Cantor - Critical Reading 3

Cantor is still talking about race in higher education because she feels there is the unforgotten legacy of the Jim Crow laws that keeps the idea of segregation in mind.   I feel like that idea may forgotten however, and  race comes to mind up just because America has been living in segregated populations.  This maybe due to the after affect from the Jim Crow laws many years ago, it may also be due to the fact that America itself is a country of settlers from other countries and the people have the notion in there mind that they support there culture over others.  Another reason for this maybe due to the fact up until recently there hasn't been multiculturalism and diversity promotion in colleges, this is where diversity ties in with races of all kinds.

Cantor believes that promoting liberal learning and civic engagement is the first step in making the universities more diversified.  She also promotes liberal arts education in universities.  She believes this will help relieve the tensions from diversity.  Cantor also talks about exchanges between each other in a diverse world.   These exchanges will teach us about entering a world of diversity and getting accustomed.  I think in this day in age is important to promote cultural diversity.  People in this country need to know how to act around diversity in these culturally entrenched times.  Today we live in a age where there are more and more minorities and people of different backgrounds so it is important to be able to communicate in the future world.  The biggest task for the universities in promoting diversity is the exchanges because this is hard to enforce.  It would be up to the universities to create environments of diversity and this would mean allowing certain students admission while turning down other students.  This is a controversial issue and that is why it would be the largest task in promoting diversity.

Diversity and multiculterism at WMU

There is a lot of diversity at WMU.  Many of the students are foreign students, some students are disabled and some are adults going back to school.  There are a lot more stereotypical students.  These students are the reason that WMU isn't very multi-cultural.  WMU mainly focuses on student success and graduating before other things like learning about the cultures and values of the students who attend here.   The diversity at WMU is broad  with all the different races, languages, and cultures of students however they will most likely spend most of there time as well as the typical student studying and waiting for graduation.

Peer Review -Personal Narrative

The peer review helped me out with my paper.  It helped me understand what my writing sounds from another persons perspective.  The peer review also helps me in understanding what i can add like transitions and more detail of the actual experience.  These things are important because they are necessary for a reader to understanding someone else's writing.

Sedaris - Writing Assignment

A fearful experience in my life was when I was taking my road test for the second time.  The first test I was over confident and had failed on the parking.  This made me nervous about taking the test a second time especially  the parking.  I made sure before I retook the test I would be much better prepared.  I had driven a lot more and practiced backing in and parallel parking so I figured I was prepared as much as i possibly could have been.  

It had been about a month since i failed the first course on the parking and didn't make it to the actual road portion.  In the month of practicing I had focused really hard on parking.  When we got to the test the guy was ready to go, he had set up the cones and was directing me where to pull in and made sure all of my signals were working.  The instructor seemed like he was in a hurry and seemed very intense about everything, he didn't seem very friendly at all and this made me worry about the test and how strict he would be.  

When the parking test came up i was pretty nervous because this is what i had failed the first time.  This time was different however and I passed  without any difficulties.  Then the instructor scooped up the cones and immediately got in the car and pulled out his clipboard.  At this time I was feeling more than confident about the road portion.  As we pulled away towards the road he was giving me instructions on how the test was going to go.  He was giving me directions on where to turn and that was going to be about it so i felt like i had it under control and didn't have to worry about anything.  I started out taking a right out of the parking lot and following the speed limit.  All of a sudden he yelled at me saying i needed to speed up.  I was worried about  going over the speed limit because that is an automatic fail, so I continued going around five miles an hour under the limit.  

As we were driving down the road I was going slow and cautiously.  Other drivers were passing me but I knew to at least stay in the right lane.  To me the instructor seemed very irritated he kept yelling at me and saying if i kept going too slow we would have to end the test.  This made me even more nervous.  He then at one point of the test told me to pull of the road and asked me if I understood what impeding traffic meant.  I told him I did and that I would increase the speed.  He told me to turn back on the road and get on the highway. I approached the highway going just about a mile an hour under the speed limit still being sure not to go over.   I got on the ramp at the right speed and continued down  at the same speed all the way till i was about to merge this is where he became very frustrated with my speed level.  I was going to slow to merge and we had to follow around and exit right when we got off.  He hit the clipboard on his legs and yelled at me again..I just continued back up on off ramp.  When i got to the top took a left and head back towards the on ramp to try again.   I approached the on ramp similarly and just stayed in lower gear when i got to the lower half  I accelerated and merged perfectly.  I got up to  seventy miles per hour and stayed there for a minute at this point I pretty sure I had failed.  As we were going down the highway he told me to pull off at the next exit which was where we had started.  I pulled off the exit and made sure i followed all the small rules from that point because i knew we were close to the testing center and I had no more room for error.  As we approached the parking lot where we took the test he told me to stop the car down at the bottom where earlier had parked.  He then said stop the car immediately instead of at the bottom.  I pulled up the emergency break and put the car into neutral.   He then pulled his sheet back from his clipboard and began calculating the marks i had compiled.  To my surprise I had past the test and was relieved and excited.  I never will know if he was just testing me to see if I would go over the speed limit or if he was really upset about me driving a few miles under.  Luckily for me I had passed and I realized that even though i was nervous I hadn't done anything wrong and i walked away fine and now had my license   

Sedaris - Critical Thinking 5

5.  Sedaris uses organizational patterns in his writings, it really helps the reader follow along throughout the narrative.  He starts off giving the setting and the situation explaining what he is doing in France.  This lets the reader understand that he is about to have a journey ahead.   He gives the reader an idea that the experience maybe difficult as he starts talking about the first day of class.  There are many examples of the teachers meanness where the reader now understands conflict.  When the other students are speaking to the teacher he describes the situation with humor and vivid detail. In the end the narrator learns french because of the teachers ways of teaching.

The organization made the story easy to follow. The patterns he used when explaining the confrontations between the students and teacher made the reader always expect something mean and insulting coming from the teacher-throughout the story and in the end it turns around and the narrator has learned French.  He also always gave his thoughts on what was going on when the teacher spoke and how he personally handled the situation, this made it easier to follow as well.

Sedaris - Critical Thinking 4

4.Besides dialog Sedaris uses other literary methods like humor and sarcasm.  He analyzes the class room situation and experience and puts humor into it to make it more enjoyable and easier to follow.  It really helps the reader understand his thought process throughout the narrative which helps to captivate the readers attention.  Humor is an important characteristic in this writing because people find it funny when they can relate to fearful events in their lives and laugh about them.  The teacher is putting fear in the students and most people can get a pretty good idea and can relate to being humiliated in class at some point in their lives.

If i was writing a narrative about being fearful during a class or when trying to learn something i would use lots of description of my fears and describe the setting and whats going on in detail similar to Sedaris.  This would help the reader get a good depiction of whats going on and how i am feeling.  This helps because the reader could relate to other times where they were nervous and have had similar thoughts and feelings.