Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

Response to Brian's Intro

Brian had a good time with this one. The introduction he wrote takes the time to make everything sound a little nicer - a little more exciting. In this manner he also tried to make predictions stretching what I actually said. In some cases, this worked out fine. In others it was astonishing. For example, he says "One of Mike's major pet peeves is when teachers let their students walk all over them and he hopes that he does not let his seventh grade algebra students walk on him." This is entirely true - I won't let my students walk all over me - but I did not specifically say that (and I'm not really afraid of it). Also he said I was 'adamant about letting the world know' that my favorite movie is Milo and Otis. That, to me, is a manifestation of how I could be described under an amount of excitement and notability where the world would indeed listen to my favorite movie. However, in reality it's just one of my favorite movies.

In the previous two cases the truth was stretched out but not broken. In a defferent case, it was said that I enjoy competing in sports but stay away from playing catcher in baseball or goalie in lacrosse because I am afraid of becoming sterile. Conversely I only enjoy playing sports casually, and my fear of becoming sterile does not keep me away from potentially groin-endangering activities.

Other than what I said above, the facts are there. I didn't lie about myself, so the introduction says stuff that is true about Michael Martel. However, I don't think an interview and introduction would do any person "justice" as far as knowing what they are like. It provides some amount of backdrop but there are so many humane details about a person, it is necessary to get to know them in person to fully understand.

The only surprise came when Brian began talking about sports. I was on a soccer team when I was 10 for about a month and then I quit. That's about all the official sports I ever played - I enjoy playing sports, but I would never join a real team. This surprise is easily explainable because I did not explain the details of my views on sports to Brian. I actually said, "I like playing sports but I don't like the spectator side of them." That's a pretty open-ended response fitting a wide range of interpretations.

Just as you'll see in my introduction, I have moderate political views. Ironically I must conclude my response to the introduction in a moderate tone. Brian's writing style reminds me of magazine articles, and in either case I find some really good points as well as some really awkward tangents. What it personally equates to is very medium. I feel like the fluff balances with the truth, resulting in a stalemate.--Thebriandonnelly 21:59, 20 September 2006 (EDT)