Alisha Vailette
7 April 2013
ENG 112
Guarino
Priorities
first—work later
Having balance is
the one aspect of life most
people really strive to achieve. Being balanced in work and socially would make someone
feel at peace because you have everything you could want out of life. If you
have friends and a great job, what more could you really ask for? 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 relies solely on her emotion and experience. This makes
the author lose credibility to some of her audience. If there were more information and facts about
other peoples’ experiences too, it would give the author more credibility
because it shows that she is not the only one who has her same opinion. Therefore, the article itself is
heartfelt with its emotion and appeal to Pathos but at times the author uses
too much emotion and loses her credibility, which weakens her overall argument.
One
of the strengths in this article is the author’s use of Ethos in appealing to her audience. The use
of Ethos is successful because she is speaking from experience, making her a
credible source. For example in this quote she 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. In my
opinion, I think she is accurate in what she says about balance. It is hard for
most people working in the corporate world to have a family and maintain their
career.
Another strength I think the author
has is the use of Pathos.
This is when a writer uses emotion to get his or her point across or strengthen
the argument he or she is trying to make. 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. This
quote is an example of her regret: “Work always came first, before my family,
friends and marriage—which ended just a few years later.” I think this quote shows regret
because she is talking about how work came before everything, which ended her
marriage. In my opinion, if you are married to someone you planned on being
with him or her forever and if a marriage ends because of work, I think that
would make anyone carry a huge burden. 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. For example: “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 this
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. The reason I think the
previous quote adds too much emotion is because previously in her article she
already has a lot of emotional quotes. The author uses Pathos a lot in the
beginning of her article. Instead of using an emotional quote at the end of her
article, I think she should have used an example of how someone else failed in
balancing life and work. Thus, giving her more credibility because it does not
look like she is the only one who went through this experience. Doing this would show her
readers that there are other people in the world like her and that her argument
is strong because of this. Since she does not use anyone else’s experiences but
her own it weakens her overall argument.
Overall, I thought that Erin
Callan’s article on balancing work and life was very interesting. It was an eye
opener because it shows you how someone can lose themselves in their work and
not care for their family. It made me appreciate what I have now and to be
grateful for the people in my life and my family. I realized I should not
stress as much about work and I should live my life now before it is too late.
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