ToW #16 - IRB by Meg Jay: "The Defining Decade"

        The bulk of Doctor Jay's book on seizing one's third decade of life is occupied by her tips on fully developing a career, a love life,  and one's own brain and body. These tips vary greatly -- from using social media to make one's self look professional to taking relationships slow in order to ensure that one does not dislike her or his friends and family down the line. Despite having a huge range of subjects to explore in her writing, Jay employs only a handful of rhetorical strategies throughout her work -- as I read it, I overwhelmingly noticed two major devices: telling of anecdotes and use of statistics as evidence.

        Jay's use of anecdotes to describe the plight of the twenty- to thirty-something is extensive; in all, I estimate that 80% of The Defining Decade involves some personal story of a patient and how Jay treated him or her. In fact, you would be extremely hard pressed to find a page outside of the Introduction that does not either mention a patient by name or have a direct or adapted quote from a patient. I'm going to turn to a random page right now and type out the first anecdote that I see: "Danielle ... imagined that people at work either had confidence or they didn't, so that any little thing that went wrong on the job suggested she didn't," (157). They are literally all over the place, and for good reason. Jay uses anecdotes because they're both inherently relatable and solid pieces of evidence. If she were examining the scientific aspects of third-decade insecurities, then perhaps statistics would be better suited -- but after all, Jay is trying to help humans get over their feelings of insecurity, so anecdotes reign supreme. Then, there's her secondary use of statistics, which serve as objective backings to what would otherwise be a purely subjective book. Without them, Jay's tips would only hold as much credibility as the believability of her patient's stories.

        In retrospect, it was quite clever of Jay to primarily use these two devices; it made the reading more coherent and understandable than if there were to be five or six main devices. However, there is a danger in only employing a few devices: the author risks monotony and boredom of the reader. At times, I'll admit, Jay droned on so long about her "clients" that I skipped a few paragraphs ahead only to enjoy some more anecdotal evidence. Still, Jay is pretty successful with her work; what she lacks in rhetorical strength, she more than makes up for in well thought-out and interesting messages to her readers.