I loved the MultiModal Unit. Not because it was a seemingly easy A, but because it was the chance to expand on a topic in my paper that I was really passionate about in a way that was easy and fun for my class to understand. The course learning outcome that I associated this project with was Purposes and Audience: Students will write with a variety of academic purposes for a variety of audiences. The game I created showed the way I feel about how women and girls are treated in today’s society and how it is setting us back, even if it doesn’t always seem like that. At first, I assumed my audience was men but once I started working I realized that as a woman, I had said some of the phrases written on the put-down cards and quickly broadened my audience. I found that everyone was guilty of thinking or saying the put-down phrases even if the words were spoken without hurtful intentions. When I watched my game being played, I found it very interesting that the audience was not exactly receptive and almost mocked the phrases that I had compiled. My game was not intended to make anyone feel bad or to call a certain group of people out, it was created to show that everyone is guilty of saying the things on the cards and people need to be aware of the impact of their words. I am very proud of my game and hope that my words and thoughts made an impact on the people that read them.
Category: Unit Reflections
Researched Argument Unit Reflection
For the Researched Argument Unit, the course learning outcome that connected to my work the most is the obvious choice, research: students will understand what constitutes credible evidence, how to incorporate evidence in their own writing, and how to use library databases to find sources of evidence. I had to find sources for this paper, as with every paper, but this paper required scholarly sources that I was able to find using the Ole Miss library database. This was my first time using a library database for a paper and it was a very useful tool that I will definitely be using in the future. It was nice to know that the Ole Miss database was most likely not going to lead me to a source that was not a credible one, but I still had to learn how to check to make sure that the author was indeed credible. The hardest part for me was incorporating the evidence I found into my paper. Finding the sources that coincided with my topic was easy and interesting but I kept wanting to summarize everything I had found and really had to work on condensing it and only writing the basics, what the reader needed to know, and filling in the rest with my analysis. As with the other papers I had written, I struggled with analysis but this time I really felt like in the end I nailed it and could see improvement in my analyzing skills since my first paper in this class which was very rewarding. I was really proud of myself when writing this paper for absorbing some of the constructive criticism I had received on the past two papers and working hard to not repeat the mistakes I had made in earlier writings. Overall this paper was the biggest challenge for me but is the paper I have come to be most proud of in this writing class.
Rhetorical Analysis Unit Reflection
Unlike the last writing assignment, I started off struggling with serious writers block for the Rhetorical Analysis. I had a really hard time finding a New York Times Op-Ed piece that I felt confident would make a good topic for an extensive analysis. The day before my topic was due, I came across an article that had been posted that morning and immediately knew it was the one that I was going to be working with. Writing on Why Do We Teach Girls That It’s Cute to Be Scared by Caroline Paul really taught me about my writing process particularly the specifics of the Writing 100 outcome that includes brainstorming, planning, drafting, reviewing, revising, editing, and proofreading. The first draft I wrote was completely in agreement with every point the author made, as I had been upon reading the article for the first time. But once I started to dive deeper into underlying meaning and flesh out critical analysis, I realized that certain claims the author made, like the one where she believes in basically only one way to raise a daughter into a “right” type of woman, were claims that I did not agree with. I struggled once again, as I had in my last paper, with balancing the implementation of quotes to get my message across. I think that I did a much better job incorporating quotes into this paper and used much less to just as convincingly convey my points. In the past I have struggled with analysis, but for this paper, I think because it was only the analysis of one article, it came naturally once my writers block subsided. The only main problem I had was writing a conclusion, which now I realize I could have made stronger with more summary and closure. Overall, I am really proud of this paper and the things that it taught me.
Unit Reflection
I really enjoyed writing my New York Times Reader Analysis because it was unlike anything I had ever written before for a few reasons. I was thankful that we got to choose the topic ourselves and write about something we were really passionate about. That definitely made it easier to express how I felt about the articles I read and to examine my opinion against the authors. In the past I have really struggled with analytic writing because it is hard for me not to just put the entire article full of quotes in my paper so I can examine each and every thing the author said. I tried to cut back on the amount of quotes and information that I presented the reader but I know I included more then I should have. Although I think this essay was an exercise in more then just this particular course learning outcome, writing this piece taught me a lot about Conventions and Mechanics: Students will produce writing that is free of grammatical and mechanical errors that inhibit or interfere with the reader’s understanding. Students will follow conventions for documentation, formatting, and length requirements. In high school I formatted mainly with Chicago or Turabian citations, so I learned how to do MLA formatting and in text citations which is an invaluable tool for the rest of this semester and my college career. Implementing quotations or summaries from sources in writing is hard in my opinion and this essay certainly tested my ability to, hopefully, seamlessly include them to help reader understanding. I definitely surpassed the minimum length requirement and I think for my next essay I could work on constructive trimming down of what is and is not important.
Revision Reflection
In the first reflection I wrote on my first draft I said that my Dior New York Times analysis was full of information and that possibly I had put too much information in my analysis. So I went back and looked at all the quotes I had added and trimmed it down slightly but really felt like the information was essential to proving my point so I kept most of it. I have a bad habit of being “finished” with a paper when I’m tired of looking at it and messing with it so this time I really tried to revise and polish the paper the best that I could. I am really pleased with the way my paper turned out and feel that it flows all the way through and proves my points in a very easy to understand way.