English 100 Course Readings

UW-Madison English 100 Program

UW-Madison English 100 Program

Madison

English 100 Course Readings by UW-Madison English 100 Program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

The essays in this text feature an array of reuse permissions rights. For materials that originated outside the UW-Madison English 100 Program, please consult the original source. Since this text is still under development, materials originating within the English 100 Program use a fairly restrictive CC license. We anticipate this will evolve and are committed to the Wisconsin Idea and to UW-Madison’s Educational Innovation initiative to increase access to educational materials within and beyond our university.

Cover Image: Jeff Miller: Photo of “Well Red,” a sculpture by artist Douwe Blumberg (UW-Madison. Copyright: Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.)

This book was produced with Pressbooks.

Contents

- Additional Selected Readings

- Student Award-Winning Essays: Narrative

- Oklahoma!

- “An Eye For An Eye” Leaves Everyone – With a Lifelong Autoimmune Disease?

- Student Writing Award: Informative/Explanatory Essay

- The Boys Who Fall: The Impacts of Concussions on High School Football Players

- Student Writing Award: Critical/Analytical Essay

- Refuting Capital Punishment in America

- Student Writing Award: Multimodal Composition

- Homework Podcast

English 100 courses at UW-Madison ask students to read and interact with a wide range of materials from diverse writers, not all of which can be included in this Web collection of Course Readings. We are, however, committed to ongoing development of this Web collection to express a wide range of voices and perspectives. (August 2019)

Oklahoma!

Alicia Lawson

My shoes produce the sound clip-clop, which echoes throughout the stairwell as I descend the stairs backstage. I hear my dog’s cries when I enter the hallway along with my dad’s frequent, annoyed hushes trying to calm her down. My shoes slip on the tile floor as I spin around; the full skirt of my sky-blue dress lifts up around me, and my layered petticoat shows. I enter the holding room where my dog Carmel is waiting, her whimpers quieting down as I lift her up and carry her to stage right. Careful not to rip the antique dress, I shift her around in my arms, and we prepare to go on stage. I finally receive my cue. The lights go up: I stroll onto the stage, look around in awe and curiosity, and transform myself completely into Dorothy.

“Look, Toto! There’s a scarecrow. Maybe we can ask him,” I say, striding over to the orchestra conductor, who is dressed as a scarecrow in a field of musical instruments. “Hey, Mr. Scarecrow, do you know the way to Topeka?”

A big, booming voice replies from the speakers, “You’re not in Kansas anymore.”

“Where are we?”

And with that line, the conductor cues the orchestra, , and the first bars of the overture for Oklahoma! begin.

Madison West High School preformed Oklahoma! by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II the spring of my junior year. Along with being cast in the ensemble, I was in two short scenes called olios, like the one I describe above in which Carmel and I open the show. I played Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz and my dog was Toto in this short, fictitious clip. The scene took place before the Oklahoma! overture was preformed, and the director wanted it to be a way of introducing the audience to Oklahoma! It was a quirky way of setting the scene as the Oklahoma Territory in 1906.

Oklahoma! requires a leap of faith and understanding from the audience because it deals with many difficult topics with the predicable insensitivity of the early-twentieth century. However, it shows a world full of rich and vibrant characters, who are happy with life, dedicated to the land they work and subsist on, and excited for the future. The line “We know we belong to the land / And the land we belong to is grand” in the song “Oklahoma” displays each character’s enthusiasm and steadfast love in this musical (Hammerstein II, Rodgers). This one line incites in me a deep passion for a place I have never even been and a time more than one hundred years in the past; it proves how moving and touching this musical and any musical can be. Theater has the power to transport people to another world and time, expose them to new ideas, and leave a permanent mark on their lives, just as Oklahoma! transformed me through the rehearsals and performances.

Though there are many famous songs from the musical’s score, the title song “Oklahoma” is one of my personal favorites. It is performed towards the end of Act II after Curly and Laurey’s wedding. In a broad sense, the characters sing about Oklahoma becoming a state, which is a general theme throughout the musical, and their hopes for the future. However, the reason I love this song is not only the message but the actual notes and melodies. The harmonies and movement between notes cause one to believe they are actually in a field of wheat. The song transports not just the audience but also the singers off the stage and to the Oklahoma Territory. The song’s happiness is infectious, and it becomes impossible not to beam while singing it.

“Oklahoma” sounds beautiful when one listens to it, but it is technically extremely difficult to sing. At times, the song may have an eight-part split and swift dynamic changes. I remember it being one of the songs the cast had the hardest time learning. As a first soprano, I sing the highest part in songs. It is my favorite position because of the chance to sing high and expand my range. First sopranos also usually receive the melody because the higher notes generally will be heard over the lower harmonies. Due to this, there are often fewer first sopranos singing the extremely high notes than people with other parts. With “Oklahoma,” the notes push a person’s range mainly because of the amount of time spent in the higher register using head voice. If not done correctly and without a proper warm-up, the song will exhaust a voice rapidly.

I remember one rehearsal quite clearly, particularly the warm-up, even two years later. It was a fortnight before opening weekend and the first time I brought Carmel to rehearsal in order to practice our scene together. A generally accepted rule in theater is that only animals trained to be in live productions should be on stage. There are numerous considerations and dangers to having animals preforming. There are the issues of cast and animal interactions, transmission of diseases, and danger of injury to both parties, to list just a few. My major concern with Carmel was not any of the aforementioned because she was only on stage for a short period and interacted solely with me. Rather, I was concerned about her reaction to the stage lights, the sounds, and the audience. The technical effects can be stunning for any person new to theater, but with a dog’s heightened senses, it could be harmful to them. Given this, I had no idea if Carmel could even be used in the production; it all depended on her reaction to these new surroundings.

In her best interest, I decided to allow her a half-hour to explore the new environment before her first rehearsal. I carried her in the side door of West’s auditorium. The minute I set her down, she became a kid in a candy store. Every smell and object became a strange and foreign thing that must be investigated. It was probably quite comical watching a sixteen-year-old girl get pulled around by a seventeen-pound cockapoo; she wanted to explore anywhere and everywhere at the same time. Initially, I limited her to the empty house and surrounding hallways as the stage crew finished up their building for the day, but the stage quickly became her biggest source of fascination. By this time, other cast and orchestra members were trickling in, all curious as to why a dog was at rehearsal. With the addition of new people, Carmel’s apprehension began to appear, and my sole focus became trying to calm her down.

Strangely enough, Carmel was drawn to the sound of the orchestra, who was warming up and rehearsing numbers behind the tan curtain that bisected the stage in half and hid the orchestra from view. Before I even figured out what she was doing, Carmel had burrowed her way under the curtain and into the strings section of the orchestra in her effort to sniff every single inch of the space. There is that certain, recognizable, cacophonous way an orchestra stops when it has not been actually cued to stop—sometimes featured in comedic skits—but , until that night, I had never realized a group of musicians could actually produce this noise outside of a performance.

Instead of the laughs that would usually accompany this event during a show, all I heard was, “Oh my god! It’s a dog!” And a chorus of replies, spanning from, “It’s so cute!” to the orchestra conductor shouting, “What are you all doing?” Looking back, it was quite humorous, but at that moment, my focus was on trying to lift yards of dirt-laden tan fabric to remove my dog from the strings section.

After catching Carmel and offering my profuse apologies to the conductor for interrupting their practice, Carmel found a new fascination in the form of the pile of loose hay on stage left. If I had let her, she would have had a good roll in the hay like two of the main characters in the show were supposed to.

Though her intent was to explore more, the musical director had started to call the cast on stage for vocal warm-ups. As I corralled her to sit next to me, Carmel’s high-pitched whining created a distraction for the rest of us trying to sing scales in tune, so my only option was to do warm-ups with her in my arms to calm her down. That night, the music director wanted to focus on correcting the harmonies in “Oklahoma,” which required the sopranos to sing the melody multiple times. The problem was that I could not set Carmel down without her crying. Although Carmel only weighs seventeen pounds, after a ten-minute warm up, even the smallest of dogs can become quite heavy. I remember standing off to the side on stage right, practicing scales and receiving sympathetic glances as my arms numbed. Even though I sang so high into her ears, she did not seem to mind it because she was being cuddled so close to me.

Since that day, every time I hum or listen to “Oklahoma,” it reminds me of this rehearsal, which never fails to bring a smile to my face. It may have been stressful to deal with Carmel during the show, but I would not trade this experience for anything. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to open the musical with my best friend. [1]*

Work Cited

Hammerstein II, Oscar and Richard Rodgers. “Oklahoma.” 1943.

Writer’s Memo

The assignment was to share a memory we have that is connected to one particular song. I chose to write about my experience acting in the opening scene of my high school’s musical, Oklahoma! The narrative tells the story of my dog, Carmel, being cast alongside me and focuses on Carmel’s first stage rehearsal and the many hijinks that happened during it.

For this paper, I had to learn how to write in a new genre. I had never composed a narrative before, so it was awkward for me to be writing about a personal experience in a non-analytical tone. The emphasis at my high school was writing argumentative essays, especially finding evidence to support a thesis statement. The storytelling format went against everything I had been taught to do for the past four years in high school on how to draft a proper essay. Using the first person and placing myself as the focal point of the narrative contradicted all of my previous English teachers’ lessons. Writing only became easier as I realized I was not writing an essay but rather telling a story. It should seem like I was speaking the words to the reader, instead of the reader reading them off a page.

One strategy I find helpful for the writing process is creating an outline before starting the first draft. My brain jumps from topic to topic in such a way that makes it hard for others to follow my thought process. The outline helps me gauge how long my work will be and lets me create a basic flow to the paper before I even begin to write anything.

* Carmel was asked to perform as the Grinch’s dog in West High’s production of Seussical in the spring of 2018. Unfortunately, due to health issues, she had to decline the role.

Oklahoma! by Alicia Lawson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

“An Eye For An Eye” Leaves Everyone – With a Lifelong Autoimmune Disease?

Katie McGlasson

The human body is very advanced. In most cases, it lets you know with some sort of outward expression when something is wrong internally. Unfortunately, it’s up to you whether or not you acknowledge the warning signs.

As a freshman in high school I chose to ignore the warning signs my body was giving me for three days. Which, in hindsight, is quite a while to ignore being blind in your left eye. Granted, it wasn’t as though I woke up and half my vision was black. It faded out, blurring from the center until I had minimal peripheral vision and I had to squint and ask for help to read my sheet music in band. It was that night, on the third day of seeing out of only one eye, with no depth perception, and more aggravation over missed notes on the saxophone than concern for my health, that I finally thought to mention my problem to my parents. They were a little more worried than I was.

I discovered then that randomly going blind is something you should probably address sooner rather than later. We went to the eye doctor in town, and they fairly quickly diagnosed the issue as optic neuritis. I assumed that would be the end of it—diagnose me, give me some eye drops, and send me on my way—but apparently not. Optic neuritis is usually indicative of deeper problems; it occurs when your immune system attacks the optic nerve, which causes the blindness. The next day, we drove directly to St. Louis where testing at the Children’s Hospital had been arranged in coordination with one of the university’s research centers. I wasn’t sure what that meant at the time, but it essentially panned out to me being followed around by three to eight med students at any given time. Who knew dilated eyes and optic neuritis were that interesting?

I spent a full day looking at letter charts, spotting flashing lights, and staring back at doctors through an ophthalmoscope. They wanted to assess how badly the optic nerve was damaged and gauge how bad my vision loss was. Then it was time for an MRI. They assumed this was all just an autoimmune response to a virus, but they didn’t want to rule out other causes. The best way to do that was with an MRI. Since 2014, I’ve had another twelve or so MRIs. If someone can be a “pro” at laying perfectly still with a cage around their head while a machine takes images of their brain for an hour, I would venture to say that I am. I’ve grown so accustomed to MRIs that I sleep through them; when I go in for testing there is nothing I cherish more than my hour nap down in the imaging center. Yet that first MRI was not one I slept through.

The first MRI gave me a lot of time to think. It made me realize how much of a security blanket my clothes are; as I was led around in a hospital gown and slipper socks that didn’t belong to me, I felt exposed and even younger than I was. I realized how hard it is to lay perfectly still for an hour, even when there’s a plastic cage around your head to keep it in place. When they put the contrast dye in my arm, I felt the ice-cold liquid flow from my elbow all throughout my body, adding to the overall discomfort of the situation, and I realized for the first time the exact path blood takes from the vein in your arm to your brain. Finally, in that moment I realized just how little I understood about what was going on and just how anxious I was about it. This anxiety hadn’t hit until I was finally alone, listening to the overwhelming hum and buzz of the machine.

Unfortunately, and against most odds, the MRI did find something out of place, although it wasn’t directly linked to optic neuritis. The test revealed that I have multiple lesions on my brain. I like to consider lesions the “anti-tumor,” but in reality they’re just areas of scarred or damaged tissue on the brain. The discovery of those lesions was the beginning of my life sentence.

The pairing of optic neuritis and lesions on the brain in young people is often indicative of early onset multiple sclerosis (MS). I was already going to be in the hospital for a few days while on steroids to speed up the healing of my vision, so this allowed for ample opportunity to run a few baseline tests for MS. Most of those tests are just genetic history, health history, and various questionnaires. One physical test they had to conduct was a spinal tap. At this point, I was still a favorite pin cushion and practice dummy for med students; it’s what I got for being over the age of twelve in a children’s hospital. I’d been in the hospital for two days, my hand was sore from the steroid IV already, the nurses’ check-ins kept me on a two hour nap schedule, I was blind in one eye, and in that moment the very last thing I wanted was a giant needle in my spine. As it turned out, my opinion didn’t really matter in this case: they moved me from my room to a smaller room down the hall, and we met a doctor and three med students. They laid me down on a cot and for the rest of the experience I got to stare at a wall-mounted band aid dispenser. At the very beginning, they explained that there’s some contest in the medical scene: If they get a clean pull of the spinal fluid, they get champagne. I wasn’t really paying attention because I was emotionally preparing to have fluid that I didn’t even know existed pulled from my spine.

They started by injecting a few shots of numbing fluid—which is when my mom left the room—and then the first med student attempted the spinal tap., A failed spinal tap manages to hurt more than a successful spinal tap, and you can actually hear the difference. A successful tap makes the most terrible pop sound imaginable, which, while horrifying, signifies that something was achieved. Failed taps just hurt and bleed, with no satisfaction of completing the job. During the second med student’s try, the nurse left the room, and it was during the last student’s attempt that I decided it was ok to cry.

There I was, silently crying as the doctor gives the three failed spinal tap prodigies a lesson in which I’m the living test dummy. The doctor managed to successfully steal my spinal fluid (which is when I learned what the pop sounds like) but not without getting blood in it, which garnered a, “Shucks no champagne for us” from him. That was probably the real tragedy in the whole situation.

The spinal fluid tests confirmed me as “high risk” for MS. I left the hospital a few days later with a bruised hand where they’d stuck the IV, a schedule for check-ins with a neurologist, and the knowledge that I would spend the rest of my life waiting for a confirmation diagnosis. That was the part that really stuck with me. And even though there was still the faint white mark on the back of my hand from the steroid drip four years later and my depth perception is still a little off because of the scarring on my optic nerve, it’s the awareness of the internal scarring that is the most present part of my life.

It would be inaccurate to say I’ve overcome my struggles concerning this, but I have come to terms with it. Throughout the years I’ve had a lot of stress and anxiety relating to the potential diagnosis, and I’ve funneled that nervous energy into researching multiple sclerosis for the benefit of my own understanding. I figured if I was going to assume the diagnosis to be inevitable, then I should be prepared for it. As I’ve gotten older it’s become less of a worry for me, both because I’ve had more time with it and because I’ve gone longer with no medical change. In no way would I say that I’d be fine if the next time I went in for a check I found out that I had MS; it’s not necessarily acceptance but a level of preparedness for something I don’t want to happen.

I never expected to go through one of the strangest medical journeys a person can take. When I was young, I was always the “sick kid,” but that doesn’t necessarily have to correlate to mysterious autoimmune issues as a teen. Now that I’ve reached the point in my “sick kid” career where I’ve grown accustomed to chatting with radiology techs about which arm has better veins for the contrast injection, it’s safe to say I’ve learned some things.

I’ve embraced one of the qualities that is a large part of my life now; living life moment by moment because of what I went through. If worst comes to worst, I could have decreased life expectancy or a decreased quality of life as I age. Therefore  I think it’s important to take advantage of opportunities and time I have now. Along with that, I like to think I’m more self-aware than I used to be. I’m more conscious of what is going on physically practically speaking, and, mentally, it’s just as important to know how you feel. The main thing I took away from all this was an acceptance that I can’t be in control of everything. Some things in this world are just out of my control, and while I can do everything within my power, that won’t matter. The acceptance that it was out of my control was the hardest part.

Writer’s Memo

For this particular narrative, I worked through the writing process in much the same way as I do for most papers or written projects. I began by choosing the topic. With the writing prompt of “scar narrative,” I remember feeling like there were a few easy choices I could pursue, but the interesting story was also the most obvious, so I went with that. After choosing the topic, I spent a good amount of time creating a timeline of events. Most of my papers start as lists of topics and key points, so beginning with a list of events and dates was a comfortable starting point. Having established the timeline of events, I went through and bulked up the list adding emotional flashbulb memories and specific points I knew I wanted to mention or specifically discuss within the narrative.

From there, it was easy enough to take the detailed list/timeline and make the events and bullet points into proper sentences and paragraphs. I remember struggling to seriously portray emotion within the narrative; I wanted the paper to feel sincere and honest to my experience, but I was also writing about being 14, so it created a strange dynamic. At some point, I decided to embrace the uncomfortable way the narrative unfolded, with its strange balance between an oddly serious topic and the tone of dry humor that I could never bring myself to fully erase. Once I accepted that the serious story had to be paired with tongue-in-cheek commentary, then I came to an honest telling of my experience. That was what I found was most important, finding a way to honestly talk about my own life in a way that didn’t feel gimmicky or too impersonal. For me, it’s that balance that made all the difference between an effective telling of a personal experience and just another paper for school.

“An Eye For An Eye” Leaves Everyone – With a Lifelong Autoimmune Disease? by Katie McGlasson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

The Boys Who Fall: The Impacts of Concussions on High School Football Players

Allison Siegert

Imagine walking into a small football stadium in the middle of what seems like nowhere. You’re bundled up with three different pairs of socks and more layers than you thought could fit underneath your coat, due to the unpredictable autumn weather of Wisconsin. If you look up, you’re staring straight into the eye of stadium lights. You can feel the pre-game music thumping through your body as you approach the stands. You see the clock hit the two-minute mark and look up towards the locker room. You can see the tips of the warriors’ gold helmets glistening, ready to become covered in mud, grass, and scratches. The team walks towards battle, arms locked, heads high, with only one goal in mind. Friday night lights is the event you look forward to every week in the fall. No one can get enough of the crack of a hard hit, the hot chocolate warming their hands, or the clouds of breath. As my father, the head football coach at my high school back home, has said time and time again: the memories, the lessons learned, and making life-long friends all create a feeling that sets the sport of football at the high school level apart from any other sport.

Here in Wisconsin, a young man could have joined a football team starting in the early twentieth century, according to Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association. The game of football has changed immensely over the years, but the thing that has changed the most since the early 1900’s would no doubt be the technology of the helmets being worn. Protecting the most advanced human organ during such an intense game is of utmost importance to football leagues of all ages. Even the editors from Neurology Reviews agree that “the design of the American football helmet has changed dramatically since Admiral Joseph Mason “Bull” Reeves donned the first leather helmet in the Army-Navy game in 1893” (Strong 32). Helmet companies today, such as Riddell and Schutt, are constantly trying to create the safest helmet possible for football players. They are regularly looking for new ways to design helmets that are “focused on modifying the liner material and optimizing helmet absorption capability based on accelerometer monitoring systems,” according to Michael A. L. Johnson, MD, CPT, a member of the Department of Neurology at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. My brother, Cyrus Siegert, a high school football player himself, told me about the newest helmet he wore just this past season: “We have helmets that almost have an in-unit circuit board and chip in the padding of the helmet that detect the big hits and are wirelessly connected to our athletic trainers and coaches during practice/game. When the alert system goes off, the kid comes off the field and goes through a concussion test.”

And that brings up the highly-debated topic of concussions in football. What many people don’t realize is what actually happens to a football player’s brain during a concussion. Matt Giles, a journalist for the magazine Popular Science, created an excellent image of the neuro injury in one of his articles:

Picture the brain as a bowl of spaghetti that is suddenly flung out of an airplane. Those noodles would stretch. Some would snap from the pressure while others would merely thin out in a way that would damage the sensitive neurons. (Giles 2)

*

A football player’s brain after a large hit is essentially a bumper car hitting the walls, where your brain is the bumper car and your skull is the wall. The brain violently accelerates in whatever direction it was hit, neurotransmitters are released and sent into a frenzy, the neuronal cells stretch so thin that they let go of potassium and sodium ions and are replaced by calcium ions, which essentially paralyzes the neuron and can potentially cause microscopic hemorrhages in the brain (Giles 3). This combination is what sends the concussion victim into a daze of speech, vision, and even memory loss. However, for high school athletes concussions are less lethal than they are with older players because a young man’s brain is flusher with the bone compared to the space between the brain and skull of an older athlete. In younger players, there is less potential for movement and damage. This is due to the degenerative issue of brain shrinkage that everyone experiences with age.

Traditionally, the game of football has been thought to uniquely correlate with growing concussion rates, but, according to an eleven-year study conducted at the MedStar Health Research Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, football isn’t the only high school sport the media should be blaming concussions on. Twelve high school boys’ and girls’ sports were examined from 1997 to 2008, and they found a total of 2,651 concussions among all athletes. Researchers further found that in girls’ soccer 195 players experienced concussions, and in football 1407 players experienced concussions. Even though football players experience more concussions than girls’ soccer players and other high school sports, football boasts the highest participation in the county. In the year 2008, there were 1,112,303 participants in football and 344,534 participants in girls’ soccer (National Federation of State High School Associations, 486). Crunch the numbers and that gives an incidence rate that is extremely similar for girls’ soccer and football — 0.056% and 0.126%, respectively — yet the media fails to take notice and they continue to blast football. Either way, concussion rates are still going up, and something must be done to combat the powerful blow behind the contact that occurs between football athletes nowadays.

Now onto the phrase that is an influential part of almost any article that has anything to do with concussions: Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE. “CTE is a degenerative condition that can only be diagnosed through autopsy,” writes Matt Giles in an article in Popular Science. As of now, there is no way to test a living individual to see if their brain is suffering from CTE. CTE has been found in 90 out of 94 former NFL players over the past eight years (Giles 3). This is the number that shocks the public the most, as would any study whose results are near 100 percent. But what is missing from this study are all the resources that are being provided to football players now and just how in depth their recovery can be before they get back on the field and potentially reinjure the temporal lobe of the brain.

Nevertheless, parents and students across the nation are questioning the safety of football and wondering if playing is really worth it. Is the sport of football too dangerous for high school athletes to be playing? The sides are obvious: yes, it is, and no, it isn’t. There are thousands of sources for each side, I’ve presented some above. But some of the best and most reliable information comes from the research of two neuro-focused physicians, pathologists and surgeons, Dr. Bennett Omalu and Dr. Uzma Samadani.

Dr. Omalu is a public authority on this issue and has been able to reach out to thousands due to his recent studies presented in the film Concussion (2015). He discovered tau[1] and named the disease CTE, which he found all over football player Mike Webster’s brain.[2] With strong opinions on the idea that football is only concerned about profits and not the people playing, he has been able to convince hundreds to keep their kids away from the sport of football. During a New York Press Club talk, Sports Illustrated reported him saying that, “someday there will be a district attorney who will prosecute for child abuse [on the football field], and it will succeed” (Kelly 1).

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Dr. Uzma Samadani and her beliefs about youth football. In August 2017, she spoke at the Wisconsin Football Coaches Association Clinic about high school football. Her argument is strongly in favor of allowing teens to play football. In fact, she allows her own son to play. She backs her argument by comparing suicide rates of athletes at certain ages to the rest of the population at those ages, and what has been found is lower suicide rates in all levels of sports competition. Since 2005, NFL players are 48 percent less likely to commit suicide, and similar results were found among NCAA football athletes. Even at the youth level (grades 7-12), an increase in sports participation leads to a decrease in depression by 25 percent and suicidal ideation decreases by 12 percent (Gangwich). During her talk, she even debunks Dr. Omalu and his opinions by stating that CTE is in fact not the problem: the depositions of tau are a response to injury in the brain, which can be repaired over time. It has even been found that CTE is not directly related to dementia at all, according to Dr. Samadani’s various studies as well as JAMA Neurology’s studies. In fact, says Dr. Samadani, according to a study done by the Mayo Clinic, 438 high school football players were followed for fifty years alongside members of the chorus, glee club, and band, and they were no more likely to experience dementia than their counterparts.

Dr. Samadani repeatedly hammered down the fact that any MRI of a child’s brain will show changes over the course of a football season, and this is completely normal. Even the brains of young people who don’t play football will change, because all brains atrophy over time. It’s a part of life. Dr. Samadani believes that the benefits of high school football highly outweigh the risks of possible injury (brain related or not). She states that, “football attracts kids that normally wouldn’t be able to play sports because there are close to 30 different positions. All skill and size types are needed.” She also presents the fact that the average BMI of a high school football player is twenty-six, a number considered at risk. If these kids had no sport to play, she says, they would likely develop a variety of different health related issues including obesity and diabetes (Wis. Football Coaches Assoc.).

Overall, the decision of whether teens should be playing high school football comes down to relationships between coaches and athletic trainers and how well a particular high school follows the American Academy of Pediatrics Recommendation.[3] Before making a decision about participation in the sport, parents and students alike should be focusing in on their football program’s willingness to follow the recommendation and perspectives of health professionals brought forward above.

Works Cited

“Dr. Uzma Samadani – WFCA Clinic” Youtube, Wisconsin Football Coaches Association, 24 Aug. 2017, www.wifca.org/news_article/show/787585?referrer_id=489026. 11/06/2017

Breslow, J. (2013). The Autopsy That Changed Football. FRONTLINE, 6 Oct. 2013, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the -autopsy-that-changed-football. 11/06/2017

Giles, Matt. “What Happens To A Football Player’s Brain During A Concussion?” Popular Science, 5 Feb. 2016, www.popsci.com/what-happens-to-football-players-brain-during-concussion. 11/06/2017.

Kelly Laura. “‘Concussion’ Doctor Says High School Football Is Child Abuse.” The Washington Times, , 8 Aug. 2017, www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/8/concussion-doctor-says-high-school-football-child-/. 11/06/2017.

Landesman, Peter, director. Concussion. Colombia Pictures, 2015. 11/06/2017

Landry, Dr. (2015). The American Academy of Pediatrics tackles youth football injuries: New recommendations advise better training and enforcement of rules around tackling, and skilled athletic trainers to reduce injuries among young athletes. ScienceDaily, 25 Oct. 2015, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151025010631.htm 11/06/2017

Lincoln, Andrew E., et al. “Trends in Concussion Incidence in High School Sports: A Prospective 11-Year Study.” American Journal of Sports Medicine, vol. 39, no. 5, 2011, pp. 958-963. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1177/036546510392326. 11/06/2017.

National Federation of State High School Associations. “Participation Statistics.” NFHS, Sept. 2009, www.nfhs.org/ParticipationStatistics/PDF/Participation%20Survey%20History%20Book.pdf. 11/06/2017.

Pirscoveanu, DFV, e. (2017). Tau protein in neurodegenerative diseases -a review. PubMed- NCBI. [online] Ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. pp. 1141-1150, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29556602. 11/06/2017

Strong, Colby. “Evolution of the Football Helmet: Improving Safety Through the Years.” Neurology Reviews, vol. 21, no. 6, June 2013, p. 32. 11/06/2017.

Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association. “Football History.” Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association, www.wiaawi.org/Sports/Football/History.aspx. 11/06/2017

Writer’s Memo

With any creative piece that I have ever been asked to complete, I have always looked to draw on things that reflect the person I am today or why I am the way I am. When researching topics to write about for my argumentative long assignment, I dove deep into the world that has inspired me to pursue the career I am diving into. With the help of my dad (my hometown’s head football coach), my brother (a graduating star linebacker), and the Wisconsin Football Coaches Association, I compiled the resources needed to put forth a strong argument for the world of high school football, so much so that my father actually presents this piece to wary parents looking for reassurance when enrolling their son in a football program. When writing this piece, I learned how to weave my way through feedback from my peers and English 100 teacher, and I was able to learn more about myself in the process. I learned how powerful my research can be, influencing those back home and here in Madison and how I must keep pursuing the subject of concussions in sport to further educate the people in the sports world. Looking back, I would revise a few details and some of the wording in my essay to make it seem more fluid throughout. As a young writer, never be afraid to go back after you’ve submitted your work to revise and make the piece longer than the page limit to further educate and pursue your audience; because in the end, your writing should have no limits!

Instructor’s Memo

Carrie Schuettpelz

We find ourselves at a moment in time where students are, unfortunately, quite well versed on the issue of football concussions. This was certainly the case in my English 100 classes where, each semester, I’d typically receive at least a few essays on the subject. In my class, the first major assignment was a personal narrative that included a broader “societal issue,” and so it was common for former high school football players to reflect on their time in the sport. What made Ally’s first paper so unique, though, was that it was from the perspective of someone whose entire family was involved in high school football–including her father, who coached the team. Ally had thus spent her entire life as a keen observer of the game.

The second major assignment of the term was to take that same “societal issue” and make it the subject of research. Ally and I discussed how to turn her observational lens from her first paper into more of a firsthand account, which she did beautifully. I really admire how she was able to weave in the story of her father and brother–through her own personal observation–into the research. I always encourage my students to utilize the “I” voice in their work, and Ally did that with such mastery. Moreover, she managed to turn the state of Wisconsin–her home state–into an important character in the narrative. Ally also did something I had not seen in previous football concussion papers, which was present a “counter-claim.” We are mostly familiar with the reasons why football is dangerous–most notably CTE–but Ally managed to unearth research by Dr. Uzma Samadini about the reasons why young men should be allowed to play the sport, which added dynamism to the issue. Together, these elements made for a paper that was solid in its analysis, deeply rooted in something very personal to the writer, and strongly tied to an issue that is of great concern.

[1] Tau are proteins that clump and clog the brain during CTE. Tau cause the death of brain cells associated with mood, emotions, and executive functioning. (Pirscoveanu, 1141)

[2] Mike Webster died of a heart attack at the age of 50 on September 24th, 2002. He had a Hall of Fame pro football career, played for the Steelers (1974-88) and the Chiefs (1989-90) for a total of 17 years. In the last years of his life he was substantially depressed, had multiple physical problems, and financial and marital misfortunes. (Breslow, 2)

[3] The American Academy of Pediatrics Recommendation for High School Football Programs states: 1) follow the rules, 2) reduce contact drills/practices, 3) neck strengthening, 4) tackle technique improvement, 5) proper care on demand. (Landry, 2)

The Boys Who Fall: The Impacts of Concussions on High School Football Players by Allison Siegert is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Refuting Capital Punishment in America

McKailah Strang

Ray Krone came home after finishing his mail route on New Year’s Eve, 1991, planning a fun evening to ring in the new year with some of his friends. His night would go nothing as planned. Instead, a dozen police officers were waiting in his driveway. Ray was immediately apprehended and charged for the kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder of a 26-year-old woman who worked at the local bar. Ray is an African-American man. The murdered woman was white. (The significance of race will be discussed later in this essay.) At trial, he was convicted of first-degree murder and kidnapping; he was later sentenced to death (Krone).

The Death Penalty Information Center showed that at the time of Ray’s sentencing, around 80% of Americans supported the death penalty and saw no problem with this conviction. This position would argue that Krone committed an act of murder; therefore, he should be executed. However, Ray Krone was wrongly convicted. An innocent, honorable man was to be deprived of his life because of an act of injustice he didn’t even commit. On April 8th, 2002, after serving 5 years on death row and another 5 years waiting for his innocence to be proven, Ray was exonerated (Krone). His case is one of the many that readily shows the flaws in the legal system and problems with capital punishment, such as innocence, lack of access to adequate counsel, racial disparities, and deterrence, which I will further explore to prove that the death penalty should be illegal in the United States.

Ray Krone is not the only person to be exonerated after serving time on death row. In fact, he was the 100th person, and as of 2016, there have been 156 death row exonerees (Dejong 325). Published in the scholarly journal, Criminal Justice Ethics, Hon-Lam Hi’s research from the 1980s showed that around 3.3 to 5% of all convictions in U.S. capital rape-murder cases were erroneous. So, since erroneous convictions are inevitable because humans make mistakes, is it acceptable to execute around 4 innocent people out of every 100 executions?

Although this question seems to only have one morally acceptable answer, it can be answered in two very different ways, either using Li’s principle of contractualism or the opposing principle of utilitarianism. People who hold the view of utilitarianism agree with the death penalty, as this position holds that if the benefits of an act outweigh its harm, then the act is permissible. In answering the question, the principle of utilitarianism would state that the cost of killing these 4 individuals is outweighed by the benefits the community receives for the incapacitation of the other 96 murderers and the deterrence of further crime. However, if one of those 4 people were you, a friend, or a family member, would you still hold a utilitarian perspective? It is very doubtful. The more intuitive reasoning, contractualism, holds that an act is permissible if and only if it is justifiable to everyone affected by it. This view would say that the killing of these 4 wrongfully convicted persons cannot be justified to the innocent people, their friends, or their families. Therefore, the act of killing is not permissible (Li 152). In itself, according to this view, rates of erroneous convictions, leading to possible executions of innocent people, are enough to make the death penalty unjustifiable and morally unacceptable.

Along with the way that Ray’s innocence reveals moral issues regarding the death penalty, his status as an indigent defendant raises significant legal issues. Indigent defendants do not have enough money to pay for representation in court, so, per the 6th Amendment, “the accused shall enjoy the right to . . . have the assistance of counsel for his defense,” meaning the state had to provide an attorney for Ray (U.S. Constitution). The 1984 case Strickland v. Washington extends the 6th Amendment because the Supreme Court ruled that defendants in capital cases have the right to effective representation that meets an “objective standard of reasonableness.” However, little pay is given to defense attorneys who are hired to represent indigent defendants, and, in most cases, this attracts the least skilled and unexperienced attorneys.

A large number of attorneys assigned to represent the accused have little to no experience in criminal law, let alone litigating capital cases. They have no idea as to how they should proceed with the cases, which leads to a large number of death row sentences. In 1999, an extensive investigation into capital punishment in Illinois was conducted by the Chicago Tribune, and it found that 33 defendants who were sentenced to death were represented by attorneys who had been, or were later, disbarred or suspended for conduct that was “incompetent, unethical, or criminal” (Dejong 329). Moreover, a 2002 study conducted by the Texas Defender Service found that Texas death row inmates face a 1 in 3 chance of being executed without having had proper case investigations or a competent attorney to argue for them (Death Penalty Info Center). Although the Strickland v. Washington case should eliminate the problem many indigent defendants have with inadequate representation, the ruling stated that the defendant has to prove ineffective counsel by showing that in absence of this assistance, the results would have been different. And here lies the problem many indigent defenders have: not only is this objective standard of reasonableness quite ambiguous and hard to prove, but the state hires these attorneys, so it is highly unlikely states will rule that their provided counsel is ineffective. Therefore, indigent defenders in capital cases are not fully protected by the 6th Amendment, yet another reason the death penalty is an unjust punishment.

Another major issue with imposing the death penalty is racial disparity, an aspect relevant to Ray’s case. Section one of the 14th Amendment states that “No state shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” (U.S. Constitution). For many years now, some people have believed problems with racial discrimination in the U.S. are nearing an end, yet evidence is readily available in our criminal justice system that these problems persist. A U.S. military study conducted from 1984 to 2005 examined all of the 105 potentially death-eligible cases during that time. Fifteen of those cases resulted in a death sentence, and from the data, evidence of three types of racial disparities was found. The most common of the race-based effects is known as “race of the victim discrimination,” which shows that capital-offense charging and sentencing decisions are applied more punitively in cases involving white victims than in similarly situated cases involving victims of color. Of the 15 cases that received the death penalty, 14 had white victims.

The second form of disparity is known as “minority-defendant/white-victim” discrimination. In these cases, there is more punitive treatment when a case involves a minority defendant and a white victim than any other race combination. Nine of the 15 executions showed this form of racial discrimination. The last identified disparity is known as “main effect” racial discrimination. In these cases, there was more punitive treatment with a minority defendant than a white defendant, and of the 15 people sentenced to death, 10 were minorities (Baldus 1229, 1265).

Although this study was conducted over a decade ago, similar trends appear in capital cases today. Since the death penalty was declared constitutional in 1976 with the Supreme Court ruling in Gregg v Georgia, the “race of the victim discrimination” has been very prominent. According to Baldus, only around 50% of the victims in murder cases overall are white, but this percentage is much higher for death penalty cases, around 76%. In Ray’s case, if the woman who was murdered had not been white, it would have been much less likely that the prosecution against him would have sought the death penalty as a punishment. All these stats reveal continuing signs of racial disparities in the criminal justice system, giving another reason the death penalty should be illegal. As Ray’s case sadly demonstrates, the phrase, “equal protection of the laws,” from the 14th Amendment does not rightfully and equally protect racial minorities in our country.

As mentioned earlier, at the time of Ray’s conviction, around 80% of the population agreed with capital punishment. Most advocates supported it because they believed a combination of the following three factors: it is a sufficient deterrent, it is a form of proper retribution, or it is less costly than life in prison. However, there are proven flaws with each of these factors.

First of all, capital punishment has not been statistically or scientifically proven to be a deterrent of future crime. Many criminals act on impulse and do not consider the consequences before committing a crime. As stated in Charles Manski and John Pepper’s article, published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, “the outcomes of counterfactual policies are unobservable” (Manski and Pepper 124-26). Referring to deterrence, Manski and Pepper attribute this statement to the research that has been conducted around the effectiveness of deterrence. The research has found vastly different results for this effectiveness, due to the biased assumptions researchers hold about deterrence. In turn, these individual assumptions about deterrence, as either seeing deterrence as effective or ineffective, have impacted the findings. In both cases, the results sway toward the beliefs of the particular researchers, as the researchers are cognitively biased, failing to account for factors that may stop them from reaching their desired outcome. Furthermore, Manski and Pepper argue there is too much ambiguity to properly measure the deterrent effects of capital punishment, so a conclusion cannot be drawn to determine if the death penalty increases or decreases homicide rates (Manski and Pepper 124-26).

The main reason we, as a society, seek to use the death penalty is not because of deterrence, but for retribution purposes. It is in our nature to want revenge against someone who wronged us, and the death penalty, as an ultimate punishment, seems like a proper way to make criminals suffer. Nonetheless, this is very hypocritical. We value human life and believe murder is wrong, yet we murder criminals to supposedly uphold our beliefs against murder; but two wrongs do not make a right. Ray would also argue that the death penalty should not be used as a form of retribution because – after his experience of 10 years locked up in prison – he found that many convicts would rather die than spend the rest of their lives, slowly rotting away in their cells. To them, death is the easy way out (Krone).

Overall, the death penalty is not morally correct or as strong a form of punishment as life in prison. Life in prison, contrary to many beliefs, is less costly than seeking the death penalty. Many people look at the wrong stats when deciding which punishment costs the government less in tax dollars. They see that the drugs used for lethal injections, the most used form of execution, only cost a total of $346.51 per execution, while life in prison costs around $1 million per person (Banner 295). However, litigating capital cases and reaching the point of execution, takes a lot of time and resources. Capital cases may take many years, as they must go through trial and, most times, several appeals before reaching a final sentencing decision. In capital cases, most of the accused are indigent defenders so the government has to pay for the defense attorneys, along with the judges, prosecutors, other court employees, and expert witnesses. After all that, the price of obtaining a conviction and execution can range anywhere from $2.5 to $5 million (Banner 295). So not only is the death penalty immoral, it also costs citizens and the government a large amount of money for such an ineffective form of punishment.

Today, 31 states, Washington D.C., the U.S. Military, and the federal government have authorized the use of the death penalty within their jurisdictions. Since 1976, a total of 1,465 executions have been performed (Death Penalty Info Center). I am proposing we ban the death penalty as a form punishment and make it illegal throughout the Unites States, as many developed nations have done before us.

In proposing this, I am not saying we should allow criminals to get away with murder and remain in society. Rather, I believe we should sentence these criminals to life in prison without parole. This form of punishment allows for retribution and eliminates major legal and discriminatory issues that arise in capital cases. Of those 1,465 persons that have been executed, we are not sure how many of them have had their rights violated or were wrongly convicted. In the words of the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, “no matter how careful courts are, the possibility of perjured testimony and human error remain all too real. We have no way of judging how many innocent persons have been executed, but we can be certain that there were some” (qtd in Li 152). Ray Krone could have easily been one of these innocent persons executed. Due to all the legal issues that arise and the amount of potential error in capital cases, which suggests we cannot apply the death penalty with fairness and certainty, the death penalty should be illegal.

Works Cited

Baldus, David C., et al. “Racial Discrimination in the Administration of the Death Penalty: The

Experience of the United States Armed Forces (1984-2005).” Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, vol. 101, no. 4, 2011, pp. 1227-1335. Accessed 18 Nov. 2017.

Banner, Stuart. The Death Penalty: An American History, Harvard UP, 2002, pp. 267-295.

Death Penalty Information Center, www.deathpenalty.org. Accessed 20 Nov. 2017.

DeJong, Christina, et al. Criminal Justice in America. Cengage Learning, 2016, pp. 323-332.

Krone, Ray. “Innocence and the Death Penalty,” Innocence Project, 7 Nov. 2017, Education Building, Madison, WI. Guest Lecture.

Li, Hon-Lam. “Contractualism and the Death Penalty.” Criminal Justice Ethics, vol. 36, no. 2,      Aug. 2017, pp. 152-182. Accessed 20 Nov. 2017.

Manski, Charles and John Pepper. “Deterrence and the Death Penalty: Partial Identification

Analysis Using Repeated Cross Sections.” Journal of Quantitative Criminology, vol. 29, no. 1, Mar. 2013, pp. 123-141. Accessed 21 Nov. 2017.

U.S. Constitution. Amend. 6 and 14. Accessed 21 Nov. 2017.

Instructor’s Memo

By Katie Schaag

McKailah’s excellent essay is grounded in her passionate conviction that the death penalty is unjust and should be illegal. Mirroring her initial conversion to this position based upon hearing the personal story of a wrongfully convicted man, she opens her essay with his story to persuade the reader in the same fashion. She builds upon this powerful emotional appeal with a skillfully executed marshalling of evidence, combining pathos, ethos, and logos to thoroughly refute oppositional claims and appeal to the reader’s own sense of justice. After clarifying her advocacy of contractualism vs. utilitarianism as a foundational ethical framework, McKailah goes on to demonstrate that capital punishment is illegitimate because of the criminal justice system’s racial discrimination and failure to uphold the constitutional right to competent legal counsel. She then skillfully refutes arguments about deterrence, retribution, and economic cost-effectiveness, supplementing the appeal to justice with additional appeals to the priorities of proponents of the death penalty, an audience-centered approach designed to persuade readers and listeners who do not currently agree with her position.

McKailah wrote her essay in the context of our class’s focus on multimodal digital rhetorics. Following a first sequence on narrative visual essays and second sequence on informative audio podcasts, students synthesized what they had learned about verbal, visual, and sonic rhetoric with an additional focus on embodied rhetoric as they created a live multimedia presentation paired with a formal analytical essay. In addition to brainstorming, researching, drafting, developing, conferencing, peer critiquing, and revising their essay, students simultaneously planned their live presentation by adapting their formal paper to a script, finding images and building a slideshow, practicing embodied techniques for public speaking such as eye contact, voice projection, enunciation, and physical stance, and rehearsing with peers. Because the live presentation component emphasized writing for the ear and using images to persuade, considering the audience became an even more integral part of the writing process.

Deftly moving back and forth between her written essay and her live script—letting one inform the other throughout her writing process while maintaining an awareness of their differences—McKailah managed to craft an essay that performs beautifully on the page for the reader as well as for a live audience. In her script, she carefully built in precise pauses, slide clicks, and gestures to strategically time and pace her illumination of the argument. Her careful planning and rehearsing paid off with a highly effective live presentation, combining her eloquent script with a visually persuasive slideshow and strong physical presence. This attention to timing and clarity also informed her written paper, as she considered the reader’s pathway through the text.

Throughout McKailah’s drafting and revision process, I was impressed with her initiative, strength of conviction, intellectual curiosity, thoughtfulness, and ability to strategically and elegantly organize her claims in order to achieve the maximum impact. While she never wavered in her main argument, she remained open to feedback from me and her peers. Because of her thorough research, she gathered more evidence than could fit within the scope of the paper or talk, so part of her revision strategy involved winnowing the evidence to only include what was absolutely essential to her argument. The death penalty is a long-debated controversial topic that is difficult to approach in a nuanced way, but McKailah manages to breathe new life into the issue with her strong voice, nuanced critique of the opposition, skillful weaving of different perspectives to move beyond the pro/con stalemate, and compassionate appeal to prioritize outlawing the death penalty as a key twenty-first century issue.

Writer’s Memo

Once my professor assigned this argumentative essay, I immediately knew what I wanted my topic to be. In my Sociology class, Criminal Justice in America, we had just begun discussing the death penalty, and we had also been given the opportunity to listen to Ray Krone speak about his experience on death row. Krone was an innocent man who was dragged through hell and back, as he was falsely accused of the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a woman in his community. Krone fought for years to clear his name, and he never gave up. He was such an inspirational individual to hear from. He shed so much light onto the problems of our Criminal Justice system and was, shockingly, one of the reasons I have altered my views to oppose the death penalty. With all the recent and interesting insight into capital punishment, I thought it would be a very controversial and relevant topic to further research, argue, and present on. I decided to ask the question Is the death penalty a fair/just punishment and should it be legal in the United States? Mainly, the purpose of my piece was to draw my reader’s attention to this relevant, societal issue and persuade them to believe the death penalty is an unfair punishment and should be illegal.

In starting my essay, my strategy was to begin researching and looking for credible sources by using key words, based on some of the views and problems my class identified, dealing with the death penalty. Upon finding a significant amount of information both for and against the death penalty, I took detailed notes on each source so I could decide how I was going to argue, assemble a conversation, and refute the opposition to my argument. Once I composed my source notes and annotated bibliography, I made a list of major points I wanted my essay to touch on. Using that and my annotated bibliography, I was able to piece my information together and create a strong argument, opposing the death penalty.

Moreover, this assignment was not solely an argumentative essay. In fact, we paired this formal essay with a live presentation, 10 minutes in length. After my paper was finished, I realized it was too long. Without edits, it would exceed the maximum time period we were allotted to present, so I needed to put a large amount of time into revising my script. The revision part was undoubtably the most difficult for me because I would not have placed the specific information in my paper if I did not believe it would further my argument. Nonetheless, I had to make major modifications. To do this, I received feedback from my peers and instructor. After the feedback and my own revisions, I was able to realize that incorporating stronger points opposing the death penalty was more efficient. This helped me eliminate extra information. I was then able to cut down my paper without taking away from my argument as a whole. If I learned anything from this process, it is that editing is important. Individual revisions and feedback from others is a great help when trying to strengthen an argument. Once I had the revisions done for both my paper and live presentation, I had a script that was sufficient to help the audience conceptualize my key points and main argument.

Refuting Capital Punishment in America by McKailah Strang is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Homework Podcast

Sophia Madore

Writer’s Memo for Homework Podcast

Hello, English 100 Students:

“Make your homework assignments fun!”

I was given this advice right before I left for my freshman year of college. Assignments in college demand time and effort. The beautiful thing about many projects in college is that you can make them your own and be creative—that is what will make your projects more fun. If you have fun, most likely your audience will too.

When I found out that Portfolio 2 was going to involve making a podcast, I didn’t know what to think. Making a podcast sounded like a complicated task, and I had never made one before. A podcast should be interesting, fun, and informative so that people want to listen to it. How in the world was I supposed to wrap these things all into one final product? Fortunately, I was on the speech team at my high school. By being involved in this club, I developed skills of strategic communication (e.g. learning what words to emphasize when presenting). I was excited to see how I could apply the skills that I learned on my high school speech team to my podcast.

The first thing that I struggled with was picking a topic. I wanted my podcast to talk about how different countries have different education systems. I interviewed my house fellow from China to try and find a topic that I could talk about in my podcast. It fascinated me when she talked about how different her education was in China compared to the education of United States. The problem was, there are so many components to education! I had the choice to talk about uniforms, cultural differences, religion, teachers, homework, or standardized tests.

As I started to narrow down my topics of interest, I remembered a video on Facebook that I saw about Finland, where students are not assigned homework. The video talked about how Finland youth have no homework, yet the nation is ranked the number one country for education. Not having homework—this was my childhood dream! But the idea of “no homework” didn’t make sense to me. This confusion led me to pick the topic of homework. I wanted to find out how homework impacts learning in various countries. It is a bonus that I just happen to know a lot about the topic of homework; I have been doing homework for the past fifteen years of my life!

My research question became: “How does homework impact learning within a country?” I was personally interested in diving into this assignment. Picking a topic that you want to work a lot with will make the podcast more enjoyable for you

My friends were happy to help me with this project. For the first draft of the script, I had my friend, Sam, be my co-host. I wanted different voices in my podcast so that the listener didn’t just have to listen to me talk the whole time. This may sound mean, but I recorded some of the podcast with him and he was very monotone. While I was editing the beginning of my podcast one of my other friends, Kyle, came in the room and said that he had created podcasts in high school. He also used to be in musicals and had plenty of practice using his voice to entertain an audience. He really wanted to help me make my podcast better.

After some debate, I let him help me. I decided to rerecord my podcast with Kyle. My other friend, Sam, just didn’t have the voice for a podcast that would capture people’s attention. He didn’t really put emotion into reading the script, and it sounded like he was just reading. Kyle had spunk and a fun tone of voice. By changing the co-host in the second draft of my script, I came to the realization that if the people in the podcast aren’t having fun, the listener won’t either. The sound of the voice is so important when creating a podcast or when speaking in front of an audience.

When I put my podcast together, I tried to come up with fun ways to say things. I was familiar with writing for the ear, I had to write speeches for competitions back in high school. I wanted the listener to gain knowledge about homework around the world, but also laugh at jokes and want to learn more about the topic. I feel as if the listener will remember the information more if they laugh at what is being said.

Podcasts are made to be listened to and must be written for the ear. Having many voices and transitions in my project makes my podcast about homework (a topic people usually think is boring) more entertaining to listen to. When writing a script for a podcast, think about what you find entertaining. What would you like to listen to? Find a balance between fact and fun and think outside of the box.

Instructor Memo by Chrissy Widmayer

for Sophia Madore’s Podcast

For the second sequence of our class, students made informative podcasts. The podcast project followed our first sequence on personal narrative—after having the students focus on themselves, I intended the podcast unit to help them move outside of themselves to engage others in a new way. The first assignment in the sequence was to conduct an interview with someone they considered different from them and then use some of the topics that arose in that interview to form the basis for deeper research on a topic. Sophia chose to interview her friend Fei, who spoke eloquently about the differences in education around the world. Sophia, too, was fascinated by these educational differences. She initially struggled to narrow her topic down because education is a big field with many interesting features, but in the end, she settled on homework differences around the world.

It became immediately clear throughout the sequence how many aspects of good composition that weren’t as obviously important when writing a narrative became significant in composing podcasts. Specifically, making podcasts and “writing for the ear” required the students to always keep their audience in mind. Listening to our podcasts at the end of the sequence helped everyone see how important it was to make a podcast interesting and compelling by writing for the ear, and Sophia’s podcast was integral to demonstrating how effective writing for the ear can be. Sophia was particularly successful in deploying “sonic strategies” and making bold choices to create a captivating podcast. While the information might not be groundbreaking or compelling to most people by itself, her performance and inclusion of a co-host allowed her to play with vocal inflection and use sound effects, reactions, and jokes to lighten the topic. In essence, Sophia’s choices made her podcast have “texture” that would be otherwise lacking from straight-up informative communication, allowing her to keep the listener’s interest.

Though Sophia struggled with narrowing her topic, her commitment to revising and rethinking is evident in this project. Sophia showed a dogged determination and enthusiasm to make this podcast as effective as it could be. In the end, Sophia’s final podcast not only impressed me, but also blew away her classmates. Sophia’s podcast’s success is a testament to the revision process, and a strong demonstration on how one can engage an audience through careful rhetorical choices.

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Members of the UW community can access the podcast through the English 100 channel on Kaltura.

Homework Podcast by Sophia Madore is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.