Summary: Kamenetz proposes an argument about the need for change in young adult’s circumstances and how the need can be met by student activism. She hits on problems such as college debt and credit card debt. She gives many examples of how student activism has brought about change
Claim: I believe Kamentez’s essay “waking up and taking charge” lacks some credible quality because it is outdated, she provides examples that could be interpreted different ways, and she sounds a little biased at times.
hw 9/17:
-My first response to “Waking up and Taking Charge” is that it sounds like it was written in the early 2000s because those are the years they reference. If this is the case, then I wonder how reliable the information is. Since then have there been more student led programs that fight for these issues? If so, were the results the same? I believe that these issues have been more addressed at least since this time period. The awareness of it has definitely risen, as the prices have gotten even higher and higher and many more college students in America started going into large amounts of debt, it has become an issue that any college freshman knows about and can not ignore.
- I definitely agree with the point that college students put large amounts of effort into rallying for really large scale international problems but they don’t put nearly as much of an effort into rallying for their own financial wellness. She makes it sound like these international campaigns are a waste of time and that students need to be fighting for their own security instead of focusing on others’ issues. So I don’t necessarily agree with how she worded that part. I believe these two kind of campaigns are completely independent of each other.
- Overall, I think she does a good job of showing the effectiveness of student activism. She provides many examples of students in America and in other countries rallying for things to be fair and willing to talk at a table. She shows results of this: officials have brought in more state budgets for schooling and other real effective changes for the trajectory of a college graduates’ financial wellness.
-After our class discussion and our reading, I learned what a qualifier is. The article does contain many of them, which makes me trust and and appreciate it a little more. “Even if a legislative reform is years in coming, a vocal activist campaign about the dangers of student loans could accomplish a lot,”.
Summary of analysis: The essay is outdated and this changes the effectiveness of the points that she makes. I think the awareness of these issues has gone up immensely since back then. Some of the examples she provides are weak. Her example of how students are campaigning for the wrong things is a solid point but she fails to mention that what students campaign for are independent of each other.
Rhetorical appeals examples: were they effective:
Style: Rolled over by greedy middle-aged and older people” page 408
Character: “If you’re like me, you’re a little impatient with the political sphere of action” page 408
Emotion: “Of we young people don’t march on our own behalf, who will march for us?” page 410
Logic: “End 29% annual interest rates so that twenty something earning $12,000 a year are no longer profitable customers for $10,000 lines of credit” page 409
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