The Dog Ate My Disk and Other Tales of Woe

     Carolyn Foster Segal’s essay was extremely funny. I loved this story. The excuses that some of her students made up in order to get of an assignment were really funny. I am pretty sure that it would have been easier for them to just do the work that was assigned to them. Her students became pretty clever when it came to their excuses. The funny part about this is that I have heard students use almost every one of these excuses before. Most students use the death of a family member excuse more than any other one because what teacher would be so rude as to make the student do school work when one of their precious family members has died. Maybe, just maybe, some of the excuses told by the students were true but most of the time, they probably were not. Student will do almost anything and think of almost anything to get out of writing a paper. I think that the students who think of the excuses spend more time working on the excuse than it would have taken them to write their paper. I love to hear a student babble out an excuse to a teacher when you can tell that they are obviously lying. I am sure that teachers get a good laugh out of hearing their students make up the wildest excuses. 

Food Product Design by Eric Schlosser

        This story by Eric Schlosser makes me not want to eat anything. When he started listing g the items that are in my favorite processed foods, I could not imagine what sort of things were going into body as I ate that item. I always knew that McDonald’s is a gross place to eat but I did not know they were that bad. Why do they have to put meat flavoring into their French Fries? Is that really necessary? Eric Schlosser has definitely got me thinking about what I should and should not eat from now on. Maybe I should eat fruits and vegetables rather than something that has to have flavor put into it. I want to eat stuff with really natural flavor, not chemically altered natural flavor. Mr. Schlosser has changed my opinion on fast food joints forever. I may think twice from now on when I go out to eat or even when I am cooking my own food in my own kitchen. Eric Schlosser is an expert on food and he knows what he is talking about. I never knew that all of my favorite foods had these chemicals in them. I do not even know how to pronounce half of the names that he listed. I don’t think that I am going to eat fast food nearly as much anymore. 

How to say nothing in 500 words By: Paul Roberts

     This story by Paul Roberts allowed me to obtain new information on how I should write. This story let me gain the knowledge on how to write proactively and not go off subject about what I am writing. I did not really care for the subject since it was about football. He gave me some ideas on how to write about anything and now I can do just that. The story was not boring but it wasn’t a lot of fun either. He got his point across and that is about it. Although I did gain some knowledge, the football topic was getting boring. I could care less about that. Paul Roberts really knows what he is talking about when it comes to proactive ways to write and now I can look back at this story if I get writer’s block or if I have just lost my way. Mr. Roberts wrote about some useful stuff, such as what words to use, what sides to take, and what to say to get your point across. This story will help me with persuasive papers on the long road and I am glad that I have some material that I can go to when I am stuck on a persuasive writing. 

"Serving in Florida" from Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich

     This story by Barbara Ehrenreich has allowed me to look at waiters and waitresses in a whole other perspective. I had no idea that what she wrote about happened in a restaurant. The life of someone in poverty seems quite hard. Barbara has a Ph.D. and she did this as an experiment. She learned a lot from this little journey and she wrote a best seller. I really liked this story although a lot of it was really sad. These people live in hotels, cars and terrible environments. They work so hard but they do not get what they deserve. The managers get everything and they do not do half as much as a typical waiter does. Waiters always seem so happy but that is because they have no choice, we have no idea what is really happening in their life and we (the customers) are not always very nice to them. I do not like to send back my food or drink if I am not fond of it because I feel so bad for all the work they put in. Restaurant workers are brave souls because they have to put up with so many stressful things. This was a well written story and although it was a little long, it did not seem that long because I could not stop reading. I really liked this story. I feel bad for waitresses because they usually are not happy and a customer that actually cares can tell.  Waiting on people all day and not really earning much from it can be quite stressful and I can understand why a waiter looks disheveled or just tired.