Developing My Critical Thinking Skills

Given the especially large number of students you see each semester, I don't expect any recollection of my presence in your COMM150 class-- I certainly wasn't an exemplary enough student to have left any lasting memories (which is both good and bad). But I wanted to share with you a small anecdote, because four years later I've realized that your class served as an important catalyst in the development of my critical thinking abilities.

As a freshmen at the Altoona campus, I took your class on a whim because I needed a Comm class. Of course I was 'confident' (re: cocky) in my abilities, so I didn't study for exams and ended up in a bad place part-way through the semester. That's when you offered an extra-credit assignment that required an analysis on Do The Right Thing. This e-mail is to express my deep gratitude for giving me any credit at all.

I recently revisited the movie-- and my "analysis" -- and it was actually appalling at how poorly developed my analysis was. Instead of analyzing why Spike Lee would portray his characters in a specific way, I decided to analyze why I didn't like them, neglecting to realize that by turning specific characters into stereotypes, he may have been trying to make an important statement. Regardless, the analysis (now, anyways) comes across as the misguided ramblings of a viewer that took everything at surface level.

I didn't have the same "critical eye" for films that I have now while I was in your class... but I wanted to express my thanks for introducing me to a life-long love and respect for films and their makers. I do believe that if it wasn't for your class, I wouldn't have given so much attention to different types of shots, or framing, or use of color, etcetc. And thank you fo...

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... time I am not against using violence in self-defense. I don’t even call it violence when it’s self-defense, I call it intelligence.” Mookie chose violence over peace in the situation, and I can’t help but wonder why. There was nothing intelligent about deciding to break the window. It didn’t help further any cause. It simply destroyed a building that was beneficial to the community (even though the owner wasn’t black). When Sal confronts Mookie about why he did it at the end of the film, Mookie replies with, “Motherfuck a window. Radio Raheem is dead.” Mookie essentially tells Sal that he broke his shop window because a police officer killed Radio Raheem. This is basically analogous to Pilate receiving the blame for Christ’s death. Sal had nothing to do with Radio Raheem’s death, yet Mookie decided to take it out on his shop? This made no sense to me as a viewer.