This week in English 1302, my class was working on our argumentative paper. I chose to write about Hamilton: An American Musical because I ate reading Shakespeare and The Tempest is incredibly boring to read. I had a lot of trouble thinking of a thesis and I got a zero. Luckily, my professor is allowing me to redo my thesis. I’m sure I won’t get the maximum amount of points, but anything is better than a zero. Since we’ve been working on an essay, I’ve been doing a lot of research and making an annotative bibliography.

This week, I witnessed my cousins use rhetoric. My cousin Long wanted boba and my cousin Kimmy works at a boba shop. He first asked her if she would bring him some milk-tea after she got off of work. He then offered her mochi donuts as an incentive. She agreed and brought him milk-tea. I think it’s amazing how we use rhetoric every single day.

I personally used rhetoric this week when I convinced my parents to let me go out and have a little photo shoot with my best friend. My parents are very paranoid about COVID-19, so I have not been out of the house in two weeks. I hate being home and I have been going insane without my best friend. One morning, I woke up and built up the courage to ask my parents. I walked into the kitchen and asked if I could go to Starbucks and the park. This request was met with upset faces. I then told them I needed to see Hannah and be around her for a little bit before I go crazy. Because they know I need to be social, they allowed me to go. I was limited to 30 minutes, but that was the best 30 minutes I have had in a long time.

This semester in Dual-English, our professor focused on rhetoric. With that, we wrote an argumentative essay and a proposal with a group. That being said, rhetoric in a paper is not very different than a proposal. In a paper, you write in a way where you’re telling the reader facts and arguing for your point. Moreover, in a proposal you also write in a similar fashion. However, in a proposal you are also doing a lot of describing. Instead of using a majority of other articles to argue for a point, in a proposal you are describing your view of a project and using other examples to support your point, not carry.

With COVID-19 in full-swing, I have been stuck at home. Because of that, I have been watching a lot of YouTube. In YouTube ads, I’ve noticed they start with concise and relatable sentences to pull in the viewer. This method of rhetoric is very effective in marketing, because humans are lazy and skip long unrelatable ads.

This week, I used rhetoric to convince my parents my room is not as bad as it looks. I know I have an incredibly messy room; however, I told my parents my friends have messy rooms as well. I then continued with the fact that my friends don’t care about how messy my room is. Finally, I finished with saying that no one is coming over due to COVID-19 anyways. It successfully got my parents off of my back. Periodt. (This was misspelled on purpose.)

I have always thought that Shakespeare was boring, and I still do. However, in reading The Tempest, I’ve learned there’s much more to Shakespeare than his hard to read plays. His writing showed me a form of rhetoric i’ve either never seen or never paid attention to. After reading The Tempest, I realize that there is so much to learn from just one play. You learn how language and situations play a bigger factor into rhetoric than just big bright text on a billboard.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, rhetoric is being used everyday. Rhetoric is used to keep people at home and off the streets. It’s also used to help the elderly in our community during this scary time. One way i’ve noticed rhetoric this week is in President Trump himself. His use of the term “Chinese virus” in place for Coronavirus is rhetoric that is detrimental to the Asian-American community. His diction allows ignorance to bloom and a severe increase in xenophobia.

Since last week, the United States became #1 on the list of COVID-19 cases worldwide. This is due to foolish Americans who ignore the stay-at-home rhetoric. I’ve personally used rhetoric this week to convince my parents to let me get a puppy. I first started with the fact that I will be home all day, everyday, due to COVID-19. I then added that social distancing has taken a toll on my mental health, so a distraction (like a puppy) would help me. It worked! By the end of the week, I had a german shepherd puppy named Gucci!

This past week has been devastating for Wylie High School. In that, I’ve learned that tragic events bring people together. With that being said, no matter how bad life gets, life goes on. This week in Dual English, I learned to look deeper into the meaning of lyrics. Lyrics aren’t there for no reason; the words in them are carefully chosen. In analyzing Hamilton, I saw first hand how clever writers are. Every lyric had a deeper meaning; beyond the surface.

The tragedy that struck the school this week was the unexpected death of a student. The news broke the loud and energetic school into silence. Later in the week, there was a vigil held in honor of the student. At the vigil, one of my friends made a speech that caught the attention of everyone in the room. His motivational words were logical, yet they also had an emotional response. His tone of voice brought out emotions in everyone, whether it was good or bad.

Because of the tragic news, I broke. This was the third tragedy I faced within the span of a week and I was not emotionally stable enough to handle it. I couldn’t function, I lost all motivation, and I couldn’t sleep at night. On Friday, I had two test one after the other. I couldn’t do it. I wrote an email to my teacher in hopes of taking the test next week. I stated that I was aware the test was that day to let her know I was holding myself accountable and credible. I told her I had spent the past few nights with the family of the student, which prevented me from studying. With that I added my emotional instability to appeal to her emotions. Finally, I stated that I understood if she declined my request to show her that I was logical. To my surprise, she allowed me to take the test next week, which I was incredibly thankful for.