Ever since I was a kid in preschool I always wondered “how will I write when I’m in college?” I never was the brightest kid in my class but yet, those simple sentences I first began to compose felt so evolutionary and complex when I added in a new vocabulary word of the week. For the longest time, I can remember I always pondered this idea of how would “older me” look down at my current self. I always wanted to go over the top and above in beyond in my writing and my work very often can be confusing and inconsistent. It took me sadly a long time to find my style of writing; but then one day I realized that “older me” writes exactly the same as I have always been writing. With all these inconsistencies and mistakes, I learned that right there is the value of my own work. It’s unique and fluid and it stands out because no matter what I’m writing the passion of my voice radiates off the pages.

This class actually helped me realize that my writing is flawed but it gave me a way of improving my work through countless drafts and hours spent re-reading my work. This class taught me a valuable lesson on the importance of drafting. It helped me actually try to revise my work because prior to this class I had the terrible habit of being too embarrassed to re-reading my work. It’s a habit that I absolutely regret because I knew it absolutely cost me several points in many different classes but it was childish and I’m glad to finally leave that phase of my writing career. Another learning objective of this class that helped me break this habit of being embarrassed about my work was the several times we as a class socialized and work on each other’s drafts in the breakout rooms. It was definitely an eye-opener and a relief to see that absolutely no one’s work is perfect and up until then, I believed that everyone but I had perfecting grammar and perfect writing but I was so wrong. For the first time in a while I was ready and very open to criticism because I knew that in the end, it will aid me in improving my skills.

I learned the power of language and how it influences and empowers from my research paper on Guy Mcpherson. Guy Mcpheresons ideas on global warming are very questionable and incredibly unreliable. However, despite this, he attracts a large audience of followers who provide him with donations and tons of support. This was largely due to how he phrases his claims and rewards scientific articles to fit better into his claim. What I learned from Mcpherson was how to convince a group of people using as few words as possible. His points are simple and direct and from this one would assume Mcpherson to have factual solid claims. Mcpherson has such a stronghold on the minds of many of his followers which use to be me before I did my own independent research. I did not realize that most of his work was questionable until I realized that his blog was very simple to read almost as if it was designed for people who dont know how to read scientific papers. This was when I began to recognize who Mcpheresons audience was and from this, I was able to determine Mcpheresons rhetorical strategy to persuade and misdirected uneducated individuals. Although Mcpherson had tons of evidence to back up his claims there was a clear indicated pattern of articles either being paywalled or misinterpreted on Mcpheresons part. This class prevented my own self from being misinformed because I was able to identify a certain rhetorical persuasion strategy of fearmongering.

Nonetheless, the class had me looking at and locating several different kinds of scientific papers. From the lecturer, we had with the librarian I was actually able to take that information and use it for a separate class where I head to find at least CCNY 3 peer-reviewed articles and incorporate them into my work. I was not only able to locate the articles through the CCNYdatabase but I was also able to properly cite the information in MLA format. I didn’t just click cite in a citation machine or copy past the given citation but for a few articles, I had to manually cite my work which I had never known how to properly do without a citation machine.

One thing in particular that I enjoyed was the weekly reading discussion posts that we worked on. For one thing, it was a way to strengthen my rhetorical analysis understanding but it also introduced to me several different kinds of genres and rhetorical strategies that I haven’t been exposed to so much. An example of a new rhetorical strategy was the storytelling in the yellow wallpaper that absolutely deserves two readings after your first read. This is because there were so many tiny hidden details in the story that were foreshadowing and rubbing the information right in the reader’s face which was only understandable right at the end of the passage. From captivating storytelling in The Yellow Wallpaper to persuasion writing in the article “Ghosts of the Future” there was no limit to genres in the weekly discussion posts.

Furthermore, I was really proud of how I dove into deep Mcpheresons claims in my research paper as I was able to clearly state my position to the reader in a concise matter that gave background to the article at hand. “However, Mcpherson’s reputation as a credible scientist is questionable as many of his references are faulty or biased. Climate control is a controversial and difficult topic to discuss as many scientific researchers disagree as to when the point of no return is, however, what is clear are the effects that pollution has on the earth and the human population.”From this quote taken from my “IS IT TOO LATE?” research paper I start with telling the reader in my thesis my position as well as why I stand by my stance followed by background information to make sure that the reader is not left clueless on the topic. Although my thesis during its first draft was really rough and long I managed to keep it concise and straight to the point.

Lastly, one of the objectives that I still have to work on is creating my online portfolio. Soon I will decide who I want my target audience to be whether I want to keep my website as a letter to my family or just make it public and target the general audience. Although I have yet used the digital tools to address a range of audiences I have a clear idea of how I’m going to formate my work

That little kid in me would be proud to have progressed as far as I have. Yet, the “older” still knows I have so much more to work on but thanks to this class I have achieved all if not most of the learning objectives and am one step closer to achieving my dream of being a great writer