Breakthrough Writer: 1A Agenda 2-20-19: Cooked Lesson #2: Self-Pity in Prison, Signal Phrases, Writing Introductions, Comma Splices, In-Text Citations

Schedule to March 4, Essay 1 Due Date:

2-13 Cooked, read 1-60; homework #1 due: Write a 3-paragraph typed essay that explains 3 ways Henderson’s childhood shaped his personality. Comma splice lesson, writing introductions

2-18 Holiday

2-20 Cooked, read 61-200; homework #2 due: Write a 3-paragraph typed essay that analyzes the causes of Henderson’s initial self-pity in prison. Signal phrase lesson.

2-25 Cooked, read 201 to end; homework #3 due: Write a 3-paragraph essay that analyzes the proposition that Henderson’s post-prison struggles were more difficult than his in-prison struggles. Sentence fragment lesson.

2-27 Peer Edit; bring typed draft for your team members.

3-4 Essay #1 due to be uploaded on turnitin; go over Essay 2 options. Read Debra Dickerson’s “The Great White Way.” Also read Vox article “11 Ways Race Isn’t Real.” We will also watch the viral video from Childish Gambino, “This Is America.” Homework #4 is to read the short story “The Finkelstein 5” from Friday Black and to write a 3-paragraph essay that explains the racial tension and injustice in the story.

Signal Phrases Used for In-Text Citations

About 80% of your essay should be your writing and 20% should be quoted, paraphrased, and summarized material.

We use signal phrases to let reader know we are quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing.

Here is an exhaustive list of signal phrases.

Adapted from A Writer’s Reference with Writing in the Disciplines 7th ed. by Diana Hacker and Nancy Sommers

How can I use them?

Below are some guidelines and tips for using signal phrases.

Signal phrases usually include the author’s name but can also include the author’s job title or background (“reporter for Washington Post,” “researcher,” “senator,” “scholar,” and so on) and/or the title of the source.
Signal phrases usually come at the beginning of a sentence before the source material, but they can also occur in the middle of a source or at the end.
To avoid monotony and repetition, try to vary both the language and placement of your signal phrases.

According to Maxwell and Hanson,…

As the 2017 IRS report indicates, …

Smith and Johnson state that …

Some scholars have shown…

Legal scholar Terrence Roberts offered a persuasive argument: “….”
Choose a verb that is appropriate to the way you are using your source. Below is a list of verbs that can be used in signal phrases:

acknowledges adds admits affirms agrees answers argues asserts claims comments concedes confirms contends counters counterattacks declares defines denies disputes echoes endorses estimates finds grants illustrates implies insists mentions notes observes predicts proposes reasons recognizes recommends refutes rejects reports responds reveals speculates states suggests surmises warns writes

4 Steps of MLA In-Text Citations

You need to do four things when you quote, paraphrase, or summarize from a text.

Step One: The first thing you need to do is introduce the material with a signal phrase.

Make sure to use a variety of signal phrases to introduce quotations and paraphrases.

Step Two: The quote, paraphrase, or summary you use.

Step Three: The parenthetical citation, which comes after the cited material.

Kwon points out that the Fourth Amendment does not give employees any protections from employers’ “unreasonable searches and seizures” (6).

In the cultural website One-Way Street, Richard Prouty observes that Lasdun's "men exist in a fixed point of the universe, but they have no agency" (para. 7).

Step Four: Analyze your cited material. The analysis should be of a greater length than the cited material. Show how the cited material supports your thesis.

Example Set 1

Example Set 2

Example Set 3 Based on Categories PDF

Signal Phrases Examples

“Scientists Are Totally Rethinking Animal Cognition” by Ross Andersen (The Atlantic)

In the West, consciousness was long thought to be a divine gift bestowed solely on humans. Western philosophers historically conceived of nonhuman animals as unfeeling automatons. Even after Darwin demonstrated our kinship with animals, many scientists believed that the evolution of consciousness was a recent event. They thought the first mind sparked awake sometime after we split from chimps and bonobos. In his 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes argued that it was later still. He said the development of language led us, like Virgil, into the deep cognitive states capable of constructing experiential worlds.

“Welfare for Those Unwilling to Work? It’s Not as Crazy as You Think” by Christine Emba (Washington Post)

As journalist Annie Lowrey, whose book “Give People Money” surveyed basic income programs around the world, points out, the United States is distinguished both by its exaltation of self-sufficiency and its unique racial divide. As it turns out, racism makes it hard to improve the safety net: Research shows that whites are less likely to support welfare programs when they’re told that blacks might benefit, even if they themselves are receiving social support. In fact, this was a flaw in the original New Deal: Agricultural and domestic laborers, most of whom were black, were purposefully excluded from many of the New Deal’s most important provisions.

“70,000 Years of Human History in 400 Pages” by Michael Saler (The Nation)

Through the ubiquity of such tools, scholars and laypeople alike are slowly being acclimatized to thinking in the long term, an outlook encouraged by Jo Guldi and David Armitage in The History Manifesto (2014). They argue that an emphasis on what the historian Fernand Braudel called the longue durée back in 1958 is now the approach best suited to a world awash in data of extended times and climes. Critics of The History Manifesto reasonably point out that while Big and Deep may be appealing, even seductive, size matters: Extra-large will not fit all, and specific historical questions will always determine the scope and method of investigation. Yet the existence of the debate itself (quite lively on Twitter, of all places) is testimony to the reincarnation of Braudel’s project.

“Can You Believe YouTube Caused the Rise in Flat-Earthers?” by Madison Malone Kircher

When YouTube said earlier this year that it would “begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways,” people praised the decision. A certain ex-engineer called it a “historic victory” on Twitter and applauded the company for making such a move, possibly at a great expense to its business model. Which … ha. Among the types of videos YouTube said it would cut back on recommending was flat-Earth content. As in, videos peddling the idea that the Earth is not, as science has repeatedly proven, round. And while I’m all for quashing the spread of truly wrongheaded and potentially dangerous ideas, in the case of flat-Earth indoctrination, the damage has long since been done.

Researchers from Texas Tech University believe they’ve isolated YouTube videos as ground zero for the spread of flat-earth theories, The Guardianreports. Speaking with attendees at the biggest annual gathering of flat-Earthers both in 2017 and 2018, the research team found that people who fell into the world of the flat Earth were often those who were already spending time on YouTube watching other conspiracy videos (about 9/11, for example). This feedback loop — where watching conspiracy videos leads to being shown more conspiracy videos, which in turn motivates creators to make more conspiracy content — was also cited by the above-mentioned ex-YouTube engineer. It’s that circle that has enabled flat-Earth content to thrive. Researchers said one of the most popular videos is a nearly two-hour-long piece that details myriad reasons why, if you’re smart enough to think beyond what has been crammed into your brain by society for your whole life, the Earth is so obviously flat.

Writing Effective Introduction Paragraphs for Your Essays

Weak Introductions to Avoid

One. Don’t use overused quotes and cliches (long list of cliches):

“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

“To be or not to be, that is the question.”

Two. Don’t use pretentious, grandiose, overwrought, bloated, self-regarding, clichéd, unintentionally funny openings:

Since the Dawn of Man, people have sought love and happiness . . .

In today’s society, we see more and more people cocooning in their homes . . .

Man has always wondered why happiness and contentment are so elusive like trying to grasp a bar of sudsy, wet soap.

We have now arrived at a Societal Epoch where we no longer truly communicate with one another as we have embarked upon the full-time task of self-aggrandizement through the social media of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, et al.

In this modern world we face a new existential crisis with the advent of newfangled technologies rendering us razzle-dazzled with the overwhelming possibilities of digital splendor on one hand and painfully dislocated and lonely with our noses constantly rubbing our digital screens on the other.

Since Adam and Eve traipsed across the luxuriant Garden of Eden searching for the juicy, succulent Adriatic fig only to find it withered under the attack of mites, ants, and fruit flies, mankind has embarked upon the quest for the perfect pesticide.

Three. Never apologize to the reader:

Sorry for these half-baked chicken scratch thoughts. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and I didn’t have sufficient time to do the necessary research for the topic you assigned me.

I’m hardly an expert on this subject and I don’t know why anyone would take me seriously, but here it goes.

Forgive me but after over-indulging last night at HomeTown Buffet my brain has been rendered in a mindless fog and the ramblings of this essay prove to be rather incoherent.

Four. Don’t throw a thesis cream pie in your reader’s face.

In this essay I am going to prove to you why Americans will never buy those stupid automatic cars that don’t need a driver. The four supports that will support my thesis are ______________, ______________, _______________, and ________________.

It is my purpose in this essay to show you why I'm correct on the subject of the death penalty. My proofs will be _________, _______, _________, and ___________.

Five. Don’t use a dictionary definition (standard procedure for a sixth grade essay but not college in which you should use more sophisticated methods such as extended definition or expert definitions):

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines metacognition as “awareness or analysis of one’s own learning or thinking process.”

General Principles of an Effective Introduction Paragraph

It piques your readers’ interest (often called a “hook”).

It is compelling.

It is timely.

It is relevant to the human condition and to your topic.

It transitions to your topic and/or thesis.

The Ten Types of Paragraph Introductions

One. Use a blunt statement of fact or insight that captures your readers’ attention:

It's good for us to have our feelings hurt.

You've never really lived until someone has handed you your __________ on a stick.

Men who are jealous are cheaters.

We would assume that jealous men are obsessed with fidelity, but in fact the most salient feature of the jealous man is that he is more often than not cheating on his partner. His jealousy results from projecting his own infidelities on his partner. He says to himself, “I am a cheater and therefore so is she.” We see this sick mentality in the character Dan from Ha Jin’s “The Beauty.” Trapped in his jealousy, Dan embodies the pathological characteristics of learned helplessness evidenced by ___________, _______________, ________________, and _______________.

Rick Wilson, author of "Bob Woodward, Bane of Presidents, Turns His Fire on Cheeto Jesus," opens his essay with cogent language:

Washington, D.C. may soon be littered with the political bodies of people who believed they could spin their way out of the impact of the new Bob Woodward book, Fear. I’ve been to the Washington rodeo enough times to know that Woodward’s methodical, grinding style of investigation doesn’t lend itself to escaping unscathed, especially for bad actors and loose cannons. Hell, as a young Department of Defense aide in 1990, I saw it up close when his book, The Commanders, led to the firing of USAF Chief of Staff Mike Dugan. He had tapes then, as he does now.

This week, it’s Donald Trump’s turn under Woodward’s political electron microscope, and the President’s hissy-fit reaction tells us how close Woodward’s work has struck. Trump knows his White House staff, up to and including his daughter, thinks he’s off the rails, a danger to himself and the country, and unable to execute the duties of a Waffle House manager much less the President of the United States.

John Taylor Gatto opens his essay “Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, and Why” as thus:

I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in the world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn’t seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren’t interested in learning more. And the kids were right: Their teachers were every bit as bored as they were.

Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teacher’s lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there. When asked why they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect. Who wouldn’t get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed upon the children. Who, then, is to blame?

Gatto goes on to argue in his thesis that school trains children to be servants for mediocre (at best) jobs when school should be teaching innovation, individuality, and leadership roles.

Two. Write a definition based on the principles of extended definition (term, class, distinguishing characteristics) or quote an expert in a field of study:

Metacognition is an essential asset to mature people characterized by their ability to value long-term gratification over short-term gratification, their ability to distance themselves from their passions when they’re in a heated emotional state, their ability to stand back and see the forest instead of the trees, and their ability to continuously make assessments of the effectiveness of their major life choices. In the fiction of John Cheever and James Lasdun, we encounter characters that are woefully lacking in metacognition evidenced by _____________, ______________, _____________, and _______________.

According to Alexander Batthanany, member of the Viktor Frankl Institute, logotherapy, which is the search for meaning, “is identified as the primary motivational force in human beings.” Batthanany further explains that logotherapy is “based on three philosophical and psychological concepts: Freedom of Will, Will to Meaning, and Meaning in Life.” Embracing the concepts of logotherapy is vastly more effective than conventional, Freud-based psychotherapy when we consider ________________, ______________, __________________, and ________________.

Three. Use an insightful quotation that has not, to your knowledge anyway, been overused:

George Bernard Shaw once said, “There are two great tragedies in life. The first is not getting what we want. The second is getting it.” Shaw’s insight speaks to the tantalizing chimera, that elusive quest we take for the Mythic She-Beast who becomes are life-altering obsession. As the characters in John Cheever and James Lasdun’s fiction show, the human relationship with the chimera is source of paradox. On one hand, having a chimera will kill us. On the other, not having a chimera will kill us. Cheever and Lasdun’s characters twist and torment under the paradoxical forces of their chimeras evidenced by _____________, _______________, ______________, and __________________.

Four. Use a startling fact to get your reader’s attention:

There are currently more African-American men in prison than there were slaves at the peak of slavery in the United States. We read this disturbing fact in Michelle Alexander’s magisterial The New Jim Crow, which convincingly argues that America’s prison complex is perpetuating the racism of slavery and Jim Crow in several insidious ways.

We read that in the latest study by the Institute for Higher Education, Leadership & Policy at Cal State Sacramento that only 30% of California community college students are transferring or getting their degrees. We have a real challenge in the community college if 70% are falling by the wayside.

8,000 students walk through El Camino's Humanities Building every week. Only 10% will pass English 1A. Only 3% will pass English 1C.

99% of my students acknowledge that most students at El Camino are seriously compromised by their smartphone addiction to the point that the addiction is making them fail or do non-competitive work in college.

Five. Use an anecdote (personal or otherwise) to get your reader’s attention:

When my daughter was one years old and I was changing her diaper, she without warning jammed her thumb into my eye, forcing my eyeball into my brain and almost killing me. After the assault, I suffered migraine headaches for several months and frequently would have to wash milky pus from the injured eye.

One afternoon I was napping under the covers when Lara walked into the room talking on the phone to her friend, Hannah. She didn’t know I was in the room, confusing the mound on the bed with a clump of pillows and blankets. I heard her whisper to Hannah, “I found another small package from eBay. He’s buying watches and not telling me.”

That’s when I thought about getting a post office box.

This could be the opening introduction for an essay topic about “economic infidelity.”

As we read in Stephen King’s essay “Write or Die”:

“Hardly a week after being sprung from detention hall, I was once more invited to step down to the principal’s office. I went with a sinking heart, wondering what new sh** I’d stepped in.”

Six. Use a piece of vivid description or a vivid illustration to get your reader’s attention:

My gym looks like an enchanting fitness dome, an extravaganza of taut, sweaty bodies adorned in fluorescent spandex tights contorting on space-age cardio machines, oil-slicked skin shrouded in a synthetic fog of dry ice colored by the dizzying splash of lavender disco lights. Tribal drum music plays loudly. Bottled water flows freely, as if from some Elysian spring, over burnished flesh. The communal purgation appeals to me. My fellow cardio junkies and I are so self-abandoned, free, and euphoric, liberated in our gym paradise.
But right next to our workout heaven is a gastronomical inferno, one of those all-you-can-eat buffets, part of a chain, which is, to my lament, sprouting all over Los Angeles. I despise the buffet, a trough for people of less discriminating tastes who saunter in and out of the restaurant at all hours, entering the doors of the eatery without shame and blind to all the gastrointestinal and health-related horrors that await them. Many of the patrons cannot walk out of their cars to the buffet but have to limp or rely on canes, walkers, wheelchairs, and other ambulatory aids, for it seems a high percentage of the customers are afflicted with obesity, diabetes, arthritis, gout, hypothalamic lesions, elephantiasis, varicose veins and fleshy tumors. Struggling and wheezing as they navigate across the vast parking lot that leads to their gluttonous sanctuary, they seem to worship the very source of their disease.

In front of the buffet is a sign of rules and conduct. One of the rules urges people to stand in the buffet line in an orderly fashion and to be patient because there is plenty of food for everyone. Another rule is that children are not to be left unattended and running freely around the buffet area. My favorite rule is that no hands, tongues, or other body parts are allowed to touch the food. Tongs and other utensils are to be used at all times. The rules give you an idea of the kind of people who eat there. These are people I want to avoid.

But as I walk to the gym from my car, which shares a parking lot with the buffet patrons, I cannot avoid the nauseating smell of stale grease oozing from the buffet’s rear dumpster, army green and stained with splotches and a seaweed-like crust of yellow and brown grime.

Often I see cooks and dishwashers, their bodies covered with soot, coming out of the back kitchen door to throw refuse into the dumpster, a smoldering receptacle with hot fumes of bacteria and flies. Hunchbacked and knobby, the poor employees are old, weary men with sallow, rheumy eyes and cuts and bruises all over their bodies. I imagine them being tortured deep within the bowels of the fiery kitchen on some Medieval rack. They emerge into the blinding sunshine like moles, their eyes squinting, with their plastic garbage bags twice the size of their bodies slung over their shoulders, and then I look into their sad eyes—eyes that seem to beg for my help and mercy. And just when I am about to give them words of hope and consolation or urge them to flee for their lives, it seems they disappear back into the restaurant as if beckoned by some invisible tyrant.

The above could transition to the topic of people of a certain weight being required to buy three airline tickets for an entire row of seats.

Seven. Summarize both sides of a debate.

America is torn by the national healthcare debate. One camp says it’s a crime that 25,000 Americans die unnecessarily each year from treatable disease and that modeling a health system from other developed countries is a moral imperative. However, there is another camp that fears that adopting some version of universal healthcare is tantamount to stepping into the direction of socialism.

Eight. State a misperception, fallacy, or error that your essay will refute.

Healthcare

Americans against universal or national healthcare are quick to say that such a system is “socialist,” “communist,” and “un-American,” but a close look at their rhetoric shows that it is high on knee-jerk, mindless paroxysms and short on reality. Contrary to the enemies of national healthcare, providing universal coverage is very American and compatible with the American brand of capitalism.

Civil War in America

In the South, it is still common to hear white people speak of the Civil War by denying its connection to the evils of slavery and treason. Rather, it is commonly spouted by white people in the south that the Civil War was the result of "Northern aggression" and "state rights," but these explanations are odious poppycock and are part of America's shameful history of fake news, which afflicts our country like an ugly, festering cancer sore to this very day.

Nine. Make a general statement about your topic.

From Sherry Turkle’s essay “How Computers Change the Way We Think”:

The tools we use to think change the ways in which we think. The invention of written language brought about a radical shift in how we process, organize, store, and transmit representations of the world. Although writing remains our primary information technology, today when we think about the impact of technology on our habits of mind, we think primarily of the computer.

Ten. Pose a question your essay will try to answer:

Why are diet books more and more popular, yet Americans are getting more and more fat?

Why is psychotherapy becoming more and more popular, yet Americans are getting more and more crazy?

Why are the people of Qatar the richest people in the world, yet score at the bottom of all Happiness Index metrics?

Why are courses in the Humanities more essential to your well-being that you might think?

What is the difference between thinking and critical thinking?'

Avoiding Comma Splices

A comma splice is joining two sentences with a comma when you should separate them with a period or a semicolon.

Incorrect

People love Facebook, however, they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy.

Corrected

People love Facebook. However, they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy.

Corrected

Though people love Facebook, they fail to realize Facebook is sucking all their energy.

Incorrect

Patience is difficult to cultivate, it grows steadily only if we make it a priority.

Corrected

Patience is difficult to cultivate. It grows steadily only if we make it a priority.

Corrected

Because patience grows within us so slowly, patience is extremely difficult to cultivate.

You can use a comma between two complete sentences when you join them with a FANBOYS word or coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so).

Correct

People love Facebook, but they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy.

Student Comma Splices Part One (the second sentence feels like a continuation of thought from the first sentence, which it is, but it still requires a period before it)

My department decided to set up another office for me to do my work, I was no longer sitting out front like the permanent receptionist.
The permanent receptionist never spoke to anyone in the offices, he just answered phones.
He said, “You have a few choices, they need a coordinator at the new jobsite or working the business side as a coordinator.”
I was lucky, many opportunities came to me and now I had the required experience to get the job I wanted.
There was no stopping me, all my achievements were completed on my own.
I was promoted quickly, I went from coordinator to senior executive within a few months.
The drug dealing lifestyle was insatiable to Jeff Henderson, he believed he could elude the feds.
Our methods paralleled, my method was legal, his was illegal.
Jeff Henderson rose to the top of his game, he had established his fortune.

10. Jeff Henderson had no choice, it was either work or stay confined in his prison cell.

11. She was going to marry her high school sweetheart, what better way to spend the rest of your life in bliss?

12. He asked me to marry him, he was a Marine after all stationed in Japan.

13. Her life was finally beginning, she could leave Los Angeles.

14. This was her life, she did what she wanted.

15. Now she had nothing, she had given up her job to move overseas.

16. Life was too much of a challenge, she accepted that fact.

To Avoid Comma Splices, Know the Difference Between Coordinating Conjunctions (FANBOYS) and Conjunctive Adverbs

Examples

Jerry ate ten pizzas a week. Nonetheless, he remained skinny.

Jerry ate ten pizzas a week, but he remained skinny.

Barbara didn't buy the BMW. Instead, she bought the Acura.

Barbara didn't buy the BMW, yet she did buy the Acura.

Steve wasn't interested in college. Moreover, he didn't want to work full-time.

Steve wasn't interested in college, and he didn't want to work full-time.

I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me. However, I do want you to help me do my taxes.

I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me, but I do want you to help me do my taxes.

I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me, but I do, however, want you to help me do my taxes.

I feel that our relationship has become stale, stagnant, and turgid. Consequently, I think we should break up.

I feel that our relationship has become stale, stagnant, and turgid, so I think we should break up.

Students hate reading. Therefore, they must be tested with closed-book reading exams.

Students hate reading, so they must be tested with closed-book reading exams.

Avoiding Comma Splices and Run-Ons

Fused (run-on) sentence

Klee's paintings seem simple, they are very sophisticated.

She doubted the value of medication she decided to try it once.

A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation.

Comma Splice

I was strongly attracted to her, she was beautiful and funny.

We hated the meatloaf, the cafeteria served it every Friday.

A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with a word such as and or because, or restructure the sentence.

After each sentence, put a “C” for Correct or a “CS” for Comma Splice. If the sentence is a comma splice, rewrite it so that it is correct.

One. Bailey used to eat ten pizzas a day, now he eats a spinach salad for lunch and dinner.

Two. Marco no longer runs on the treadmill, instead he opts for the less injury-causing elliptical trainer.

Three. Running can cause shin splints, which can cause excruciating pain.

Four. Running in the incorrect form can wreak havoc on the knees, slowing down can often correct the problem.

Five. While we live in a society where 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers are on the rise, the reading of books, sad to say, is on the decline.

Six. Facebook is a haven for narcissists, it encourages showing off with selfies and other mundane activities that are ways of showing how great and amazing our lives our, what a sham.

Seven. We live in a society where more and more Americans are consuming 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers, however, those same Americans are reading less and less books.

Eight. Love is a virus from outer space, it tends to become most contagious during April and May.

Nine. The tarantula causes horror in many people, moreover there is a species of tarantula in Brazil, the wandering banana spider, that is the most venomous spider in the world.

Ten. Even though spiders cause many people to recoil with horror, most species are harmless.

Eleven. The high repair costs of European luxury vehicles repelled Amanda from buying such a car, instead she opted for a Japanese-made Lexus.

Twelve. Amanda got a job at the Lexus dealership, now she’s trying to get me a job in the same office.

Thirteen. While consuming several cinnamon buns, a twelve-egg cheese omelet, ten slices of French toast slathered in maple syrup, and a tray of Swedish loganberry crepes topped with a dollop of blueberry jam, I contemplated the very grave possibility that I might be eating my way to a heart attack.

Fourteen. Even though I rank marijuana far less dangerous than most pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol, and other commonly used intoxicants, I find marijuana unappealing for a host of reasons, not the least of which is its potential for radically degrading brain cells, its enormous effect on stimulating the appetite, resulting in obesity, and its capacity for over-relaxing many people so that they lose significant motivation to achieve their primary goals, opting instead for a life of sloth and intractable indolence.

Sample Thesis Statements for Cooked

The wisdom from Arthur C. Brooks' essay is illustrated by Jeff Henderson's journey from misery to redeemed soul evidenced by _________________, _________________, _______________,_________________, and ________________________.

The wise man's rising-falling paradox applies to Jeff Henderson's hell-to-heaven journey evidenced by ___________________, _________________, _________________, ____________________, and ______________________.

To understand the wise man's saying in the context of Jeff Henderson's memoir, we must focus on Henderson's character arc from immature hustler to mature man evidenced by a radical re-defining of happiness, the drive to put family over selfish needs, the need to take an account of one's misdeeds in order to clear a path for redemption, __________________, and ______________________.

Arthur C. Brooks' essay complements the memoir Cooked in five major ways, which include ___________________, ________________, _______________, _________________, and ___________________.

The idea of falling:

The rising-falling paradox can be explained by a close examination of human nature.

False rising: We are delusional so that our perception of "rising" may be a false perception. The narcissist always thinks he's rising when in fact he's falling.

The misguided "mountain climber" dates evil women to prove he's "number one." We could call this the drive for dominance.

False rising: We see what we want to see so there is a disparity between our self-image and who we really are. Again, this disparity evidences narcissism.

False rising: We become intoxicated or drugged by false ideas of success. Americans too often chase the mirage or chimera of fame and want their own "reality" TV show.

False rising: Success makes us feel invincible.We begin to believe in the lies of the sycophants.

False rising: When we feel invincible, we allow our behavior to become more and more reckless.

False rising: When we feel more invincible, we experience hubris, a form of arrogance that blinds us from our flaws.

Fale rising could be based on arrogance and power giving us a false sense of invincibility while we become disconnected from others.

False rising could have a downside: being blind to portents of danger and obnoxious behavior as we become full of braggadocio.

False rising could result in a disconnect from values and morals and even our true self.

False rising could result in inflated self-esteem, narcissism, and a loss of proportion in regards to what's important in the world.

False rising could be the misguided use of creativity and talent: used for the purposes of evil, concupiscence, greed, self-destruction when it should be used to blossom or to flourish.

False rising results in popularity and when we're popular we get surrounded by a popularity bubble in which sycophants praise us even when we don't deserve it so we think we're being smart and funny when we're not.

False rising: The illusion of rising is often from misguided genius or talent in which we use our power for evil rather than good but willfully blind to this fact, we pat ourselves on the back for our evil deeds.

Rising is also based on human nature and the nature of struggling, flourishing, and character-building.

Falling could be a good thing: a purging lesson in humility and fortitude. Sometimes the best that could happen to you is to have "your butt handed to you on a stick," to quote Marc Maron. For example, when I was 14, I picked a fight with an 18-year-old state wrestling champion, Sammy Choa, and I had "my butt handed to me on a stick," the best thing that ever happened to me because the experience taught me to keep my mouth shut.

Falling could be a test over what's really important in this world.

Falling could be an opportunity to live and learn wisdom.

Falling could be the experience of rejection from others so that later we have empathy for those who are being rejected or scorned.

Falling could result in a struggle that develops our fortitude (strength to endure).

Falling makes us lose our "friends" and popularity so that we have to define ourselves in a new way, without the superficial definition we had when we gained our self-esteem from the approval of others.

Falling slaps our face and makes us see the truth, the truth that we have been denying. We often deny the truth about who we really are until we "hit rock bottom" and say to ourselves, "Whatever the hell it is I'm doing, it isn't working. I need a new plan."

To me, the topic demands a two-part essay. The first part is about false rising rooted in

self-delusion

denial

intoxication of false success

The second half is about real rising rooted in

hitting a wall so that we finally see our self-destructive ways and take accountability for our actions

perdition, suffering and humility as part of the re-building process

developing empathy as we reinvent ourselves in a new, much wiser way.

Comma Splices

A comma splice is joining two sentences with a comma when you should separate them with a period or a semicolon.

Incorrect

People love Facebook, however, they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy.

Corrected

People love Facebook. However, they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy.

Corrected

Though people love Facebook, they fail to realize Facebook is sucking all their energy.

Incorrect

Patience is difficult to cultivate, it grows steadily only if we make it a priority.

Corrected

Patience is difficult to cultivate. It grows steadily only if we make it a priority.

Corrected

Because patience grows within us so slowly, patience is extremely difficult to cultivate.

You can use a comma between two complete sentences when you join them with a FANBOYS word or coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so).

Correct

People love Facebook, but they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy.

Student Comma Splices Part One (the second sentence feels like a continuation of thought from the first sentence, which it is, but it still requires a period before it)

My department decided to set up another office for me to do my work, I was no longer sitting out front like the permanent receptionist.
The permanent receptionist never spoke to anyone in the offices, he just answered phones.
He said, “You have a few choices, they need a coordinator at the new jobsite or working the business side as a coordinator.”
I was lucky, many opportunities came to me and now I had the required experience to get the job I wanted.
There was no stopping me, all my achievements were completed on my own.
I was promoted quickly, I went from coordinator to senior executive within a few months.
The drug dealing lifestyle was insatiable to Jeff Henderson, he believed he could elude the feds.
Our methods paralleled, my method was legal, his was illegal.
Jeff Henderson rose to the top of his game, he had established his fortune.