Critiques of Sara Rimer’s A Lost Moment Recaptured and...

Critique #1 Rimer’s â€Å"A Lost Moment Recaptured† (2000) provides readers with stories of women’s lives who have returned to college through Smith College’s Ada Comstock Scholars Program. These stories intertwine with evidence supporting the implied claim; the typical college student is no longer the 18 to 20 year old. Providing intimate details about the lives of these diverse women, Rimer leaves the reader admiring their triumph over gendered expectations of generations past by going back to college. Rimer hooks the reader immediately in the opening paragraph by describing a transforming moment in an older woman’s life. The woman was leaving her life and beginning anew; she was going back to college. The women in Rimer’s essay range in†¦show more content†¦Rimer advocates that older women were faced with negative attitudes of previous generations concerning the necessity of college attendance. This partnered with today’s flexible opportunities provided by women’s colleges tailored for these women have caused the recent influx of college students being women over the age of 30. This causal claim ties nicely to Rimer’s general evaluative claim: The typical college student is no longer 18 to 20 years old. Critique #2 Mosher’s â€Å"Where Have All the Heroes Gone?† (1998) questions the role sports athletes play in today’s society. Mosher takes the reader through the history of sport and its evolution in the United States. This lays the foundation to his evaluation that society should not expect someone to possess the characteristics of a hero simply because they are a sports athlete. Mosher attempts to draw the reader in to the essay by starting off with quotes from top box office movies The Natural and Bull Durham. Mosher assumes the readers have seen these movies about fictional sports heroes and their flaws; he is writing to his audience, the sports fan. He goes on to highlight poor character traits of sports celebrities by detailing some disturbing incidents they were involved in. Mosher assumes the reader is aware of the factuality of these instances; there is no supporting evidence. The phrase â€Å"celebrity is not fame† (para.6) is awkward. According to the Merriam-Webster