Stephanie Ericsson The Ways We Lie Summary

The main idea and Thesis for “The Ways We Lie” is “when someone lies, someone loses”. The author of the essay Stephanie Ericsson gives several scenarios that support her main idea. The first supporting idea is the White Lie. Stephanie writes about how telling a friend they look great when truly they look unpresentable or horrific is a perfect example of how one person loses to lying. If you tell your friend they look great when truly they don’t, you are winning by appearing as a considerate friend, but your friend is losing because now they believe they look great when truly they don’t. Another example Stephanie gives for the White Lie is a story about a Sergeant in Vietnam who told the family of one of his men that the man was missing in …show more content…
The essay is about how Mike went from a vocational school to graduating from college prep and eventually getting accepted to college. I had a difficult time finding the main idea at first, but I think I found it on the third page. The main idea of this essay is “Students will float to the mark you set”. The reason Mike’s story about his friends and him throughout his vocational track are related to this main idea is because it shows the reader how a teacher who set the bar high motivated the student to meet that expectation. Mike Rose writes, “While it’s certainly true that we’ve created an educational system that encourages our best and brightest to become cynical grade collectors and, in general, have developed an obsession with evaluation and assessment, I must tell you that venal though it may have been, I loved getting good grades from MacFarland.” Mike Rose and his buddies had averaging C’s and B’s. Mike Rose said in his essay that he hadn’t read books since elementary, but his grades, writing, and reading all changed when a teacher MacFarland entered into his life. Mike describes MacFarland as a teacher with high standards and expectations for his students. The high challenge of this new class made him addicted to working hard and collecting good grades. An example of how MacFarland set a mark for student to float to is how much homework and assignments he gave his students, “We wrote three or four essays a month. We read a book every two to three weeks”. Mac Farland set the bar high for Mike Rose and Mike worked hard to meet that goal. The entire essay is a story that illustrates and supports the main idea that “students will float to the mark you

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