PROMPT:
Meta-cognitively reflect on your work toward the course goals this week. Some questions to consider: What was your experience of drafting, giving and getting feedback, revising, and finalizing your CP? What are you most proud of in your essay? What are you still challenged by? What did you learn from the whole CP process (about writing, argumentation, research, working with sources, reaching an audience, completing a project in steps, seeking help, etc.)? Of these things learned, which one is the most significant to you? How do you think you might apply this learned awareness or ability going forward?
What rhetorical choices did you make this week? Is there an artifact you can upload that demonstrates how you contributed to your learning this week (such as an example of your revision work or peer review)?
I can honestly say that writing this essay was a bit difficult for me because I have not written one since junior year of high school, and it felt like I had to relearn many things. While I found the theme itself to be very interesting, it was hard to narrow down a topic that was both specific enough for the prompt and that I was passionate enough to really dive into researching. Once I had found that topic, however, it turned out to be too specific to fit all the requirements of the rubric, and I had to revise my entire essay. I felt a bit defeated after having spent hours researching the Husband Stitch and writing up my first draft around it only to have to come up with a new overarching topic, find new sources, and rewrite everything. I think that accepting this setback and doing all of that work was the hardest part of this essay for me; however, I think it made my essay turn out even better in the end! My final topic was a mix of things that I was passionate about: women’s rights, healthcare safety, and necessary consent. I was proud that I was able to still incorporate the work I had done about the Husband Stitch into my new essay, albeit at a smaller scale.
I think that through this project, I learned the most about researching, reading, and incorporating a wide variety of sources in order to really build up my essay. While I have written research papers in high school, they usually required 3-5 sources at most, and were no where near this level of research and organization. I think that learning these skills have definitely made me more confident in my ability to write, and are something that I will be beneficial in other classes as well.
The obvious example of rhetoric that I used this week would be the decisions I made in my essay regarding word choice, multimodules, source quotes, and even formatting. I had to use a lot of argumentative and confident rhetoric in order to get my points across and convince the reader that my problem exists. I think that the best evidence showing this would be my original outlines and notes to myself on my first drafts where I mapped out the course I wanted to take with my writing.
WR39C E-Portfolio 