1. College the Easy Way: Pretty provocative ideas, especially as you all are students at a college prep school. Thoughts?
2. Liam Neeson Interview: Yeowzers this is a great profile! And Tom Chiarella is an amazing writer. What are your thoughts on the overall structure of this piece? Is it effective? Does this piece make Neeson a more compelling personality?
4 comments:
"College the Easy Way"...
I think that this article presents an interesting approach to the current college situation in America. As a college degree becomes more an more common and therefore less and less significant, the pool of college students has increased and the percentage of genuinely interested students has become smaller. It seems as though the colleges have taken this change in the student demographic poorly in the sense that the work is less demanding which then allows the students to take it less seriously. I think that in order to make a college degree return back to its previous acclaim, then colleges need to ramp up their expectations in order to weed out the students who are not willing to do the work.
"College The Easy Way"
Although this article presents several valid arguments, I think it falls short on several fronts. The skills mentioned in this article are something that I think many people today wouldn't say are the most valuable thing people take away from college. Other than the degree, of course, I would argue that an appropriate and thorough understanding of the course is more important than how hard each student worked to achieve it. It is for this reason that I believe that the case presented in the article is in some ways invalid, and should not be understood as an accurate portrayal of college students today.
Liam Neeson Profile
There are several things which made this piece so interesting to read. The first is the reverse chronology structure of it. This gave it more of a movie-like feel, thus providing an enticing drive for the reader to continue on. It also was full of emotion and intricacies, also giving it a movie-like feel. For me, this forced me to visualize the article, making it far more personal. It was almost as if I had been sitting right with them. Finally, it provided a past look at Neeson through the cancellation of the first interview. Not only did that make it seem as if this piece was more of a rarity, but it also helped to really fill the piece with emotion. The emotion and human touch that the article has adds another layer of drama to the interview, as opposed to just talking about Neeson's upcoming movie, which woud have made for a rather dry article.
“College the East Way”
This is article presents an interesting argument. I think everything they said might all be very true but not in every college/university like they made it seem. I think that there are some colleges that have transitioned more to the “slacker” side, but I think that there are still a TON that are academically very rigorous. At every school you can challenge yourself as much as you want to, or you can be there more for fun but a lot of people still take their educations very seriously.
College:
I really didn't know that any of this was an issue. I feel like students are (generally) going to do what they want to while in college. If they want to slack off and get by with the bare minimum of work, then they will do so. If they are willing to put in the time and do well, then they will. I agree with the author that the slackers are missing part of the point of college, but it seems like not much can be done about them.
Liam Neeson:
The piece certainly succeeds in making Neeson easy to relate to. I liked him beforehand due to his acting capabilities, but this just made him all the more awesome. The structure of the article confused me for the first two pages before I decided to just read it like it all in the present tense. I am still slightly confused as to why he chose to write it that way, but it didn't take away from calibre of his writing.
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