AP Lang

Jennifer Senior "The High School We Can't Log Off From" The New York Times August 4, 2018 In this opinion article, Jennifer Senior discusses how Twitter devolves its users' mindsets into those of teenagers. She quotes an expert psychoanalyst, increasing her authority, about how teenagers care so much about what others think, and Twitter is causing adults to fall back into this way of thinking. Since once one posts a tweet or picture they get immediate feedback in the form of likes, comments, or retweets, it reinforces the adolescent idea that everyone is watching and judging them. Senior ties this point back to our president, musing that his social media of choice is the one most closely related to adolescent thinking. I believe this connection weakens her argument a little. If she wanted to write an article about Trump's behavior on Twitter, maybe she should've done so instead of randomly including it in an article that she doesn't even center around...

Jennifer Senior "Sheryl Sandberg Can't Have It All" Published November 23rd, 2018 Link Jessica Senior analyzes Sheryl Sandberg's multifaceted personality and her appearance in the recent news. Sheryl Sandberg is Facebook's chief operating officer, a women's self-confidence advocate, and the co-author of a book about coping with grief. As of November of 2018, it has come to light that Sandberg worked to cover up findings regarding Russian meddling in the 2016 election on Facebook. This self-help guru has a corrupt, power-hungry side. Senior poses the question, "Why do we assume female leaders are inherently gentler and less egomaniacal?" This appeal to logic opens up a bigger discussion, later in the article, about how many women can't "have it all." Like Sandberg, women often have to pick between being successful and ambitious and having a gentler side. Sandberg uses personal evidence to support this claim. She was voted "most...

Jennifer Senior " Our Brains Aren’t Designed to Handle the Trump Era" Published  February 19, 2019 Article In this article Jennifer Senior discusses the intersection between our brains' evolution and the age of internet multitasking. She argues that our brains were never meant to take in so much information at once. Since we began as hunter-gatherers, with no social media or internet whatsoever, we didn't need to process half of the amount of information and news as we do now, surrounded by cellphones, TVs, computers, and other sources of information. And because Donald Trump is a very controversial and twitter-fluent president, he usually makes the news multiple times in a day, whether he sent out a tweet, fired a staff member, or made a foreign policy decision. Senior's support comes in a form that appeals to the reader's sense of logic- percentages, numbers, and scientific studies. She cites multiple researchers and scientists regarding the human mind,...

Jennifer Senior "What We're Not Talking About When We Talk About Joe Biden" Published April 2, 2019 Article Jennifer Senior's article "What We're Not Talking About When We Talk About Joe Biden" discusses the broader epidemic of male superiority beyond the Me Too movement. She begins with introducing the controversy around Joe Biden's inappropriate/unwanted touching of multiple women and soon segues into her broader purpose of informing the reader of her connections with the Me Too movement. While a few of Senior's friends are sexual assault victims, the majority of them, Senior included, have had a less traumatic but more widespread experience with male superiority. Not being taken seriously in the workplace and being treated dismissively by male colleagues is something many working women can relate to. Senior uses ethos from experience gained as a working woman to get through to other women who go through these experiences with sexism eve...