Month: September 2018

While I was editing my peers first draft I remembered how different everyones perspectives truly are. Both of my peers had the same opinion as me but they both had different supporting evidence than I did. They had things that I hadn’t even thought of but when I read it I thought yeah thats very true and another really good way to support your claim. everyones perspective is different even when you are writing about the same thing.

For my brainstorming I used a rough graphic organizer. I chose my key points I wanted to make and created branches coming off of them as my supporting evidence.  As I was chasing my main ideas supporting evidence just kind of came to mind. Since I read the text a few times and listened to my TED talk multiple times it was easy to organize my thoughts. It was also very easy to know what textual evidence I wanted to use since I have a good grasp on the ideas that they discuss. I found the organizer helpful. I was able to just get my ideas on paper to see how they can all come together.  So when it comes time to writing the essay I will be prepared and organized.

I believe that my TED talk speaker, Benjamin Zander, thinks that there is no limit to art. I chose this TED talk because I personally listen to classical music and I strongly agree with Benjamin when he says classical music can affect anyone. He does believe you can make a larger impact with your art by the way you present it and by the way you think of it. The type of art he talks about is music, classical music to be specific. He also believes that it can impact everyone. Literally everyone, it does not matter who you are, if you can hear then classical music can affect you. The music can change how you think and feel. It reminds you and makes you think of specific times which impacts how you feel. He says how he was even able to make an impact on children, he is able to make them listen and feel a certain way with classical music. He influences a large group of people with the songs he plays. He proves that art can have a major impact on a large amount of people no matter who you are.

After re-reading this article I noticed a lot more, especially in the first part of the essay. I was able to actually understand all of the background information given at the beginning since I had already read the article once. I was able to learn a lot more about the author and why he was even on this trip with the EA members. I Also noticed that he finished his script which was his initial goal in going on this trip. Another part that really stuck out to me was that many EA members are also associated with other organizations. in fact two members co-founded another organization, Giving What We Can. I looked into this foundation more and found their website – https://www.givingwhatwecan.org . This is an other organization that seems to follow what the EA stands for. According to Southans essay this organization suggests a baseline donation of 10 percent of your income. This is all information that I did not quite grasp onto the first time I read and annotated the essay. Reading it a second time definitely helps to understand more information and I found it to be helpful.

 (Each comment I will be talking about is starred) The first comment I will expand upon is that one the third page the text did not seem to flow. I felt that the topics jumped from paragraph to paragraph. I found that this made that section very difficult to read and follow. I tried to write down the questions I had when it got confusing and I also tried to summarize the paragraphs but I still found the text very hard to follow. I was not able to focus and my mind tended to wander. The topics do clearly change but the order still made it very difficult to follow.

The second annotation I will be elaborating on was made on the fifth page. I thought it was very interesting that one of the EAs, Michael Bitton, said, “I wanted to be a filmmaker, and then I thought, well what good does this do?”. I thought it was very interesting how he changed what he wanted to do so he would be able to help more people. He literally gave up his dream to better the world. Not many people would be willing to do that. For people in the EA their job is to literally help as many people as they can, and they are very willing to be completely selfless to do that. This is a very kind quality that not many people have.