When I pulled the freshly baked cookies from the oven, noticed that they were not cookies… they were chocolate chip less. My mom asks from the other room, “Ian how did they turn out?” It is to my extreme embarrassment that I have to tell her how my first attempt at baking actually turned out. This memory of mine is a funny story but it is also a valuable lesson that is accompanied by a good laugh. The lesson is one of persistence, a lesson of not giving up when met with failure. While my failure to put chocolate chips into my batch of cookies is not really anything more than a slight mistake, I remember it made me think more about other aspects of my life that were just a smidge more important. I thought about my schoolwork, my athletics teams, and the general idea of reaching my goals.

Ian Margot           

Do you remember the first time you made something in the kitchen? Back when you were just a small child and you wanted to help your parents make dinner, and the wonder of making food took over? I do. I have always thought cooking was amazing. It is like a form of art, the best form of act actually because you get to eat it after! The first dish I ever made without any assistance from my mother, sister, father, or cookbook was a homemade batch of chocolate chip cookies. I was so proud of myself, so in awe of my accomplishment that I didn’t realize I had forgotten a crucial ingredient until after the first batch was done. I had forgotten the chocolate chips. I know, how could I forget the one thing that makes this cookie a chocolate chip cookie? To be honest, I still don’t know, but I do know that no one was more surprised to notice that my lumps of baked dough were just that, lumps of baked dough, than me. That happened 5 years ago, and since then I’ll have you know that my chocolate chips cookies have gotten a lot better. Probably because I actually put the chocolate chips in them, but hey who knows. When I look back on this memory, I always think to myself, I failed when I set out on my own. I’m not saying that my failure was all that crucial or important. It actually had no effect on anything in my life besides the fact that I found out I wasn’t that bad of a baker. While I did fail, I also succeed at the same time because I didn’t give up. When I realized my mistake I fixed it, put chocolate chips in the dough, and it all over again, this time to find the sweet warm taste of success. 

My two examples of fallacies are 1) The Miami Heat have the best fans in the NBA, you should become one. This is a bandwagon appeal. 2) LeBron James is a horrible person and NBA player for leaving the Cavilers and going to the Heat. This is an ad hominem fallacy. And a fallacy in something I've read come from the essay Anti-Intellectualism by Grant Penrod. He makes a hasty generalization when he says "...society looks down on those individuals who help it to process..."This is a hasty generalization because it reaches a conclusion based off insufficient evidence. the writer only looked for examples of intellectuals being attack and none where they were praised and celebrated for their achievements.