Discussion 3

The topic that i feel like i could use further in discussion and in future references will always be the topic of arguments. Sometimes when i feel really passionate about a certain subject i try to argue my point and persuade people to try to change their minds and take my side on a specific thing. I learned many different  persuasive techniques i could use in the future such as stating facts and using emotional techniques for my advantage because i know from personal experience many people take sides based on what their emotions are telling them because they may feel guilty or bad if they choose to take another side. I don’t think ill be aggressive when I try to argue my point because I know that being assertive may be good, but some people may be turned off by it when im trying to explain my point and reason for a subject.

Discussion 2

I think the one thing i didnt really enjoy from working in this class was working on group projects. I was never really a group project guy because in the past I have always had difficulties in group projects because some group members always failed to communicate so it was always me ending up doing the whole project by myself at times. I was lucky that in this class I was able to get good group members that were able to have the same work ethic as me so that we were not only able to finish the group project, but we were also able to finish the project days before it was due. The thing I liked from this class was the blogs because there were a lot of different topics we had to talk about and it was fun looking at everyone else’s opinions on some things especially if I thought the exact same way on a topic.

What I Learned

From this class I have learned a lot of different things. I learned how to work better in groups and how it is essential to communicate with everyone in the group in order to meet the overall goals that the group is trying to achieve. Even though i dont like group projects at all it really helped  my communication skills and leadership skills. I also learned the different types of arguments and I thought that was interesting because it showed different persuasion techniques to go alone with it. The persuasion techniques was interesting to learn about because it gave me some insight on how I can persuade or convince my audience to take my side in a situation for the future. I thought I knew most of the things that we learned about, but I only knew a gist of some of the things and this class was able to help me broaden my knowledge on the topic of critical thinking.

Discussion 3

The mission critical website did a good job explaining what an argument is.  It had a page where you can see all the different parts of an argument, which make up an argument and you can click on each individual. There were some parts on the page that I was already familiar with because of the previous chapters we went over before such as inductive and deductive reasoning and deductive arguments. I enjoyed all the different common fallacies because there were a lot I didn’t know before reading this page. The casual argument page had a lot of good information also, but I knew most of it already so I didn’t learn that many new things. The things I did know was that the strength of a casual argument doesn’t just rely on one factor, but instead three. I also liked that the page gave different examples of the argument.

Assuming conclusions

There was a time when I assumed a conclusion about something where I was wrong. Recently we had to make a hypothesis in my psychology class and I believed that if you were in a relationship your grade would drop significantly lower than if you were single. My group all concluded that we would see lower grades so we set out to see if our conclusion was right. We were surprised when we saw that there was no significant decrease in people’s grades based on if they were single or not. We tested this by giving out surveys to many people and asking them many questions like how many hours do you spend studying, what’s your grade like, and what is their relationship status. When we saw that grades didn’t drop we thought that even though people in relationships are busier, they also have a significant other pushing them to do their best in school.

Horoscope

You can relax a little at last! That's what you could be thinking with today's celestial energy. The time is perfect to get ready for the challenges that up to now were just anxieties inside you. If you're thinking clearly today, Cancer, it's because you have the strength to face your problems. Now that you have your self-confidence back, you might open your heart even wider to someone dear.

I feel like my daily horoscope is pretty accurate because it says that I can finally relax. I can relax a little because I finally finished my pledging process for my fraternity and was able to cross, but now I am stressed for figuring out the dances that we will have to do for our banquet tomorrow since we all have to perform. Something that I feel may be falsifiable in my horoscope is that it says that now that I have my self-confidence back I can open my heart to someone dear. The thing is I never lost my self confidence in the first place, if anything the confidence in myself has steadily increased and it’s still increasing. I also feel like I got rid of the majority of my problems already and that my worries have gone from large to small instead of finishing my small problems first in order to deal with the big problems.

Internet

The topic i decided to talk about was the internet age because i feel like that topic could relate to many college students since many of us spend so much time on the internet. The internet has mainly taken over our lives because we are on it so much and we can find out so much information from a click of a button. Then again it has it downsides because many people's private lives end up being exposed on the internet against their own free will. Also the internet is a huge distraction for me. I find myself online in class typing up notes and end up drifting and going on different sites such as facebook or tumblr in order to keep myself awake. The internet has also limited face to face interactions with people because it is so easy to just chat with them online. I try to limit myself from going on the internet a lot and go out more, but sometimes it gets hard.