Skip to main content

Changing My Legs and My Mindset

This quarter I watched a Ted Talk done by Aimee Mullins. Aimee Mullins is a double amputee who doesn't have the bottom parts of both her legs. She was born without fibulas in both her legs. She did a talk on how she overcame that obstacle in her path and went to the Paralympics. She started out by telling the audience about her academic scholarship to Georgetown, this was the path which took her straight to the Paralympics. When she was at Georgetown she became interested in Track and Field, being an athletic girl she excelled in the sport. The coach of the team took time to train her personally, and she was blessed with the gift of new running legs. With the help of her coach, she made it to the Paralympics within a year of beginning to run competitively. She faced many struggles in races, but she never let that stop her. Her story is inspiring many today who are either paralegals or amputees.

This was a very encouraging speech and has shined a new light for me on the subject of amputees. Aimee was obviously very comfortable speaking about her struggles and accomplishments. She was very open with the audience and made many jokes, establishing a connection with audience through pathos. She spoke to the audience like she was speaking with a friend. Her ethos was established by the introduction, she was on stage with a friend in a interview type of setting. It was very obvious that she was qualified to be speaking on behalf of amputees and paralegals due to the fact that she is one. Her testimony was very engaging and uplifting. She didn’t make a point to bring pity to herself, she spoke only of how she was able to overcome the challenges in her life.

She brought on stage with her some of her legs. On stage she was wearing, what she called, her “pretty legs.” These legs looked very real and worked very well for her. Also on stage with her she had her running legs. These legs were prototypes, but were very interesting. She put on her running legs and demonstrated how they work by walking around in them. Throughout the whole speech she was making jokes and connecting with the audience, there was never a dull moment during this Ted Talk. People like Aimee deserve to be honored for the example they set and for the challenges they overcome.
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 1, 2017 at 5:25 AM

    It seems as is Aimee really did have a new mindset, allowing her to connect with her audience very well. A speaker with a story like that is bound to be good.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousMay 9, 2017 at 4:02 PM

    Sarah you did a really great job on your blog post. I admire you for allowing the speech to encourage you and then encouraging others, yourself with her story. You did a great job of attracting the attention of the reader and making them want to read more. It is always inspiring to hear stories such as Aimee's. Thank you for sharing- great job!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousMay 10, 2017 at 8:04 PM

    I think this is a very inspiring story. It's awesome to see how she used her challenges and obstacles and turned them into something that can inspire other people as well. Good analysis overall.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousMay 11, 2017 at 5:13 AM

    She is a very personable speaker. She easily closes the distance between her and her audience, and uses mild humor to maintain pathos. She's just a normal girl who happens to be an amputee, and who found a talent for running.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Open Happiness

While at the movie theaters to see The Maze Runner , I saw a commercial that featured rhetoric. The commercial begins with a young woman named Jess purchasing two Coca Cola drinks in a convenience store. One has her own name on it, and one has the name of her friend Alisha on it. The cashier watches her forlornly as she leaves, hinting that he has a crush on his customer. Jess gives the Coke with Alisha’s name on it to her friend, and together the two friends drink them. Later, Jess, Alisha and two other friends come back into the store to buy more Coke, then leave and have a good time together. Jess keeps coming back to the store with more and more friends, each time purchasing Coca Cola with their names printed on the labels. The cashier smiles and watches, but it is clear that he wishes he was with Jess.  Finally, as the cashier is closing the store for the night, Jess shows up at the door with a Coke that has the name Chris on it. She smiles and hands the drink to the ...
4 comments
Read more

Marilyn Monroe's Shampoo

While browsing on Google I found an old advertisement.  The ad was for Lustre-Crème Shampoo. It featured Marilyn Monroe, known for her beauteous looks and her parts in different movies. One of her movies was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Lustre-Crème was attempting to sell their shampoo through the use of fallacies. By saying that Marilyn Monroe that tells you nothing about the actual product: it simply attracts you to the pretty face in the picture. Using this as an argument of why someone should buy your product is quite illogical. Just because Marilyn Monroe uses it doesn’t provide assurance of its abilities. They attempt using snob appeal by trying to make the audience believe that they could be like Marilyn Monroe if they use the same product as her. They use appeal to illegitimate authority by using Marilyn Monroe to promote their product. Although she herself is a customer, this is still rather irrelevant. She herself has no type of expertise in hair products and knows nothing t...
3 comments
Read more

Is Hip Hop a Cancer or a Cure?

The speech I watched was a Ted Talk presented by one of my favorite music artists, who just so happens to be a Christian rapper.  This rapper’s name is Lecrae Moore, but he just goes by Lecrae.  Over the past five years or so, Lecrae has been able to break out of the small box that Christian music and Christian rap have been put in, and he has been able to get his music out to all types of crowds.  So I was actually pretty excited when I saw that he had spoken at a Ted Talk in Nashville.  The speech he delivered was titled, “Heroes and Villains: Is Hip-Hop a Cancer or a Cure?”  In this speech Lecrae talked about how it is easy to look at certain people in history and label them as heroes or villains, but he talks about how not everyone views historical figures the same.  Lecrae started off by defining where we get the words, “Hero” and “Villain”.  Knowing the origin of these words really gave good context for what came to follow.  He then went o...
5 comments
Read more