Priorities first, work later

Priorities first—work later  

           

Having balance is the one aspect of life we really strive to achieve. Being balanced in work and socially is important to most, and is probably one of the hardest things to accomplish. In the New York Times article from “The Opinion Pages” on www.nytimes.com there is an article titled; “Is There Life After Work?” and is written by Erin Callan. It is about a woman’s battles balancing work and her social life and how it ultimately fails in the end. She ends up realizing what her priorities really were as she picks up the pieces of her life and puts it back together. I can relate to the article because I work too. Even though I am 19 and not married I feel I still stress as much as anyone with a full-time job. The author uses Ethos and Pathos to appeal to her audience. I think it is targeted at a woman who works and is independent but also has a family to take care of. The argument the author is trying to make is that working too much will not be beneficial in the long run. However, she does not use facts to back up her argument. The author lies solely on her emotion and experience. This makes the author lose credibility to some of her audience.  Therefore, the strengths of the author reflect through the article very well and make it a very convincing, interesting piece of writing but sometimes Erin Callan relies too much on her emotions weakening the overall argument.

            One of the strengths in this article is the author’s use of Ethos in appealing to her audience. She makes you very able to relate to her and feel her emotions through her writing. The use of Ethos is successful because she is speaking from experience, making her a credible source. For example in this quote it talks about how other young women look up to her; “Sometimes young women tell me they admire what I’ve done. As they see it, I worked hard for 20 years and can now spend the next 20 focused on other things. But this is not balance. I do not wish that for anyone.” This quote shows her credibility and experience because even other women tell her they admire her. Erin Callan has been through the terrible experiences of not having enough balance in work and life, which gives her argument the credibility that some people look for in an article.

            Another strength I think the author has is the use of Pathos. This is when you use emotion to get your point across or strengthen your argument. The emotions behind her sentences really grab your attention. In my opinion, you can feel the pain she feels from kind of wasting time working instead of working on what is really important in life. At one point in the article she talks about how she could not have children of her own. To some women, like me, that hits an emotional nerve. Most women have the innate desire to be a mother. Therefore, thinking of not being able to have children of my own makes me feel guilt and pain. I cannot imagine how this woman feels knowing that she missed out on having her own child. “Most important, although I now have stepchildren, I missed having a child of my own. I am 47 years old and Anthony and I have been trying in vitro fertilization for several years. We are still hoping.” At the end of this quote she says, “We are still hoping”, that sentence alone has so much emotion and pain behind it. She is still hoping for something that probably will not happen because she spent so much time working instead. This is definitely a strength the author has because she shows her emotion so well through her writing.

Even so, relying on emotion can also weaken the argument you are trying to make. A weakness the author has is relying too much on emotion to prove her point that balancing life and work is very hard. Sometimes people will tell stories of life experiences and it will have an impact on other peoples’ lives because of the emotion and details behind it. However, using the appeal of Pathos too much could be devastating to your argument. This could make you seem less credible to your audience and more like you are complaining or whining about your situation. In, “Is There Life After Work?” the author makes a good use of Pathos but she weakens her overall argument because she only uses emotions to support it. An example of this is; “Perhaps I needed what felt at the time like some of the worst experiences in my life to come to a place where I could be grateful for the life I had. I had to learn to begin to appreciate what was left.” This quote has a lot of emotion behind it, which is a good use of Pathos; but, in my opinion, it adds too much emotion to her argument. This is because it starts to sound like she is complaining and relying on the fact that she had bad experiences in her life instead of using facts or someone else’s experience to make her point stronger.

            Overall, the author’s strengths were that she appealed to the audience well using Pathos and Ethos. A weakness she had was relying too much on emotion, which ends up weakening her argument. But, I think the article was very moving and easy to relate to. It showed me someone else’s view on work and how it can take over your life so quickly that you do not even realize it. It makes me appreciate what I have now and to be grateful for the people in my life and my family. Therefore, the author does a really good job of appealing to her audience and makes you feel her pain and emotion through her story. 

Grade Inflation: Myth or fact?

I think Alfie Kohn, the author of "The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation", makes a sound argument in saying that grade inflation really does not exist. He makes a lot of valid points as to why it is a myth. The fact that grade averages fluctuate every year does not mean the teachers are starting to be easier on students. It really depends on the student and the drive they have to do well in school. "Unfortunately, self-reports are notoriously unreliable, and the numbers become even more dubious when only a self-selected, and possibly unrepresentative, segment bothers to return the questionnaires. (One out of three failed to do so in 1993; no information is offered about the return rates in the earlier surveys.)" This quote is saying that there have been surveys done on grades students are receiving. And that one out of three failed to even return the surveys. Therefore, this makes grade inflation an irrelevant topic because if you are trying to figure out the grades of students, you need all of the data. What if that last report had all the bad grades people were looking for? The grades that were not "A's" and would disprove grade inflation? We will never know because the report was never returned. That is one flaw in the opponent's argument. There is not even enough evidence to support a grade inflation argument. Also, statistics show that grade averages fluctuate with every generation. "The proportion of A's and B's received by students: 58.5 percent in the '70s, 58.9 percent in the '80s, and 58.0 percent in the '90s. Even when Adelman looked at "highly selective" institutions, he again found very little change in average GPA over the decades." These statistics would also disprove the argument of "grade inflation." It shows that the teachers have nothing to do with grades students receive and that it depends on the generation. One generation might not think grades are important to their society, so their grades will be lower than the next generations'. But, that does not mean the grades inflated due to the grading system of teachers. Also, how does one even prove, with data, that the quality of work in students has gone down? Where would you find the data to prove that teachers are just giving students "A's" when they do not deserve it? The author even refers to this as a flaw in the grade inflation argument. "Maybe students aren't forced to take as many courses outside their primary areas of interest in which they didn't fare as well. Maybe struggling students are now able to withdraw from a course before a poor grade appears on their transcripts." Therefore, all of these "maybes" cannot prove that grade inflation is a real problem. No one can measure the quality of a student's work now, nor could they in previous years. Thus, grade inflation is a myth due to lack of evidence and data proving it otherwise.