As I am revising my first essay on whether art is a waste of time or not, my main objective is to stray from the traditional 5 paragraph essay that I am so accustom to. My body paragraphs are mainly summary, summary, idea and I need to reorganize that around my own ideas. I can’t just reiterate what everyone say’s from their texts but instead I need to use my own ideas and use the text more as just supporting evidence or contradicting evidence. If it is contradicting evidence, I need to make sure that I have points to disagree with the argument.

The steps I plan to take to achieve this goal is to first cut out my main 2 body paragraphs that really summarize both of the texts instead of having my own ideas. Its going to be hard because I spent a lot of time creating this rough draft and now I am basically just deleting my two body paragraphs but it has to be done to better my text. I will still be using the same ideas from the body paragraphs but I need to make sure that i’m not just summarizing the two pieces of literature. The next step I plan on taking to better my text is adding a paragraph about the Peter Singer pond analogy. I did not see that the analogy had to be included into the text that was on the syllabus so I really need to make sure that I include a paragraph about how the pond analogy relates to the EA’s theory of replaceability.

The biggest challenge that I will face is cutting my two paragraphs. I believe it will be very hard because I put so much time into them. Another challenge is going to be how I summarize the text around my own idea’s. This is going to be hard because normally in high school, you summarize the text to make sure the reader knows what you as the author are talking about and then putting your ideas into the essay that either supports or contradicts the literature.

If a challenge arrises that proves too difficult for me to solve on my own then my first source of reference to be looked at will be the book, The Little Seagull. If that doesn’t help me out, then my next resource will be to set up an appointment with SASC so they can help me out.

The three categories of comments are ideas, evidence, and organization. In the idea category talks about your thesis and suggestions that would make it stronger. It also talks about your claims in the paragraphs and the relationships between ideas. The evidence category is pretty self explanatory. Does the evidence support the claim that you as the author has made. Finally, you have the organization category. This category is talking about the sentence fluency. If a sentence doesn’t fit in with the essay, it should be cut.

Idea comment: “I really like this intro but I do think that you should add your views on what you think about art not only just the two pieces of literature. I also think you should add a thesis statement for your final sentence.” This comment is giving the idea of using different methods to make the introduction paragraph better which is why it fits in the idea category.

Evidence comment:”good quote to support your ideas. I like how you explained further the importance of that quote.” This is in the evidence category because it is talking about how she used a great quote and explained it further in depth.

Organization comment:”I think you should cut this and put “like the year” because the dash was confusing, I think : would have made more sense.” This belongs in the organization category because it is talking about how the sentence did not make sense and how it needs to be either cut from the text all together or changed to make it sound better.

Truthfully, I did not really enjoy reading other people’s essay’s because I feel like I would have rather been focusing more on my essay in the time provided. It was nice to see the other people’s ideas and perspective’s but I also didn’t have time at all to work on my essay. I was focusing on other people’s essay which to me didn’t make sense. I think in the future, we should only have to peer review one essay instead of three so we have enough time to work on our essays too.

I really enjoyed reading others introduction paragraphs because it gave me insight on how to critique my own writing. It gave me ideas about what I can do to make my introduction better. I peer reviewed Anthony’s introduction and it gave me insight on what I need to do better in my own introduction for the essay to come. I really liked how he brought both of the texts available in his introduction. I thought it was a good idea to introduce both texts and there views. It will help the reader understand what I am going to be arguing for and what texts I am going to use to support my claims.

Hyperlink to Portfolio

Blog 3

The TED talk I chose to write about was Koolhaas and Urhahn’s story about how art can change the perspective of favelas and rough cities. Their journey started when Jeroen Koolhaas won a competition to make a documentary for MTV. The documentary was originally on Brazilian hip-hop music in the favelas of Rio but during their time in Brazil, the word image was always lingering around the slums. Koolhaas and Urhahn saw this and wanted a change to happen so they put a plan in place. The plan that was put in place was to create a massive mural that would cover many buildings and would be able to be seen from far distances. This experience brought together the whole community in a way like no other. Koolhaas and Urhahn completely changed the perspective of favelas and basically forced people to think of favelas differently by the actions of two people. Now that is truly unbelievable. Koolhaas and Urhahn quickly got famous and started getting requests from all over the world. They then took a gig in North Philly which is one of the poorest neighborhoods in the United States. They worked with the whole community to get this project done. It took about two full years to transform this neighborhood. Koolhaas and Urhahn even went a step further this time and trained kids from the streets to paint and hired them so they could help out with this amazing project while getting paid for it. Even now after the project has been over with, Koolhaas and Urhahn still stay in contact with some of the people from Philly. They couldn’t believe how much of an impact they could possibly have on one neighborhood.

In the short essay, Is Art a Waste of Time, by Rhy Southan talks about many different views and opinions of being an artist. He starts off by introducing himself as a movie script writer whose focus is on very dark comedies. He then introduces the Effective Altruism, or EA for short. The EA believe that there is no room for art in the world and that artists could be doing other things that could actually benefit society. They believe that artists are in a whole other world just “paint[ing] beautiful landscapes in front of them while the rest of the world burns”. The EA wants artists to give up their dream of being an artist for a job with higher expected returns so that the person can donate more money to kids who are in need. The EA really tries to guilt trip the audience into agreeing with their beliefs by comparing not donating to charity to not saving a kid’s life drowning in a pond right in front of you. Southan on the other hand, believes that “the world would be unlivable without art” and that art does indeed have a positive impact in society. In the middle of the essay, Southan does seem to feel a little guilty for not doing his part in society to his fullest potential because he is doing art instead of higher paying jobs. He eventually comes to the conclusion though that he is not willing to give up on art which he loves and holds dear to his heart for something that will ultimately make him unhappy.

I was able to make a few connections between Southan’s essay and the TED talk. The main connection was that both believe that art has a positive influence in society and that art makes a difference in people lives all over the world to the point where art is unlivable without. Another connection that I made between the two is that both like to help the poor.    Southan will mainly help the poor by donating money to charity and from the pleasure that his scripts give to people. The TED talk likes to build something so spectacular that it gives the community and everyone around the community hope and joy.

Is Art a Waste of Time?

Part 2

After reviewing and going over Rhys Southan’s text one more time, I gathered much more information about the text compared to the first time reading his essay on art. Reading his essay for the first time was very confusing to me. It was confusing to me because it seemed like he was going back and forth about deciding if art was useful to society or not. He had stated “I think this world would be unlivable without art” which made me think that he was on the side of all the artists in the world. He states a couple things like this, so I have no doubt that the essay is going to about how art in necessary in life and without it, life would be boring. Then out of nowhere, Southan’s states “Artists, meanwhile, paint the beautiful landscape in front of them while the rest of the world burns”. He also stated, “Perhaps they should think about ditching their dreams” for a job “with higher expected returns”. This is saying how artists should quite their dream of being artists and should get a job that can actually pay to support one and his/her family.

Once I read the essay for the second time, I really tried to dig deep in the text so I could truly understand and I think I figured it out. I realized when Southan seemed like he was truly talking bad about artists, he was telling the EA’s view on how they see artists role in society. Rhys Southan is an artist himself who writes very dark comedy scripts. I also came to the conclusion that Southan’s true belief on artists role in society is whenever the text is praising artists and the effects they have.

Truthfully, glossing the text of this essay didn’t help benefit me in any way. When I was reading, I could normally figure out the meaning of words that I didn’t know off the top of my head by reading the surrounding text. What truly benefitted me was reading the essay for a second time. The second time reading the essay, I could really focus in on specifics unlike the first time reading the essay when I was oblivious to those specifics and who was truly talking at that time. Discussing the text in class also helped me out significantly because when I was confused about some parts of the essay, my partners could help me out and vice versa. I think discussing in class is one of the best ways to truly understand something because who have the perspective of so many others.                                       ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism )

Is Art a Waste of Time?

This article by Rhys Southan is very controversial to me and what I believe. Personally, I did not like to hear his opinion on things because it was so drastic compared to my beliefs. For example, Southan states “Suppose you saw a child drowning in a pond: would you jump in and rescue her, even if you hadn’t pushed her in? Even if it meant ruining your clothes?”. In my mind, I’m screaming why the hell wouldn’t I go help an innocent girl from drowning in a pond? I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I just purposely let a child drown knowing that I could have saved her life. I believe that goes for everyone unless the person was mentally unstable. Then he relates this situation to poverty and how we ignore the people suffering from poverty as he calls a “preventable disease all over the world”. I have never really thought about poverty in that way because it is such a drastic comparison. It blew me away how he could remotely compare these two scenarios. Poverty is something that can be preventable or not. One can decide to gamble his or her life away with many things that puts their family and themselves on the streets. Everyone can decide to get a job instead of sleeping on a sidewalk. Ord and MacAskill, co-founders of Giving What We Can, suggests that everyone should donate 10 percent of your income to charity. My question is, why should hard-working people have to donate 10 percent of their income to those who might not even care about themselves and given up.

Rhys Southan also states that if you “have little to contribute to the cause. Perhaps they should think about ditching their dreams for what Caleiro call ‘an area with higher expected returns’ .” I agree that if life isn’t going the way you want it to go, and you are unable to be financially stable for yourself and if you have a family, then you should be thinking about maybe getting into a new career. However, if you are already financially stable and can support yourself and your family, I believe that you should never give up on your dreams. You should never give up on your dreams because life wouldn’t be fun or interesting if you hated your job. Some people have the luxury of doing what they love and getting paid for it. That is the ultimate life to me even if the job doesn’t contribute to the cause.

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