College is a period of time full of hard work, stress, and
late nights. Any college student working towards a degree understands and would
agree with that. Sometimes it’s tempting on a late night of studying to opt for
a pick-me-up, and whether the student chooses a coffee or a drug, that’s their
choice. “The Last All-Nighter” an article by Kate Miller from the New York Times, tells a story
about a senior at U.C.L.A. who is in the final moments before graduating and is having trouble keeping focused
and therefore turns to drugs to help. After graduating and getting a
real job, she still continues to struggle with drug addiction. This piece focuses more on the personal
experiences of the author, Kate Miller, and less on the factual evidence which
would have made the argument about drug addiction stronger and also much more
convincing. Despite the lack
of logos, the use of ethos makes the paper seem convincing but when taken into
consideration, the absence of facts makes the author seem unreliable. It seems
like she didn’t care enough about her argument because she didn’t take the time
to research the topic she was writing about. Throughout her essay, she relies way too much on ethos and not
enough on logos or pathos, although her argument about drug addiction is valid
thanks to her personal experiences.
When it comes to the
argument about A.D.D. drugs and how they’re used, I honestly feel that they are
a good choice for a person who suffers from the condition because it helps them
focus more than they can on their own. Other people who illegally use the A.D.D
drugs use them for the same reason but can easily slip down a slippery slope. A quote that really struck me was, “Uninsured, I chose to
pay hundreds for a refill instead of buying groceries. I’d consume far more
than my allocated does, then spend sleepless nights tossing and turning, my
mind racing and my heart pounding, only to wake up and take another pill with a
coffee to compensate.” This
quote uses Miller’s personal experience with drug use to show that she
was willing to do anything and skip eating food, which is obviously needed to
survive, just to fulfill her addiction. When Miller used this quote,
“Eventually, I cared less about balancing alcohol and medication, and more
about escaping my dim routine of dependency. My quest for a more polished self
became so superficial that I lost track of my goals. It took an old friend to
notice the changes,” I thought it was one of the best sentences in her entire
paper. Again, it uses the
author’s actual experience to prove her argument. It quickly shows the
reader that using drugs to get ahead in life won’t do what you want it to do
for you. In paragraph
eight, she says, “I was now getting high seven times a week, every night a
delicate balancing act.” I think that this line supports her argument the most
because she’s trying to tell everyone that there is no shortcut to success and
that taking and relying on drugs to get you to a successful life, in the long
run, isn’t going to work out in your favor. With the author arguing that there is no
shortcut to maturity and success, she, herself, proves that using drugs even
just to keep her awake at night so she could finish her work never meant that
she was destined for success. These examples are using ethos because the author
is trying to show the audience what happened to her personally. It shows that her battle with
drug addiction basically ruined her life and that no good came out of it at
all.
One weakness that I think takes away from the piece of
writing is the fact that there are so many different paragraphs that could’ve
been put together to make her argument stronger. It seems like her thoughts are
unorganized and it gets very hard to understand her main point. In the
beginning of her paper, it starts with an opening or introduction to the author’s
life during her senior year in college and goes on about how she started doing
drugs. I think that this introduction paragraph was too simple and didn’t catch
the reader’s attention at all. Starting off the first sentence with a shocking
statistic about how many college students use Adderall illegally for their
“benefit” would’ve been a much better way to hook the reader and make them want
to read on further. In the next paragraph, the author is still talking about
her first experience with the drug. I think that this paragraph should’ve been
part of the first one because it’s the same topic and tells the end of the
story that she already started telling in the previous paragraph. When writing a paper that is
trying to argue such an important topic in today’s society, it should be better
written and much more organized that it was so that it’s easy for the audience to
follow.
Although she made a lot of good points from her own personal
experience, which does prove to be somewhat convincing, there were more ways to
make her piece that much better. If she did a little bit of research on how
many college students used some kind of A.D.D. drug to help them focus and used
that statistic to prove her experiences that would’ve made her argument convincing.
Using logos in an argumentative paper like this makes it a lot better because
it shows the audience that you’re trustworthy and that you know what you’re
talking about. It also shows that there are scientifically proven facts that
using drugs is a bad choice and that nothing good would ever come of using
them. I think that using facts like that would’ve made her seem very educated
about the topic and that in itself would’ve made the paper much better. I also
think that using quotes from other people that have gone through the same or
similar experiences could’ve added to her entire paper and made it that much
more believable. This is true because when she used her own personal
experiences in the paper; it was almost shocking that something like that could
happen to someone like her. If she used other personal experiences from
different types of people, it would’ve proved that drugs can affect all kinds
of people not just college graduates. This would also open the paper up to more
of an audience such as people who are drug users and not just college students.
It could potentially make them all understand the negative effects of using
drugs and make them stop. From
beginning to end, Miller talks about her personal life and doesn’t include
statistics about drug addiction to prove her argument. If she worked a few into
her piece then her argument, in its entirety would’ve been more cogent.
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