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Porter Treanor

English 1010

Trevor Smith

8th May, 2016

It’s Alive

Many college students believe that originality is a thing of the past for us humans.

Those people believe that most people are just, “following the crowd”: which means that

people do many things just because of its popularity. In the sense that the people mean;

“following the crowd” is that they don't have originality and that they are copying people.

Even though they might follow the crowd they still have originality.

Originality is still alive in people today. Something to support that claim is that as

each individual lives different lives and experiences different things, they see and

perceive things differently than each other. Therefore people take their own ideas and

thoughts from seeing and experiencing things differently and making or coming up with

something that is unique and defined by their own perspective. The evidence is that

each person as an individual experiences their own life that differs from everybody

else’s. For an example I will use going to the park. I grew up going to the park with my

friends and family and climbing trees and playing games. I see going to the park as a

good, fun, social activity. Someone who has had a different experience, maybe

something bad happened to he/she or he/she never had a good time at the park, will

see and think of parks differently. Now if you gave us two the opportunity to create a

park, we would most likely come up with different designs, features and ideas for the

new park. We may even choose to not have a park. It's all about the individual and the
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life experiences they have, which gives them a unique perspective. Even though people

may have their own experiences in life, people still come up with the same ideas as

some other people. Therefore the idea not being original.

People may still come up with the same ideas as one another but that doesn't

mean that the idea isn't original. As long as the people have not been 100 percent

influenced to do something by another person and or thing, it would still be original. For

an example, there is a man who is going to a third world country to help impoverished

people for a church expedition. He gave a lot of things to the people in need because he

saw that they truly needed these things. He now understood the power of giving, he was

inspired to create a non-profit organization to help impoverished people in third world

countries. Now there is a woman who has been mostly selfish her whole life until one

opportunity arose for her to give to her own family that is in dire need of support (she

has had issues being giving to her family in the past). She decides to be nice this one

time and help her family. She was surprised on how big of an affect she had and she

felt much rewarded by just giving to someone in need. She is inspired and motivated to

turn her life around and start a non-profit organization to help people that are in most

need: people in third world countries. No one controlled their minds and they did not

steal the idea from anybody else. They both came up with this original idea on their own

by pulling from their life experiences and perspective. It may not be an original idea for

its existence, but for a person who comes up with it on their own, it is original. Two

different people who have lived different lives could come up with the same idea, but

coming from different paths to reach the same destination. Another example might be,
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one plus one equals two, negative three plus five also equals two. Those are two

different equations that come up with the same answer.

The people who are claiming that originality is dead are saying that people don't

live true to their perspectives and life experiences. I have seen many people create and

do things that are unique and original to them. It is a natural thing for people to be

original. As long as you are true to your own point of view and perspective.
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Reflection Questions:
The process I went through for writing my argumentative essay was simple. I broke it down to
three basic parts. One being the thesis statement and the claim that will directly connect to my body
paragraphs. It to a few tries but I got it to be more concise. Then it goes to the body paragraphs that
comprise of the arguments. I got brain stormed and collaborated with my peers to help come up with a
fitting argument that would be well argued. And lastly I worked on the conclusion that wasn’t just
restating the thesis statement but is to show that the evidence given has proved my position on the
argument correct. My thought process came from the similar thought process while I was writing the
exploratory essay. For the translated version of the essay I chose the brochure and all I did was create a
stronger sense of the purpose for the brochure which is to inspire students to empower their own
creativity and originality. I used information from m essay in the brochure and added a few more things
to make it more enjoyable to read. My topic was difficult to write about. It took a lot of thinking and
conversations to come up with the information given in the essay. My method of attack was to come at
the argument with logic. Something simple that most people have. Things that will connect with people
so they can understand more deeply in what I was trying to explain and argue.

My audience is for college students and the same for the brochure. It is to show the students
that they have originality and they shouldn’t let people tell them otherwise, unless they really are
stealing the ideas they are portraying. It is to inspire and empower the students to creative by
embracing their life experiences and having their own perspective that will give them their own
uniqueness.

The revisions I made on the essay was to help the audience understand more deeply. It was also
to be more accurate on why I was writing the essay and to what audience I was writing it to. For my
brochure I felt that it didn’t need many revisions because of the simplicity of it. I added a couple things
more from my actual essay that would help describe the point I was making and to make it more
concise.

I learned that well rounded research is important to maximize your chance of creating a
stronger argument. Learned that there are important steps in the writing process that should be taken
to create a stronger essay. For some reason I have a hard time on following the steps and exact process
that is shown and meant for me to follow. I learned that the next English class will be a little easier for
me because I have more knowledge about certain writing process. Well at least my notebook has the
knowledge.

As a writer I feel that I write in a different way that may be harder to understand. I guess that is
a good reason why peer response is very important. I feel that my writing style is more expressive to me
then my own words sometimes. That is if I put the effort into my writing of course. My essay I feel is
simple and because I used a strong logical argument it should be easy for people to agree with.