https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H4yuz9P3FvPMSEicfqCfnw2LrmWaDQTlssaGAC3x-AY/edit

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H4yuz9P3FvPMSEicfqCfnw2LrmWaDQTlssaGAC3x-AY/edit

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H4yuz9P3FvPMSEicfqCfnw2LrmWaDQTlssaGAC3x-AY/edit

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QiNkVf2POW3Uj5tvZXWcZ3Z8NRZjLCY7UVsYcwRUp3g/edit

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DInNePfwS9VRPCTlfEny4ntvNKukOvCTs6IBnhEn0i0/edit

The corporation I chose to focus on was O’Neill, a surfing company founded by Jack O’Neill in 1952. Roughly ten years after opening his first surf shop in San Francisco, O’Neill moved to Santa Cruz in order to “go full force into the wetsuit business, [as well as] expanding the line to feature different styles and women’s fit.” The company continued to do so even after Jack’s death in 2017. Like many other sports based corporations, O’Neill sponsors high-profile and young promising surfers, boarders, and skiers. 

However, that is not the only thing that the company has set out to do. In 1996 O’Neill started the O’Neill Sea Odyssey, a free, non-profit program that educates students about marine environment. The program solely runs on donations and grants in order to provide free education courses for students who specifically come from a disadvantaged background in Santa Cruz County. The curriculum and concepts are divided into three groups for the students: marine biology, ecology, and navigation. Teachers who enroll their students in the courses can also utilize the programs web-based classroom curriculum before and after the main three hour course at the Santa Cruz Harbor.(OSO)

The O’Neill brand has tried to become involved as much as possible in various other causes and ways to support the environment, such as creating O’Neill Blue. With the motto of Our Ocean Mission, O’Neill Blue was made as an initiative to get rid of  the plastic waste in the ocean. The clothing collection consists of sustainable surf wear that is produced from threads by Bionic that contain recycled plastic. “Without clean oceans and clean waves we would exist as an organization. It is our responsibility as an organization founded on the surf to help save our oceans.”(O’Neill Blue). According to the O’Neill website, the first O’Neill Blue Spring Summer collection that launched in 2015, consisting of boardshorts, walk shorts, and t-shirts, was estimated to have removed 200,000 bottles from beaches and shorelines worldwide. Since the start of O’Neill Blue, the company is trying to continue adding more and more sustainable products in their collection, and plan to have 50% sustainable products in their collection by 2021. “Our journey is never finished. It’s an ongoing exercise where we learn, collaborate, improve and share. All with the goal of actively and steadily reducing the environmental footprint that we leave behind.” (O’Neill Blue). However this grand plan cannot be done alone, O’Neill partners with other companies such as Repreve, Econyl, Waste2Wear, and Organic Cotton to produce their collection. 

When Jack O’Neill first invented the wetsuit, he did it because he simply “just wanted to surf longer” (O’Neill). From the start the O’Neill brand had been profoundly connected to water  “Over half of our oxygen comes from the ocean. I think if the ocean goes, we do too”(Jack O’Neill). With the various amounts of programs and partnerships that O’Neill offers, their pursuit to save the ocean will improve and keep moving forward for years to come. 

                Citations

1. Wikipedia contributors. “O’Neill (brand).” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 17 Feb. 2020. Web. 24 Mar. 2020.
2. O’Neill. 2020. O’Neill Boardshorts & Clothing Official US Store. https://us.oneill.com/pages/about-jack-oneill
3. O’Neill. 2020, O’Neill Blue- Our Ocean Mission. https://www.oneill.com/eu/en/shop/inspiration/collections/oneill-blue

4. O’Neill Sea Odyssey. 2020. O’Neill Sea Odyssey | Ocean Conservation For Kids | Protection And Preservation Of Our Living Sea And Communities. http://oneillseaodyssey.org/

The main point that author Yvon Chouinard illustrates in the early pages of his book Let My People Go Surfing is that building a business from the ground is hard, but not impossible. One of the many things that I found surprising about Chouinard’s way of writing is that he’s not afraid to admit that he was reckless, that mistakes were made, and that he was willing to acknowledge how hard it was to start off. Chouinard begins his book by drawing out his past, stating that his family had moved to Southern California when he was young and from the start he had learned to love the great outdoors. In his young adult years Chouinard confessed that he spent a majority of his time after high school climbing with a few of his friends and adventuring out wherever he could. When talking about the uprising of Patagonia, Chouinard admitted that the company had almost gone bankrupt due to almost any decision that was made such as designing better shirts for climbing. It was a constant battle for supplying enough product at the rate that it was being demanded. Out of all of those things however, Chouinard’s way of proving that he didn’t entirely know what he was doing is what stuck out to me the most. He explained that there was a point where he handed over the company to Kris McDivitt. Chouinard confessed that he “always avoided thinking of [himself] as a businessman. [He] was a climber, a surfer, a kayaker, a skier, and a blacksmith.”(44). Although he proved that we would much rather spend his time enjoying the environment there was a point where he realized that he was entirely a businessman, he had responsibilities, and “it was also clear that in order to survive at this game, we had to get serious.”(44).

Now we all know who Paramedics or EMTs are. They’re the people in the ambulances. In other words they are certified individuals that typically arrive first at the scene of an accident, they are the ones that transport a patient and make sure that they are in stable conditions while they are transported to the hospital, once said patient is dropped off at the hospital, the job starts once again. Now the current salary of a paramedic in the U.S is dependent on where the individual is working, which is also typically based on the population. Currently New York is the top paying state at an average annual salary of $46,494, and North Carolina is the lowest paying state at an average annual salary of $32,839 based on a survey conducted by ZipRecruiter. In 2018 the national annual average salary for EMTs and Paramedics was $34,320 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The need for EMTs and Paramedics continues to increase, especially due to our ever growing population. The more people there are the more EMTs we need for emergencies such as car accidents, natural disasters, work related injuries, the list goes on. Now if we are so dependent on these individuals to help us, why do we still refuse to raise their salaries? Yes, according to BLS the average annual wage increased 18% from 2018 to 2019 alone, but that can’t simply be enough. These individuals, many of whom we consider heroes, spend their time getting certified, deal with the gruesome hours of training, and have seen things that many of us will never be willing to experience voluntarily. You wouldn’t pay superman minimum wage now would you?

I’ve noticed that rhetoric is literally everywhere whether it be politics, media, classes, it is in almost every piece of our lives. Now whether we really bother to notice it is a different story. We learned how to analyze rhetoric in our previous English classes but were never really taught on how to analyze rhetoric in real world situation, but even so we still tend to ignore it at times. Some people may cave into buying whatever in the world the Kardashian’s are selling now, but there are still people that shrug it off and move on with their day.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KmXtQnkTpgwgLtub2nTMQq6IkoOSZc8CUp9d9p52i8g/edit