1. I learned about how their were many different and strong opinions in ancient Greece as to what rhetoric is and if its even a worthwhile topic to be studying. Writing my paper I learned how items places and things can be their own pieces of rhetoric that make an unspoken argument to whoever looks at them. I found it interesting to learn about different beliefs of what rhetoric was and how to make valid arguments existed at the time along with what individual things made the use of rhetoric a good or bad thing.
2. I think the group activities that we do in class help me learn the subject a lot better by getting to hear what other people think and how they interpret some of the pieces we have studied.  Having time to do the draft and have a meeting about the paper is useful in the writing process, but I think it would be helpful to have on more peer review session.

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The SPSS work has ramped up in the past few assignments in terms of difficulty.  I think that for the most part I understand what I am doing with it and how it works. For assignments 1 and 2 they seemed pretty easy when using the companion book, but for worksheet 3 it seemed much more in depth. For the most recent assignment I had trouble figuring out how to collapse statistics down into one category, but after reading a little more into what the book said on how to do that problem I was able to figure out what needed to be done with no Issues. From what I can see right now once you know how to do a type of function it is easy to apply the method to the individual problem.

2. What are the major similarities between Phaedrus & Gorgias

Both in the Phaedrus and Gorgias the conclusion that the most important part of rhetoric is to convince your audience to accept what you are saying regardless if what you are saying is factual or not. Socrates claims rhetoric isn’t an art and it cant be done without a grasp of truth in gorgias and also says in the phaedrus that it is a knack that has nothing to do with art. In both of them Socrates says that rhetoric can be used for negative reasons, but he also states that it can be powerful because you can use rhetoric to change small things into bigger issues or vice versa.

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P.soc reconciles slightly his beliefs on rhetoric because he begins to change some of his opinions because he sees rhetoric in a different light and that rhetoric can be used for pragmatic and beneficial purposes. While he does come around on this he finds it hard to change his views that peoples lives are often ruled primarily by emotion rather than through reasoning. It is a little surprising that he would change his views in these small ways, but overall it is unsurprising that for the most part he dosent change his views. It is unsurprising because of how set in his ways he was and how self-assured he was in past conversations such as the one he had with gorgias.