Inside My Mind

“Now, the c a t e r p i l l a r was no longer small. He was a big, fat, c a t e r p i l l a r. ” This line comes from one of my favorite books of all time: The Very Hungry Caterpillar . It’s not just my favorite because I love to eat food (which I definitely do). It’s not just my favorite because it’s a childhood classic. It’s my favorite because it’s difficulty matches my reading abilities. I’m not a big fan of big words or big sentences. I like to keep my diction simple, with words like “fat,” “ate,” and “hungry.” However, the world is not sunshine and roses for me. Sometimes I have to dive into harder works, such as academic writing; It’s much harder than The Adventures of Captain Underpants and Diary of a Wimpy Kid in fact! Reading through Teaching the Conventions of Academic Discourse , I realized it wouldn’t be quite as easy to chew through. I read a few pages and began to digest the material, and I realized it’s not that bad. I’ve never had a taste for academ

I recall receiving my first paycheck. I worked assembling eye-wear in a warehouse, so my pay wasn’t stellar. Regardless, it was a first job and I was looking forward to any amount of money. I had worked about 20 hours and couldn’t wait to cash those $200. I remember receiving the check and looking down at the amount. $170 or so. Because of taxes.  It wasn’t that far off from what I expected, only $30. However, I couldn’t help but feel like the government had stolen three hours of my life. Americans hate taxes. Especially the rich. Noam Chomsky makes the claim that the reduction of taxes on the rich is unfair for the rest of Americans. He states, “The tax system has been redesigned so that the taxes that are paid by the very wealthy are reduced and, correspondingly, the tax burden on the rest of the population’s increased” (55). To back up his claim, Chomsky utilizes several pieces of evidence. Chomsky begins by providing historical context. He mentions taxes were

“We will make America strong again. I promise. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And we will make America great again!” I wonder who said that? It is easy to fantasize about the past and romanticize memories to the point where they’re no longer accurate. Maybe we remember a barbecue, surrounded by friends and family. Maybe we remember sitting at the bar with friends old and new, laughing throughout the night. We look back on the times and think THAT was when America was great. However, these are personal reflections, not a reflection on the quality of the whole nation. I have a question: When was America ever great? Was it when America was born? When we built our country off the backs of indentured servants and slaves? Where the people were stripped of their rights and worked for no pay or compensation? Was it when we slaughtered the American Indians? When we made our imperialist push West, murdering and displacing any who opposed us?

Left or right? For or against? Pro or con? There’s only two options. Right? From an early age, I was only taught two sides. I recall sitting in my 4 th grade class and being given a persuasive essay. It was about saving the whales or something. I remember telling my teacher, “Mrs. Holcomb, I can’t pick a side. They both make sense.” Her response was: “Just pick one and write about it.” So nine-year old me flipped a coin to randomly pick a side. Dissatisfied, I wrote an essay on why saving the whales was so darn important. Let’s fast-forward three years. Now we have 7 th grade Andrew, complete with the pre-teen social awkwardness, acne, and everything. I was given a prompt I can’t entirely recall, but I remember this: it was stupid . Both sides of the arguments were poorly constructed and loaded with fallacies. I was skimming this prompt and thinking, “Man, I can’t wait to write about how stupid both these arguments are!” But then the teacher said, “Make sure