First - and let me start by saying I'm not trying to cause problems, just stating what's on my mind - we are expected to print a whopping 182 pages for our Technical Writing class (I downloaded the files and looked at their page lengths). This semester every undergraduate has a print quota of 350 pages per semester. The entire policy can be found here. I suppose it would be possible to print double sided, but this will still use just under 100 pages which is only counting the reading and not including any assignments one may want to print, or any resources one may need to print off for any other projects in this class. That is almost 1/3 of our total free prints. While I don't print nearly as much as other students and I'm sure the new print quotas will effect others way more than myself, I find it a bit surprising that such a huge chunk of our free prints must be used for 1 class, when most students have 4 or 5 other classes as well. Now, I have read the policy and see that faculty/staff are allowed unlimited free prints. However, I also took a moment to read the F.A.Q. about the policy and it states that faculty printing will be monitored for abuse. I don't know how much the "accepted" amount for faculty printing is but I'm sure almost 4000 pages (or 2000 double sided pages) - for a class of 20 students and 100 pages per student - would be pushing the "accepted" limit. Therefore, perhaps a compromise could be reached where half of our readings are printed for us and we print the other half? Just a thought I had, as I stated printing isn't a huge deal to me. Moving on.
Second - My second realizations was that I was probably not going to enjoy blogging this semester, however it is always nice to express things we are feeling so I'm thinking I might enjoy keeping a blog. Not sure yet.
Third - Finally, I realized that rhetoric has a negative connotation and I don't understand why this is the case. Well that's not true, I understand why it has that connotation I just don't agree with it. I suppose really it depends on which definition of "rhetoric" you choose to use. If we go by the definition of rhetoric from our reading which says that rhetoric is "the systematic study and intentional practice of effective symbolic expression," (Herrick pg. 7) then it becomes apparent that rhetoric is not necessarily a bad thing. So really, the people who use it for "bad" things are just assholes. Herrick goes on to define "effective" as "achieving the purposes of the symbol-user." With this definition, just about everything is rhetoric including art, literature, music - almost everything. All artists do their best to use symbols (whether they be musical notes or paint colors) to create a feeling in their audience. Regardless, I feel rhetoric's connotation will never change because a word's connotation, much like a person's reputation is very hard to change. People have falsely given rhetoric a negative reputation but right or wrong I don't see it changing so I suppose we just have to accept it.
I think that rhetoric is a useful tool for arriving at the truth. Like you said, rhetoric isn't necessarily a bad thing. It just seems that way because we usually only hear the "bad" rhetoric, such as when politicians attack each other. The good rhetoric just isn't as newsworthy. And when we use rhetoric ( which we do every day), we don't think of it as that.
ReplyDeleteWhen you break down the whole printing quota it does make a lot of sense. I agree with you about how there should be a compromise with the printing. I have tried not to print at all and just read things off the computer but I hate it. Hurts the eyes after a while.
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