Ivan Ramirez

English 1A

3/21/14

Concussions in Soccer?

            Concussions are something that is very common everywhere but are also something not to take lightly. Concussions often lead to worse injuries such as permanent memory loss, and may even cause retardation if left untreated. They occur with hard contact or collision to the head and some of the symptoms are memory loss and dizziness. Concussions occur more often in more physical sports such as football and hockey. These types of sports have constant collisions within players and have a lot of head banging that goes along with it. The thing that many people may not know is that there are also many concussions that happen in soccer. Many people think that soccer is a relatively safe sport and that the only true harm it causes is to your legs. But in reality it is one of the sports where concussions happen more frequently. I made a clay brain for my Three-D rhetorical object to spread awareness of the amount of concussions in reality occur in soccer.  In this paper I will be explaining what my artifact represents along with the materials I used and why I chose those certain materials.

            My brain consists of clay and it is basically two parts. On one side of the brain I have medical tape rapped around it representing damage and a concussion. The other half of the brain is normal which represents no harm and a completely healthy brain. One the injured half of the brain I have all the soccer players from Sacramento State that got concussions during the season and on the healthy side I have all the soccer players that did not have a concussion or any harm done to their head what so ever. I cut out their faces from our team picture and glued them onto there brain to show people a more and better visualization on how common concussions do occur in soccer. On the top middle of the brain I put a big S representing Sacramento State and wrote soccer underneath it to show people that this is a real life example and that soccer team at Sacramento State is a prime example of just how frequent concussions are in soccer. I outlined parts of the brain in black to add more detail and I chose the color black due to the fact that concussions are not a laughing matter and that they are not a good thing. Black isn’t known to be a happy playful color which is why I again chose the color black for the outlines.

            I chose to make the brain out of clay because it has the same texture and softness that a real life brain would have. I did not want to make the brain out of a hard substance due oi the fact that it would not have been as realistic and did not represent a brain well. I chose medical tape out all types of tape due to the fact that we are always around medical tape. Soccer players see or use medical tape on the daily. Weather it is to tape up your ankles before practice or tape an injury during a game, we use it on the daily. I also thought it represented an injured brain well. I used real life pictures of the players on the team because I believe that it will send the message I am trying to convey in a more effective way. People may know some of the players on the team that have gotten concussions and may become more interested in the issue. Looking at the faces of people who have actually gone through this, sends a more effective message compared to just statistics or stick figures. I made a large S and placed it at the top of the brain and made it green, because of course it is our school’s main color.

            The size of my object is not very big, it is about the same size as a brick. I did not want to make the brain too big because I wanted to keep it somewhat realistic. I wanted to make it about the same size and actual human brain is. The texture of the brain is a little rough and bumpy because a real brain is bumpy as well. A real brain has a lot of cresses that go around it, I tried to imitate it as close as possible. The intended audience for my project is anybody who is interested or unaware of the likelihood of concussions in soccer. I did not really target a specific audience, I just made it so that anybody is opened to it. I try to use and emotional appeal to persuade people to become more aware by placing actual pictures of the players. Seeing real life people will make people feel a little bit of pity and hopefully make them more concerned about the ongoing issue.

            The biggest message that my artifact displays is the awareness of concussions and that’s what I was going for. I think that my concussed brain does a very good job of conveying the message or spreading out the awareness. It is easy to tell which side of the brain is concussed and people will be surprised of how many concussions happened throughout just one team. It will be spreading the awareness of it and will hopefully catch a few peoples interest.

            I think that this way of conveying or sending a message is the most effective compared to the other three genres that we displayed. They are similar and different in many different ways. They are similar because they are all ultimately sending the same message and they all have to do with the soccer part of concussions, compared to other sports. They are also similar because they all use words to get across the message, all four genres had at least a few words when trying to convey there message. But they are also different in many ways as well, some used words more than others and others used more of a visual aspect to send the message. I believe that the three-D artifact sends the message the strongest and is the most effective because it makes the spectator think more and really challenges them to figure out what the message is. It forces them to analyze more critically and makes them think much deeper compared to just reading words or watching a video.

            Overall, I enjoyed making my concussed brain and I believe it does the job that I wanted it to do. I did not really go through any hard obstacles when making the brain, the hardest part for me was thinking about the idea. I struggled a lot thinking of things I could make that would send a strong enough message to the viewer. I constantly changed ideas until I stumbled upon this one. My biggest success is the fact that I am satisfied with its appearance and believe it sends the message or awareness I wanted to get across in an effective way. I believe that I deserve a B or a C in this assignment because I put a lot of work into my brain and I think it does send out awareness about concussions in soccer. It is not like it’s a completely irrelevant object, I believe my brain does what it needs to get done and does it in an interesting way as well.