact that I have been flying for about one third of my life that would completely change who I am.

I could not help but laugh and laugh when I came to the paragraph about becoming an NBA center and sex changes. The author stated "However much I wanted to be an NBA center, no matter how hard I work, if extraordinary height is not in my DNA, my dream is doomed." I couldn't help but think that this author obviously has never seen the South Park episode about Stan getting plastic surgery and becoming a tall black man. Then, when I continued to read and the passage mentioned sex changes I thought about Mr. Garrison or should I say Mrs. Garrison and all the funny episodes of South Park that go along with sex changes. The coincidence was just too funny that they put these two examples in the same paragraph.

"Because we are so wary of advertisers' claims and savvy about their ploys, most of us have become adept at using rhetoric to protect ourselves against them." I thought this was a very insightful observation. The fact that the stupid "Head-on" commercials repeat the name of the product 30 billion times is exactly why I will never buy their product even if it works great. I don't want to fall prey to the advertiser's brainwashing.

In closing I hope people did read my blog, and comment on it. I'm going to try to make these things more lively as I go, because let's face it, we're all in this together. Next time someone asks me who I am, I'm not going to say Jason Reinhart, Im going to say "I'm a nineteen yeear old aviator majoring in Professional Flight Technology at Purdue University, who was born and raised in Fort Wayne, IN (represent) likes stand-up comedy and takes life one day at a time."

My picture is badass.

I agreed with a lot of the information in this reading. I really like the statement "When they revise, writers find out whether their draft matches their intentions and meets their expectations." I think that this sums up the revision process well. Sometimes when we begin to write a paper we mean to convey and idea that turns out to be different from what we actually say. I also agree with the statement that, "effective writers are often their own harshest critics." When writing a paper, I tend to be very hard on myself and sometimes will rework a paragraph a couple of times before moving on. I also have to agree that when writing a piece of work it is extremely important to analyze your audience. This alone can determine what terms you define, how in-depth you can get in a subject, and how informal/formal you can be. It is also important as you are revising a draft to make sure your purpose remains the same throughout the entire paper. Like I said earlier, sometimes the purpose of our paper can change without us knowing it. Other times, we may change our own opinion on an issue in the middle of writing a paper. One thing I did not understand in the reading is the idea of "Kairos," if anyone can explain this to me just comment on my blog. Finally I agreed with the idea that adding detail and evidence to a draft is important. Without this evidence, it is hard for a reader to determine your credibility and decide if they agree with you or disagree with you. Overall, I thought the reading to be effective and to the point, and am very glad we didn't get the long version.

I, like many others in our class, have also been taught ethos, logos, and pathos in my Com 114 class and also in my speech class in High School. However, I think it is a good idea to go over these appeals, because sometimes we may forget to include one or another in our paper. For example, if we feel strongly on a topic we may focus on the pathos of our argument and not the logos. It is important that as writers we pay attention to these things in our writing and make sure that they are balanced. This reading ties into with our discussion of politicians very well. For example, when discussing pathos, one of the questions was "how will your audience respond when you scratch yourself?" Depending on where you are doing this, you may lose a lot of credibility as a politician. After a while, I'm not sure I would vote for a politician who is scratching his butt every time he gets up on stage. Overall, I thought the reading wasn't as bad as others made it out to be, but I do agree with them with the fact that I didn't get much out of it.