Mediation Paper

The last assignment in English 103 this semester was to do a mediation paper. A mediation paper is when you pick a topic that is controversial and explain both sides of the subject. You are to give the pros and cons and defend both of them, without being bias to one or the other. Once that part of the paper is completed, you are supposed to come to your own conclusion and help think of a solution to the problem while incorporating both views. Since we are college students, I thought the topic I chose was both relevant and appropriate. I chose to talk about the drinking age and its increase from eighteen to twenty one in 1984 under The National Minimum Drinking Age Act. Although most states had a choice, almost all states made the decision to raise the drinking age. This was because a few years ago Congress started tying highway funds to the drinking age. Unless a state raised it to twenty-one, then it would lose a percentage of the federal gasoline taxes its citizens had paid. The United States is currently the only country where the drinking age is twenty-one; it is also the highest. The most common drinking age for other countries is eighteen years old. The second most common drinking age is sixteen years old, followed by no minimum. In order to address all of the issues associated with the drinking age, I first had to identify why people agreed to it. After this I had to find out why people were opposed to it. Our teacher actually cut our paper down to one draft because we didn’t have enough time for two. In my brief, I basically outlined the purpose of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act and why it worked and why it didn’t work, very ‘briefly.’ Then I used that as my outline to help write my actually paper. In the rough draft, I used about six sources and ended up with about six pages. It was a little rough because I wasn’t sure if my paper made sense organizationally and it I had enough citations or possibly too many. We did peer revising in class and then our teacher took the papers home to make a few marks. The next class he went over our papers individually with us which helped a lot. Some classmates helped me reorganize a few paragraphs that didn’t flow as well as others. My teacher helped correct a few citations that were wrong and some other mistakes with grammar, etc. After that, we got to fix our papers before turning them in for a final draft, which is due Friday, along with our learning record. All of the revisions helped shape my final draft by correcting small mistakes and reorganizing some things. I didn’t end up adding anything to my paper or taking anything out. I liked the information in my paper; it just needed a little tweaking. Overall, I was very happy with my paper and thought I did a thorough job and put a lot of effort into making this last project really count.

A More Perfect Union

Barack Obama's speech, "A More Perfect Union," was awesome. I listened to him when he came to Clemson so I already knew he was a good speaker. I enjoyed his speech at Clemson as well as this one. He knows exactly what to say and does a good job of addressing more than one group of people, like some other candidates. This type of speech was needed and I think it might be a deciding factor for some people to be a supporter. I think his speaking ability is his best asset and one of the reasons he is where he is today. He is very blunt on his opinions on race and gets right to the point. I find Obama to be very intelligent and articulate. I don't necessarily agree with all of his views but for the most part, I love him!