Portfolio Reflective Piece

 

English 2150 has been one of my favorite classes this semester. I generally dislike introductory writing courses, because I am a very creative person and intro writing classes generally focus on structure, content, and grammar. I also usually dislike that the entire semester has one overarching theme, rather than one theme per assignment. This class was different and definitely surprised me. If I had to choose an overarching theme for a class I have no qualms about rhetoric. This was a valuable element of writing to learn. This theme allowed me to express myself, and exhibit my own tastes when deciding what I wanted to write about rather than given something I had to write about. In Psychology, it is stated that people do far better work when they are intrinsically motivated rather than extrinsically motivated. In other words, the promise of a good grade, admiration from a professor, or a chocolate bar, would not propel me to do as well on my papers as if I was excited about it, inspired, or felt I had the autonomy to be creative. This class intrinsically motivated me to do well. I think I could use a lot of work on my grammar. This class helped me organize my papers in a way that will make my point stronger. I have a terrible habit of writing the way I speak. Not in the terms of word choice, as I speak much more casually with others rather than the way I write papers; however when it comes to grammar and organization. I write as thing pop into my head. Of course that is where editing comes in, but even in editing I sometimes miss things that should really be stated elsewhere. Even as I read my papers aloud, I won’t catch those mistakes, only things that don’t sound right to the ear, not things that logically would do better elsewhere. I have improved on that in my most recent paper, but what I have realized is that even if I have not improved as much a I liked, this class made me realize I had this issue. Had I not taken this class I may not have noticed, and if not for Professor Blankenship, who else would have take the time to write beneficial comments in detail? Being self aware, of your flaws and of your strengths, is very important if being a good writer. In my Writer’s Letter for the Rhetorical Analysis of a Cultural Artifact, it was my first time writing something major for this course, and figuring out what the goal of the paper really was and how my topic applied there. In my second Writer’s Letter for the Research Based Argument I found myself being much more focused and specific. Being specific and arguing one main point was always hard for me. I had so many points that I felt were all related. I was always surprised when so many times people would say that I needed to ‘narrow it down’. I thought I had been clear, but if they are all saying it, it must be true. So for my second paper I really buckled down and tried to drive the main point home. Sometimes as I write it seems too repetitive for me, too obvious, but I remember that is only because I already know exactly what I am talking about and the people who are reading my paper do not yet. This extra reminder and constant reiteration will not come across as annoying to them, but rather get the point across. For the Rhetorical Analysis of a cultural artifact, the main goal was to analyze a piece of popular culture and explain using the tools we learned in class, how this artifact utilizes rhetoric, because as we all know, everything has rhetoric. We were required to give a bit of context of the show, but mainly provide examples of how the show uses the tools we have learned, even if they are subtle, maybe especially if they are subtle. I think I did this well in particular when I analyzed a still shot from the show Sons of Anarchy. “Everything has rhetoric. Gemma, a prominent female character on the show, is actually given some serious importance and respect by being placed front and center. However, they have her kneeling on the floor, while the men stand. Even as she is the focal point, and quite possibly the glue that kept the club together for many seasons, she is second to the men.” Here I used the image to support my point that Sons of Anarchy has many sexist tones to it and the women are not fairly portrayed. For the Research Based Argument we had to look at our stories and our own family history with language and education, and the implications of our personal struggles on a larger scale. I had a hard time with this because my struggle is not one that is widely spoken about nor is there a lot of information to be gathered. Nonetheless, it was my story and I would tell it. In my paper I discussed the struggle of first generation college students like myself. I made it personal an told my story in a way that anyone could relate to, wanting to take care of their family, wanting to be a success for themselves, and being terrified of not succeeding “I want to be able to help my family, I want to say that I made it happen for myself, and knowing my family does not have the means to support me should I fail is a stark reminder.” In this class by this point in the year we are expected to be able to critically analyze texts in a variety of genres, use a variety of media to compose multiple rhetorical situations, identify and engage with multiple sources and multiple perspectives in writing, compose as a process and use conventions appropriate to audience genre and purpose. While I have not mastered all of these I believe I can do all of them decently and far better than I could have four months ago. Our weekly postings on our readings on the course blog helped us practice analyzing texts from a variety of genres, personal essays, letters, and instructive pieces on narrative and rhetoric. With our remix project I was able to challenge myself to use a multimedia platform to portray and communicate a rhetorical situation. In all of our papers we were asked to look at different, countering perspectives than our own, and challenge them. A paper is not convincing unless you can refute the opposing side. Four our research paper we were required to pull from scholarly sources to create out rhetoric. We approached our assignments in steps, with multiple levels of drafts and revision, and most importantly develop our own writing styles. I view myself as a more capable writer now than a few months ago. I always assumed I was a great creative writer, and a pretty lousy structured writer. I see that while I still prefer creative writing I have the capability to be a convincing writer in other genres should I need to be. I approach writing differently in the way that I put a lot more stock into revision now than ever before. In the past my first draft was pretty close to my final draft with the exception of grammatical errors being corrected. This semester I have drastically changed papers from where they first started, changed my entire thesis, and for the better. This class helped me confront a lot of my weaknesses in persuasive writing and how to amplify my strengths. As I had mentioned before my weakness was my organization and I am painfully aware of that now. Outlines and revisions are so incredibly important and I always need to give myself enough time for papers to fully go through the process to see my paper reach its full potential.  This class also made me much better at proper citation formatting and I learned how to do an annotated bibliography which actually really helped me with my paper and I may very well use them in future courses. Thank You.