The clay tablet exercise was interesting and quite therapeutic. I sculpted a silly interpretation of Moses, as the word tablet initially made me think of the tablets engraved with the ten commandments. When it came time take a shot at carving text into our own tablets, I think I speak for the whole class when I say that it was very challenging. So I immediately thought about how grueling it must have been for the ancient rhetoricians, and how precise they had to be in order to avoid mistakes. In the end, it made me think about rhetoric as a term we discussed called "rhetricky". I don't recall if it was Plato or Socrates who voiced out against rhetoric, but whoever it was would probably have predicted it to be dangerous in the future. If rhetoric did commonly function as trickery at a time when simply writing a message involved such hard work and precision, then it is surely lethal in today's society since we have developed a plethora of means for communicating. Regardless of good or bad intention, rhetoric is accessible, user friendly, and available to all.