I have decided to do some research on a brand that almost everyone uses, such as Apple. Everyone knows the history of how Steve Jobs was the cofounder of the well known Apple company. Around the 1990’s Apple was considered doomed because the market was slowly suffering. However, over the years it was able to recover and become the successful company it is now.

Apple is a very popular brand, almost two-thirds of Americans own at least one Apple product. As someone who has owned an apple product for a long time, I often find myself questioning the sustainability of the company. In order to assess Apple’s sustainability, I looked at their most recent environmental progress report that can be found on their website. The Environment VP of Apple began her opening statement by saying, “We are committed to building groundbreaking products and services with the mission to leave our world better than we found it”(Jackson 3). This is important because it molds the company’s values when it comes to the environment. 

Throughout the report the author also mentions that apple takes full responsibility for all the carbon emissions that occur within their supply chain. Not many companies like to admit that they are contributing to climate change because it doesn’t look good to the consumers, but apple is upfront about it and states how they will make a change. Instead of disregarding the issue like other companies, Apple explains the programs they have created in order to reduce their carbon footprint and resources being used in the process of production. Thanks to their Supplier Clean Energy Program,  there was a 35% reduction in overall carbon footprint compared to 2015. This program is a good example of apple’s sustainability. 

Another interesting fact stated was about how the company turned over to using renewable energy, “It was just a year ago that we reached our goal of covering 100 percent of our operations with 100 percent renewable electricity. That work continues as we source the clean energy needed to maintain that standard — even as our company grows”(Jackson 3).  Since apple has done this, it’s become evident that the usage of renewable energy is a great way to conserve the nation’s natural resources. Adding on to the topic of the nations resources, apple emphasizes, “We’ve embarked on a bold mission to make products without taking from the Earth” this is yet another way in which apple is striving towards sustainability. They’re making an effort to reduce the intake of mining materials from earth for their products. This all leads back to them being very reusable with their products. 

Not only is apple devoted to becoming eco friendly, they also strive to inform their consumers, suppliers, and other partners. All their programs have also been used in other countries, such as China. For example, apple explains that they plan on helping their suppliers to transition to the usage of new renewable energy sources. The report states, “We share our learnings with our supplier partners and help them plot their transition to renewable energy” apple does an excellent job of helping other companies strive for sustainability as well. 

As I type from my MacBook Air, I feel a lot more informed after reading this report on the products I buy from apple. It makes me feel good knowing that the company is transparent and honest about their productions. As someone who advocates for climate change it’s very relieving to know that although apple isn’t the most environmentally friendly company, they’re making the effort to get there and that says a lot more than companies who only care about the money they’re making. 

My meme reflects on the abortion laws being passed in multiple states in the U.S.. My intended audience would be people who are pro-choice and pro-life and I am using pathos as my rhetorical appeal. 

 Over this year more and more states have passed the “heartbeat” bill, making it illegal to have an abortion after 6 weeks. As a result, women and LITTLE GIRLS (12years old or younger) are now forced to live with their unwanted pregnancy. Since abortion was banned it is more likely for women to resort to unsafe abortion methods that could potentially put their lives in risk. This has caused a serious controversy nation-wide. Why must men have an opinion over something in which doesn’t concern them? Why do women have to face the consequences while men are let off the hook so easily? How come a woman who is trying to abort their unwanted kid can get a higher sentence (even the death penalty) than the man who raped her? As a result of rape how will a CHILD raise a baby when they’re still a child themselves. These are all very serious questions people constantly ask regarding to abortion laws. The approval over these laws have only shown how United states is progressing backwards in women’s rights. 

Essentially my message is that the majority of the people who are making these laws are men who shouldn’t have an opinion on women’s bodies because they’re not women. People don’t have to support abortion but they should respect a women’s decision because it’s none of their bussiness what a women wants to do since it is her body. 

1. What  I have taken away from Rhetoric would be that it is used a lot more than I thought. It can be found in our society very often because people are always trying to persuade someone to do something. What I also realized is that It can be hard to use, especially in writing because it’s hard to persuade someone simply through their words.

2. Rhetoric relates to critical thinking because one should have a basic understanding of how to analyze the certain appeals. It also coincides with reading because when reading, we often analyze the text to see what devices the author is using to get their message across. 

Over the last few years climate change was always considered a controversial topic due to the fact that it wasn’t such a big deal back then. I remember people would always joke about it and say “oh hahaha it’s because of global warming” etc., but it was never brought to my attention how much of an issue it was until now. Within these past few months I have learned a lot more and gained knowledge on the crisis. In the article, the author mainly explains how young people all over the world are becoming more aware and acting upon this environmental crisis. It’s also brought up how these young students are doing a lot more than the government. There have been many demonstrations over this year than there has been in a while and the interesting part is that they’re being led by young students. Greta Thunberg is a 16 year old swedish activist that has been the face of this climate crisis and is leading the huge population of young students all around the world. She started striking school on Fridays and was later followed globally by many other students. It’s important to understand how much of an impact a single person can have. If that’s the case, this shows how being united on something as important as this can have a huge impact on the world. This then coincides with the goals of what striking will achieve. The main goal is to get the government and other people in power to ACT NOW before it’s too late. The people in power are reluctant in making changes, as a result, that will only end up affecting my generation and those after. However, I strongly believe our generation and generations after that can make a change. This is definitely something that will go down in the history books and I’m glad to be a part of it. 

Visual Rhetoric is utilized by the media and mainly used to influence others. For example, many social media influencers who don’t really have a job are simply famous for being “pretty” or having a youtube channel are always doing ads for certain products. On instagram I have seen many popular influencers do an ad for a product called Curology. Because of their popularity, their so called fans are often to buy these products because they believe the person is credible. Many people use ethos or pathos to convey their messages across to the audience.

Implications of Rhetorical Analysis Paragraph 5-7:  In these few paragraphs the author explains the role of rhetoric in our everyday life and states “‘wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric. And wherever there is ‘meaning’ there is ‘persuasion’”. Essentially, this points out how our actions are “persuasive in nature”. We have grown up analyzing and intrepreting people to draw a conclusion of them. This is important to understand because we do this in our everyday life without even noticing it sometimes.  This also ties in with connecting meaning to persuasiveness (rhetoric), which is also important to comprehend.

The main point of this article is to illustrate the role rhetoric plays in the world and how it is used in our everyday life. The author starts by stating that we analyze people all the time without even noticing it and gather opinions on a specific person simply by their appearance. I completely agree and believe this is something people, including myself, do all the time. Not even in a bad way, but a way in which we’re trying to comprehend what kind of person someone is. This brings up a very important topic of how rhetoric is used on a daily, depending on the person. Although people use it all the time, it tends to be people of higher status, such as celebrities, who use rhetoric to promote something. The most commonly rhetorical devices that are used would be ethos and pathos. People tend to make decisions with their emotions rather than logical reasoning, which is why pathos can be very effective in persuading an audience. The author goes on to further explain all three rhetorical devices and their effectiveness on an audience. When learning about rhetorical devices in high school I always wondered why we have to do it? Like what’s the point in it anyway. The author infers that it is practically used for everything, even small things such as buying certain products simply because of an ad that was on T.V.. Before reading this article, the first thing that came to mind when thinking about the three rhetorical devices was just ads or commercials. However, after reading the article, I realized it’s something I do on a day-to-day basis and allows me to judge the decisions I am going to make.

Prior to reading this article I had absolutely no knowledge on geography besides the fact that it has something to do with regional areas. From my perspective, the main point was that geography plays an important role in the world. Although it is a very broad field, it has various subfields that coincide with other fields. The article discusses many topics from the origin of geography to the new technological advances of it. Over the years there have been several technological advances that have allowed geographers to obtain a better understanding of earth’s findings. Aside from learning about the advances I also learned about different types of geographers and their roles within the field. The article also mainly focus on explaining the part of each individual geographer and how they contribute to the geographical field. Despite all the information I retained from this article, there was a couple of ideas that I did not fully comprehend. For example, the geographic techniques were a bit hard to grasp because it involved technology concepts that I’m not very educated on. However, they were detailed to the extent that I somewhat understood, but was still kind of confused. This was an important part of the article, because as previously stated, there has been many technological techniques that have advanced over time and are important to know. These were the main ideas I gathered from the article and considered them important. The article was not really argumentative, therefore there was nothing to agree or disagree on because it was more informative. 

I chose this article because I’m highly  interested in environmental topics, but also because the cover art drew me in. I figured it would be educational and I could potentially learn something I did not  know. After reading the article I came to the conclusion that recycling is not the only way to help our environment. Although it is effective, we need to start thinking about other ways because recycling can’t be the only way to “save the planet”. We have relied on this too much that we haven’t  thought of other ways to make a change. At first I wasn’t too sure what they meant by that, but I began to understand more in depth of why people believe recycling isn’t the only solution. I’m not as educated on this topic as i wish i was, however, I was able to learn a couple of interesting facts that I didn’t know about before. For a good amount of time I figured that recycling is probably the best thing you could ever do in the world, but that’s only because I never really knew what goes on behind the scenes. Majority of the items that are “recycled” aren’t making a big difference because it’s hard to break them down(clothes in particular). It’s extremely important for big brand companies to spread this information and further educate all of their consumers. Overall another main point I gathered from the text was that: As someone who cares about my environment I will demand for better environmental systems that are sustainable and will make a difference rather than just relying on recycling for the rest of my life. 

After thoroughly reading this article the main point I came across was how to succeed in college writing and multiple tips. 

There’s a variety of topics discussed throughout the article that really stood out to me such as: “Three Characteristics of Academic Writing”  and “Characteristics of the Critical Essay”. Both of these were really helpful in the way they were structured because they were very straightforward. 

I really enjoyed reading this article because it had a lot of truth behind it. As someone who is not a huge fan of English, this article definitely made me look at writing with a different perspective. I now understand that college writing will not be the same as writing in high school which excites me in a way. However, I’ve always had that mindset of simply not being good at English. The article mentions something similar when explaining the “Myths About Writing”. I agree with the author and believe many college students may have that mindset, including me, of it being something fixed. I also agree that with time and practice one can always improve their writing skills because it’s not something we’re naturally good at. 

This raised some questions for me personally of how will I be able to convey certain messages through my writing? Or how can I improve certain skills that I lack? Plus more. With the proper resources and information available to me I aspire to improve and be able to look back at all my progress throughout this course. 

The article overall was genuinely interesting and offered an insight of what is to come with future college writing.