Blog-Cabin The world's foremost informative blog... for ILS 200

The sports world, in all its glory, hasn’t exactly garnered worldwide respect for its exemplary command of the English language, and in a world that continues to place a higher premium on knowledge and intelligence, those in the athletic realm have managed to fool a large portion of the population, and feign intelligence with the overuse of sports clichés. These clichés give the appearance of a clearly thought out idea, without truly saying anything. Of the clichés one overwhelming culprit comes to mind, a sneaky one liner that truly means jack squat. What is it? Well, “it is what it is.” The epitome of all sports clichés and the go to response of so many, “it is what it is,” allows athletes, coaches, and any who unwisely chose to employ this phrase a way of answering a question with a mean-nothing answer, or as Douglas McCollum, a writer for slate.com put it, “It helps them avoid speaking about the essence of anything. “ For some the saying is a way of admitting fault or defeat, while others use it to seem humble, when really it accomplishes neither. Still, no one benefits from the use of the vacuous saying. No opinions are expresses, or ideas brought out, no one gains any insight or deeper understanding after hearing that answer. All too often I see sports writers and reporters ask athletes brilliant questions, that I truly want to know the answer to, only to hear those five meaningless words come tumbling out effortlessly, followed by a swift change of topic, leaving me annoyed and cheated of a competent answer. This whole business of never truly answering questions plagues all aspects of the sports arena. “How does this loss affect your team, and will you change your perspective towards coaching this team?” a reporter might ask, “Well it was a tough loss, and we fought hard, but in the end, it is what it is, we just have to move forward.” What was that? Nowhere in that answer lied a coherent thought. Such a meaningless, rushed, go to answer deserves no place in modern society and language, and should be done away with as quickly as it’s used to avoid a question.

This will be my last post. Summer is upon us and finals are almost done. I hope you enjoyed my writing.

Our experiences shape our beliefs and everything about us. Language is our way of passing on our experiences and beliefs. It is our challenge as writers, to convey our experiences as best we can. Common writing advice is "Show don't tell", an idea that you should not just tell your audience something, but set a scene, give examples, and try and let them go through your same experiences through your writing. By showing, the reader can get a much better idea of your experience. But good writing is still not enough to capture the enormity of experience. The best writing can create its own world or an alternate reality. It can let the reader know exactly what is going on and what everyone is thinking, but it cannot put them in the same place in actual reality. It cannot let them go through the experience in the manner or process that they would choose and it cannot make the reader think about the situation with the same time scale as the experience. Language can capture a lot about our experiences, and it is our job as writers to do it the best we can. The truth is though, that nothing beats experience. When going through something first hand, you get to ask the questions and decide how you answer them. Language can capture a lot, but it cannot capture everything.

I had no expectation at all for a Com B class before this class. Intensive writing, as what I thought what this class would be, is never an exciting experience for me. But I was completely wrong. This class has offered me a lot of new perspectives of writing, or more precisely, the thoughts and tacts I could put in my writing. It is interesting to know how widely the rhetorical techniques are used in our daily life and they actually do achieve their effects.

One takeaway that might be very useful for others as well is that the awareness of our delivery and the audience’s reception. It is such a truth that could be applied to many aspects of our life. Often times we complain about friends and family for not understanding or not supporting. It could be the way we express ourselves is not easy to understand or the way they show their support cannot be explicitly captured. After all, it is all about delivering the message in the right way at the right moment and this class has provided an interesting starting point for us to work on.

One of my long-existing perceptions on English speakers that this class has overturned---they actually do know how to appreciate the beauty of long sentences. (After going through many English academic writing, I was effectively brainwashed to believe that simple=good.)

Can language capture the enormity of experience? At first thought, I would have to say no. That is why expressions such as “loss of words” ever exist. Recall the most heart-throbbing moments in our life. What are the best descriptions for the thrill of skydiving, or the joy of sailing on a sunny day? Any language would be too plain to explicate the enormous experience. That is we are to “experience your life” instead of “to read a life” (although reading is not bad either), because they can never be equitable.

However, when I think about it, it is true that language can never fully describe experience, but it still helps to remind our sensations to relate to existing experience. Think about how often we use one experience to describe another-- “the soup tastes like salty water” or “he walks like a duck.” We often use some common experience to describe something that is not readily seen or experienced. And as our own enormous experience is built up and becomes prevalent to everyone (so that they are not “enormous” anymore I guess), new languages are going to be invented to despict this particular experience. To illustrate, how would you describe bungee jump to someone who has never done it before? You would probably tell him “ It is like riding The Abyss in Disney Park without a seat but just cords tied to your feet.” But how does it feel to ride the Abyss? You would try to describe it as “ a car rushing down the steepest hill you have ever experience and ten times faster, without holding the steering wheel of course.” Now how would you describe the feeling of car rushing down the hill to people from hundreds of years ago who had no cars back then? You tell them “it is like sitting in a carriage driven by some hysteric horses.” The point I am trying to make is that driving a carriage is used to describe driving a car and rushing in a car can more or less depict the feeling of riding the Abyss, which in turn is the closest experience to bungee jump. Later on, when bungee jump becomes so common that everyone has such experience, it could become an “adjective” itself such that “Skydiving is like bungee jump with a bag and your do land on the ground.” and the audience could actually imagine how it feels to skydive and that would actually achieve the purpose of converying the experience.

In short, I guess language can never describe the full feeling of enormous experience, but it does somewhat capture the essence of it by relating it to the closet existing experience we have.

When we had our meeting with Shiffra, she asked us about our most memorable writing experiences, good or bad. While I referred back to my high school English class, I just as easily could have referred to my ordeal with the pathos cap essay.

My spring break fever had taken a hold of me, and I found myself without even a start to the pathos essay the day before it was due, so I had no choice but to grind one out at the library. Unfortunately, after spending what seemed like an eternity in the cramped confines of the 5th floor memorial library cages, I had gotten nowhere. So I a furry of panic and emotion, I bolted out and scurried back to my apartment, in a daze of disbelief and disappointment. My topic had led me nowhere, and I found myself yet again at square one.

I arrived at my apartment to find my roommates having a beer, and what seemed like a very entertaining night, such was not the case for me. They asked me if I’d like to join, and against my better judgment, I agreed; as it turns out, this might have been the best idea I’d had all night. I now felt calm and relaxed, but most importantly confident. At 10:30pm I said goodbye to the roommates and headed into my room to begin a completely new paper from scratch.

With the new topic came new energy and interest. The words flew out of me faster than ever before. My opinions and thoughts flowed freely onto the page, a stark contrast to the monotonous word by word writing I had done in the library. And before I knew it I had a whole page written, and then two, and then the essay was completed. I had set a new personal record. Unfortunately this didn’t exactly bode well for my confidence, one does not usually expect to do well with a paper written in under two hours, or at least I don’t. But to my pleasant surprise I did well, better than usual in fact. And reading over the paper, I had realized something, that with that beer and a change of topic, I began to truly understand more about the pathos unit we had been covering, more specifically I saw how to analyze an audience and how different language affects them. This marked a turning point, and the highlight of the class.

Understanding one’s audience, and their needs, will be the most important lesson I take away from this class. That and a few other things like never write a paper in the memorial library, and maybe, sometimes the best cure for writer’s block is relaxing with friends and a beer.

Truly amazing experiences, experiences that come along once in a lifetime, carry with them so much pure emotion, that more often than not, using just words and language to convey the feeling of the moment falls short. For thousands of years writers have struggled to capture the raw emotion of life, its deathly depressing lows, and insurmountable highs, and I’ll be darned if they don’t struggle for thousands more to come. With each different writer comes a unique style, and tone, all creating a different path for which to understand their literature. Unfortunately, the way in which this path is interpreted varies immensely from one reader to the next. So, a piece of literature might have a profound effect on many readers, but it will affect each reader separately, and the exact emotions felt by the author will never be the same as those felt by the reader. I am sure this must frustrate writers the world over, knowing that while someone might deeply appreciate and understand their work, no one will experience the enormity of emotion expressed in their writing, ever. Even so, the beauty of writing lies not in the ability of the writer to convey their exact emotions, but more in their ability to inspire imagination in the reader. I can imagine no better feeling for a writer than knowing their work of art has deeply affected someone, in whatever way. Life spins such a complex web of emotions, causing every experience to be absolutely unique, and in that facet no amount of language can truly pass on the beauty of the human experience.

Obviously I am early to say goodbye, but what can I say, I'm extremely excited for summer! ILS 200, besides fulfilling my communication b requirement, also greatly helped me understand the power of writing and how to appeal to my audience, both of which I did not fully understand or appreciate before. Although I still find it somewhat difficult to write about myself and how I perceive pathos and ethos in writing, I've enjoyed discovering writing styles that are not strictly logical and academic in nature.

I also have decided to join the certificate program for ILS because of the interest in the undergrads that my past and present ILS professors (Elder, Hunt and Sharlin) and TA's have shown. It is refreshing to have professors who genuinely want to spend time with the undergrads and focus on their success as well as their own success as scholars and professors.

Adios chicos, I wish you well in your academic career and your work career for those lucky ducks who are graduating and starting their next stage in life. Erin out.

Writers manipulate words into persuasive arguments, tear-jerking novels, abstract poetry, alluring performances and yet still, true experience trumps all recreations. The enormity of experience cannot be captured by language, at least if it can, I have yet to experience it. I believe more in the cliché that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, but even a thousand pictures (or a video) lack the ability to capture the excitement, serenity or overwhelming enormity of a moment. I do not possess the creative writing skill or the emotional capacity to transform my experiences from brain to paper, music, speech or any other communicative forms. A re-enactment is the only way for someone else to experience the same experience, yet they do not have the same history so cannot understand the full experience that the writer tried to share. How does the writer know how to capture the reader’s interest and emotions to help their attempt (pathos!) at a recreation of an important meaning to them. Real-life experience, in person, clashes no many sensations together that the writer may not even notice all the factors contributing to the experience, or notice how much each of those factors changes the overall feeling of the moment. I for one would be disappointed if writing was an easy way to share experience because then even less people would go out and have those experiences for themselves. Experience crucially impacts life by its tendency to make people crave more and more places and feelings, contributing to the quality of life for those who seek to experience all that life has to offer. To gain so much experience just by reading about it makes it unnecessary to live in the real world; it would be too similar to virtual reality, false experience, leading to boredom with everyday incidents because extraordinary ones would be available by a click or by opening a book. If that were possible, experiences would mean less, ergo it is essential that experience stays genuine.