Ideas on my first paper

Since Tom said we could blog about either our reading or our topics for our paper, i'll adress the topics. My freshman year in high school, People to People Student Ambassadors sent me a letter proposing i was a good canidate for sutdent ambassador travel. I quickly took them up on the offer. I began a series of applications and a face-to-face interview with them. They responded to me qauickly and told me that I was selected along with 39 other North Carolina students to travel to Europe the upcoming summer. The trip would last 20 days, and within that timespan we would travel to 5 different countries: England, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland. I was about to embark are the greatest adventure of my life. The trip was amazing! it was so good to experience something like that while i was still young. It really helped me mature and figure out who i really was. I mean, this was the first time i had been away from my family for this long, with only 4 other adults and 39 other kids whom i had just befriended a few months before. The whole trip was such a learning experience, i believe this is what i'll write about. However, another thing that i would write about is my Grandfather. He has been about the most influential person in my life. I love him so much and look up to him like no other. He was a Green Beret (special forces) in Vietnam, and since then he worked many jobs including being an accountant. He always took me places when i was little. We would go up north to watch Wake Forest University play football and basketball. He's the most generous man i know. He always stood behind me during my 9 years of baseball and always helped anyway he could. His name is Ernest, but everyone back home calls him the same as I: Poppy. Loved by many, hated by none, Poppy is my role-model. Both of these topics, I think, would churn out good writing. It'll be tough deciding...

Rhetoric and Judy Brady

So i was reading through the first chapter last night a little before class, and the thing that really stood out for me was the essay "Why I Want a Wife" by Judy Brady. We touched alot on this essay during class today, but when we started discussing it out loud it really sparked my mind to really look inside of the essay. The chapter has been talking about the use of rhetoric as a persuasive use of language, or a manipulative use of language, and how some must act on rhetorical situations with properly placed language. Different situations call for different styles of rhetoric. Some might be a little more aggressive than others, but its all about the situtation. For instance the book talks about at a funeral you would rather give your condolence's out directly and verbally as opposed to writing an essay for a professor where written word is expected.
Alright so back to the essay. Obviously Judy Brady was experiencing a rhetorical exigence... women not having as many opportunities as men. Throughout the essay she uses a very distinct rhetoric to get her ideas across. She's talking of wanting a wife, but we know that she is not serious through her use of words. An example of this that stand out to me is towards the end of the essay where Mrs. Brady says,"If, by chance, i find another person more suitable as a wife than the wife i already have, I want the liberty to replace my present wife with another one. Naturally, I will expect a fresh, new life;". To me this quote shows how completely sarcastic her tone is. Examples such as this can be found throughout the entire essay, and shows how through the use of good rhetoric, one can spice up a topic.