Part One and Two: P1

Part One: P1

Learning how to summarize is a life skill that every person needs to know. Whether on paper or in a face to face conversation, summarizing is a crucial part in expressing ones’ ideas. Knowing how to summarize correctly will benefit me throughout the year so I can recap main points of a story while expressing my own opinions in an understandable way for my audience. To be able to summarize to the best of my abilities, I need to be able to think critically. But thinking critically goes beyond just brain storming as a writer. Critical thinking is just as useful in everyday life. Thinking critically can help one acknowledge why we are interested and trust in the things we do, or why some things seem to be more persuasive than others. This can be anything from an author expressing his opinions, backed by facts, to an advertisement persuading you to believe in their product. In both scenarios its important to understand what is causing us to think the way we do so we can better asses situations, and know what is true, and what is not. Being able to critically think has helped me to better analyze both writing and authorship because now I realize the purpose of the authors message and not just the content. I see this a lot with adds supporting a campaign or trying to persuade one to believe or buy something. When I see posters of athletes with a PowerAde bottle next to them, the add is implying that if you drink PowerAde you will be just as good as the athlete in the picture. Or the commercials with dogs and sad music, as a use of pathos, to drawl emotion from their audience to satisfy their ultimate purpose; which in this case is to get you to donate money. Thinking critically goes past just perceiving items as a viewer, but causes you to actually analyze and understand why you view them the way you do.

Part Two: P1

After reading “Should College Athletes be Paid? Why They Already Are”, Seth Davis, a reporter for Sports Illustrated, contradicts a statement written by Branch, in the Atlantic. Branch believes college athletes are not getting paid at all, by saying, “Student athletes generate billions of dollars for universities and private companies while earning nothing for themselves.” (Branch). Davis goes on to argue against this by providing multiple variations of how college athletes are being paid, just in different ways. He explains how they earn free tuition while being provided housing, food, textbooks, and academic tutoring. Once Davis proves how college athletes are being paid he looks at a new proposition on if they should be paid more for what they do. When discussing this he looks at if it is even possible for colleges to have the revenue to channel in a salary for these athletes. Although the SEC and Big Ten accumulate almost 2 billion dollars a year, Davis reports “…88 percent of the top football programs lose money for their universities…”(Davis 300). This shows us how most colleges would not even be able to pay athletes unless they were to make a contract with the player to receive a portion of the athletes’ salary once a pro down the road. Davis announces this is what will turn College sports into a business, and a very slippery slope. I agree with Davis’ position on how college athletes are already getting paid in a sufficient way. For these reason I do not think college athletes should be paid outside of normal scholarship funds. Because of scholarships, these elite athletes have the opportunity to make millions of dollars down the road while receiving an education for free. This is the same for any student whether athlete or not, because anyone can receive a scholarship for grades and turn that into a successful career. College athletes are just receiving their money by using a different skill set.