Project 1: Laura Carpenter
Inexperienced, college blogger, Morgan Timm addresses her struggle with mental health in college throughout her latest blog post on http://mostlymorgan.com/mental-health-in-college/ .Morgan aims to be a comfort and and an encouragement to her readers, as well as to take a step in improving her own mental health. She conveys an apprehensive yet encouraging tone in order to convince her readers, who are mostly fellow college students, of her decision to take a semester off school. Her tone also warns her readers to be cautious of their own mental health throughout school. Through pathos, as well as ethos and logos, Morgan’s piece moves the reader.
Morgan begins her post by acknowledging her mood in the past few months, and using these emotions to draw the audience in. “I need to get real with y’all for a moment. I was depressed”. She uses short, and concise sentences for clarity. Without a doubt, her mood has been down as she’s struggled with depression, and later mentioned anxiety. Her use of first person makes the post personal, rather than saying a friend was struggling with these things, she claims it for herself. She also introduces her own depression by stating that it can happen to anyone, making the blog post relevant to anyone who ever becomes stressed and anxious. “I learned the hard way that depression can happen to anyone –even if your life looks perfect from the outside”. Obviously, she is as surprised as those who know her that depression can take over a life without the “victims’” realization. “My life felt like it was going in a downward spiral and there was nothing I could do about it”, is her final introductory sentence. It obviously catches the reader’s attention, begging them to continue reading further and discover what’s been done about her situation. Directly after, she inserted a picture with the title of the blog. It shows a girl, who is assumed to be Morgan, staring out a window. However, instead of the window opening up to a beautiful, sun-shining day, the window is closed, and blurry due to the rain that has fallen against it. The rain easily connects with her diagnosis of depression. In the top right corner, there is a light, and on the bushes out in the rain, there is color. These are hints of hope and encouragement.
Continuing into her post, Morgan elaborates on her story, starting at the beginning. Introducing her first realizations of anxiety and depression, she uses strong verbs and adjectives to stir-up emotions and vivid imagery for the readers. These words include: “terrified, paranoid, unusually dark, disappear, hurting, slipping away”, all of them point to another side of Morgan and her struggle. She describes the battle that constantly warred in her mind; again creating vivid imagery of what she went through without anyone knowing. By telling her story, and “being real” with her readers, Morgan obviously appeals to pathos, gripping the readers even further into her story.
After the warring happening in her head, a shift occurs. “Finally, I had a public breakdown, and had someone tell me…you deserve to be happy, you just need to get help.” She had reached her breaking point, and this is where she starts to reveal a light in the story. “Things are slowly getting better every day”, instead of having an unrealistic turn around, Morgan continues to revel in the truth of her situation, and expresses her need to get better, but her understanding that it takes awhile. After getting help, Morgan’s diagnosis becomes credible and even more relevant as she encourages anyone with the same situation to seek help. Her appeal to logos is apparent. After hooking the readers with pathos, she uses logos to further connect with her readers.
Moving to the end of her post, Morgan quickly adds her decision to leave school, and how that has impacted her health. “I really didn’t start making big progress until I made this decision”. Her tone is almost daring readers to be willing to make big decisions in efforts to save their health. Since she summed up this decision in just a few sentences, she felt the need to elaborate by accompanying the blog post with a video. Visualizing -mentally- everything she has gone through is one thing, but actually witnessing it through a self-made video, is another. In the video, she is simply sitting in front of a camera and explaining her decision. Through actions such as nibbling her lips, not making eye contact, and rambling, it is easy to tell she is still uncomfortable with the situation, and that this post was a brave step for her.
Although she is an inexperienced writer, Morgan is living the reality of having mental illness in college, and is therefore a credible source. Through raw diction and unreserved truths, Morgan is able to capture the readers and carry them through this journey with her. She also accomplishes this by appealing to pathos, logos, and even ethos. All three of these were applied in her video, and are seen in the writing as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment