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Mengqi Ma

Ryan Myers

ESL 1080-005

February 4, 2020

Rhetorical Analysis First Draft

Since the competition of employment is increasing in recent years, many people want to

get their master or doctoral degrees to get a better job. However, entering graduate school means

that there will be more and more tasks for study and research, so people must choose between

academic and relationships. As a result, many graduate students have to sacrifice their marriage

for academic reasons. According to the Why Does Graduate School Kill So Many Marriages,

Kathryn R. Wedemeyer-Strombel believes that seeking knowledge does not mean sacrificing

their relationship. She analyzed that those graduate students spent a lot of time in the laboratory

and ignored their own and family emotions. People should carefully consider this issue before

planning to enter graduate school, and graduate schools need to give students the necessary

reminders of what going to be happen about their relationships after their students get to graduate

program. In the original article, Kathryn R. Wedemeyer-Strombel discusses the fact of graduate

students lost their marriage at the beginning. She tries to figure out why this fact happened next.

Finally, she proposed solutions through his own experience and the opinions of others.

Wedemeyers-Strombel used genre, purpose, exigence, audience, visual design, and constraints to

provide a serious problem about relationships of graduate students. Therefore, the author used

the rhetorical tools well to make this article well-constructed and very convincing.

This article is an argumentative essay. As an argumentative, you need to find a topic and

discuss this topic, then give your own opinion. For that, Wedemeyers-Strombel firstly talks about
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she finds that more and more graduate student lost their marriage based on her own and her

colleagues’ experiences, which is one of the popular topics. Then she explains why this problem

happened. She believes that because graduate students spend a lot of energy when they are doing

graduate research, they easily ignore their relationship. In addition, pressure as a graduate student

and pressure from professors and graduate schools have also “depleted your emotional

reservoir”. At last, he provides some solutions to solve the issue. For example, you should

consider what suits you and your partner when choosing whether to enter graduate school. She

addressed the issues and steps clearly and perform them in the most understandable way to the

readers.

Wedemeyers-Strombel tries to remind those who want to enter the graduate school to

maintain their relationship; and the school needs to remind the students the consequences. For

those who have become graduate students, the author hopes that they could balance their

academic and relationships. The topic of this article is serious and sad. Many families are broken

because of graduate program. Therefore, it is very urgent for the author to write this article. She

believes that this article is important for those who are graduate students or doctoral students.

She hopes that those who read this article will have some insight or remind them to pay attention

to their relationship.

The intended audience of this article is graduate students who have relationship with

someone, graduate school, and some people who want to study in graduate school. As I

mentioned in the previous paragraphs, the purpose of this article is the author want to remind

graduate and doctoral students that their relationship could be in danger. Additionally, she

suggests graduate school should have a class, which can notice students what will be happening

after they entering the graduate school, like “welcome to grad school” orientation.
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She adds a photo at the beginning to attract readers. The author uses bullets when she

tries to give readers some solutions about how graduate students to notice their relationship

Those bullets make the article clear and understandable. There is also a capitalized T at the

beginning of the article, it reminds her readers the start of this article.

As the author said, her own marriage was also near collapse, so I don't think she could

maintain absolute objectivity when writing this article and may have some bias against graduate

school. A support quote will be, “When my own marriage nearly collapsed, graduate school was

a main factor.” No matter what, as long as it involves themselves, everyone will have some bias.

In a world, it is an argumentative essay. The author wants to remind people that they need

to be prepared with their partner when they want to study in graduate school. Her article’s main

audience are graduate students. She adds a photo and bullets to attract readers. However, she

may not be able to claim his points objectively. The article “Why Does Graduate School Kill So

Many Marriages?” is perfectly structured, and tall the support idea that Kathryn R. Wedemeyer-

Strombel used were trustworthy.