TOW #28

Looking back at my previously written TOWs, I noticed that I now have a better sense of what I want to talk about and how I would organize it instead of just writing whatever comes to my mind. Now, I think of what I want to say and how I want to say it and overall what I really learned from whatever I was reading. I think that I have mastered thinking a lot more rapidly. I really think this has to do with knowing what i want to put out there first before i write. I notice that I do not keep stopping in the middle of my TOWs and thinking of what I should say and kind of being in that "getting it over with" attitude. I know that in the beginning of the year i was a little skeptical on how this would really improve my writing skills since I thought I was just going to read something quick and write whatever comes to mind. The questions that are required in order to complete each TOW helped me to really read something that is worth reading and benefited my knowledge somehow. One thing I could strive to improve in my TOWs is to not procrastinate and understand that even writing something about you read once a week could really improve your writing and understanding of current issues or just simply understanding visual texts more. I feel like I really benefited from these assignments simply because it actually improved my writing skills and influenced me to write more just in general. I would honestly continue writing TOWs for my own use.

TOW #27

The TOW I chose for this week is a non-fiction essay called "This Is The Life" by Annie Dillard. This essay is about how humans nowadays take their lives for granted and they don't realize that not everyone in the world can have such an easy life. The author, Annie Dillard, was born in 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and she is an american author who is best known for narrating non- fiction and fiction pieces. The audience of this overall piece is for everyone, considering that this text is about life and how you shouldn't take it for granted. I would also say that this text could be more towards those who are more mature because of the strong diction she uses. The context of this text is for people to appreciate their life more and for them to challenge them selves to look at the world more differently. An important rhetoric device that this author uses tone. In this text, Dillard uses a generous tone and she switches between a mocking tone and an annoyed tone to show that humans nowadays really do take their lives for granted as I said before and do not realize how others have it. She also describes how humans lived in the past and present and she was bringing up scenarios describing the “easy life” during a certain time. She also tries to get the reader to actually appreciate what they have in life and tries to open our mind more and look at the world a different way. The purpose for Dillard to write this text is simply just to show everyone that they have an easy life compared to other people around the world. The author did accomplish her purpose by using anecdotes of peoples lives to relate more to the reader. The author also draws the reader in during the beginning of the text by saying, "You enjoy work and will love your grandchildren, and somewhere in there you die."