For me, writing was never really my strong suite. Though I do relatively well on various English assignments, it was never an “easy A” for me and it always took a lot of hard work and effort. My “writing career” consists of various phases: in middle school it was sentence structure issues, in high school it was tweaking up my analyzation, and lately its been focusing on my wordiness and precision of word choice. For the most part, I think I’ve come to college with a good handle on sentence structure and on unique analyzation of different paper topics, however I’ve noticed (with feedback from you and from my professor last semester) that I could still use a little help with overall delivery (word choice and wordiness).
The fact that this class was conducted as a hybrid has actually—to my surprise– helped me realize this wordiness issue of mine even more. The fact that lots of the in-class discussions were replaced with online-commentary, I was forced to write out my thoughts versus the more natural way which would be to just raise my hand in class and verbally address my thoughts. Doing so wasn’t easy for me because I sometimes have trouble getting all my thoughts down on paper. So essentially each response, each comment, or even the feedback we had to give on other students’ work meant that I had to figure out ways to coherently express my thoughts and opinions in a way (in writing online) that was a bit more unnatural to me than the way I would if it were to be in a regular classroom (more verbal) setting. Though it wasn’t always a “breeze” or “natural” for me to have to write everything out versus just doing so verbally, it forced me to work on and practice my writing on an almost weekly basis (which to be honest, I think frequency in writing—no matter how tedious it could be sometimes—is really important in becoming a better writer).
The first project we had, the Rhetorical Analysis project, I thought was the most interesting one. I loved the discussions we had both in class and online about rhetorical analysis, and how truly widespread it is (magazines, billboards, music videos etc). I was especially hooked on the idea of rhetorically analyzing commercials, as many firms will manipulate the psychology of their commercial’s audience in order to effectively promote their desired product. After discussing the Apple commercial, I knew right away that I wanted to do a TV commercial. I chose to analyze Android, and I greatly enjoyed analyzing their use of Kairos in creating their effective commercial. For this paper, my issue remained the same: I was too wordy. I remember the hardest thing for me was knowing which ideas to include and which to just keep aside, because I wanted to include so many! I learned, though, that keeping a narrow (and therefore deeper) focus, is better than trying to tackle everything at once (resulting in a very broad/general paper). Instead of analyzing the pathos, ethos, logos AND kairos elements of the Android commercial, I chose to just focus on Kairos and develop that portion into a whole paper. This was a great example of where I worked on precision and coherence in a paper, and I’m very satisfied with the end result!
The Narrative argument was an interesting paper too as I was given the chance to reflect upon my upbringing. Here too, I felt that I had a lot to write about and had issues with wordiness and precision (my first draft paper was a bit long!!). But by the final draft, I really worked hard on “cleaning up” and “tightening up” my paper to make it a stronger and more powerful piece.
The final project, the Media Remix project, ultimately tested my ability to “cut down” to the essentials of the argument, because I knew that I couldn’t include everything I wrote abut in my paper and put it into the video. Though I also wasn’t sure what to include, I decided to keep it simple because putting in too much would make my video ineffective (my audience wouldn’t have such a great attention span, nor would it be enjoyable). This project allowed us to use our creative sides in trying to appeal to the pathos (as opposed to perhaps the logos or ethos as in our papers) of our audiences.
What I learned was that in order to be have good word precision/effective delivery, it’s helpful to know your audience. Once you tackle that, it is much easier to write a paper and direct your thoughts. Though I still think I could use some work on coherence/wordiness/delivery, I think this class helped me not only realize that this was a writing problem of mine, but also in providing me with the insight and tools I need to conquer these issues. Going forward, I will probably continue approaching papers the way I usually do: where I brainstorm excessively before writing my first draft, write a full/complete first draft, and then revise as much as needed before submitting my final drafts, this time paying close attention to my wordiness. I think once I am able to master that, I will get closer to becoming a bit of a better writer (I hope!).
Thank you for a wonderful semester!!