Rachel Wiatros
WRIT 116.10
5/15/2015
Full Final Reflection Essay
Throughout high school, I always followed the same steps: One, write thesis statement.
Two, write topic sentences. Three, write outline. Finally, fill-in. Those steps got me pretty far in
high school, until my senior year. I was pretty confident in my writing. As a senior, I was
attending college classes, and receiving college credit at a community college. In the writing
class I took, we were assigned four papers. Our first paper we had to write about meaning;
something that could have a common dictionary meaning and a metaphoric meaning. The next
paper was an argumentative piece, trying to convince the reader of your position, but not
dismissing the opposing position either. The third paper was the writer's interpretation of an ad
picture. The final paper was one in which we had to find the hidden meaning of a scene or music
video. Every paper I wrote, I followed the given instructions. I also made the corrections he
suggested when I asked for help revising. I failed every paper. For each paper, all his corrections
he made and comments he wrote for the final drafts were all degrading, as though he were
talking to a child. The college classes I took that year made my confidence almost non-existent.
I admit I have found more weaknesses than strengths in my writing. I include a lot of my
own voice within my writing. I try to sound more intelligent on paper than I may sound talking
to someone face-to-face, and a lot of the time end up coming across very high-headed. I loathe
revising my own work. When I write, I write quickly and I neglect to read over what I have
written, leaving a lot of simple mistakes. I also tend to be extremely wordy at times, and include
a lot of unnecessary detail, and it seems a lot of the time (recently) it’s hard for others to figure
out the main point I’m trying to make. Some of my strengths, though, include: being
unpretentious and honest, being organized and my word selection.
While writing my summaries for this first segment, I picked up on a lot of my common
mistakes, such as wordiness or unnecessary detail, spelling, and grammar. For example, in The
Dragon in My Garage summary, instead of saying “He then discusses different scenarios of how
to approach the idea of the dragon being real, and different variables that might help us to believe
that the dragon is real”, I condensed it down to “He then discusses different scenarios that might
help us to believe that the dragon is, in fact, real.” I also added in important information from the
articles that might have been missed. For example, in the Inventing the University summary,
after revising my original summary, I included the information about what the article is about
and who it was meant for.
The mistakes that I missed or may not have recognized as mistakes were pointed out to
me by my peer revisions. These peer revisions helped me recognize more of my bad writing
habits that I have gone blind to. Such as my repetitiveness, in which I would write a sentence,
and then write the next sentence, stating the exact same thing, just rewording it. They also helped
point out to me my punctuation mistakes and spelling mistakes. They also brought to my
attention that sometimes my words may be clear to me, but to someone else it could sound very
odd and uncomfortable. All of these corrections and suggestions from their point of views has
influenced me to read over my own work more closely, and try to read it, out loud, as the
audience to which it pertains to, instead of the person who wrote it. By doing this, I will have a
better perspective of my writing, and I will also have a better idea of it will come across to the
audience.
By segment 2, just being half way through this semester, I have learned more in this class
than I had in my past writing classes taken in high school and post-secondary school. I have
learned to take my audience into account, and read over my own work as they would read it. I
have learned the importance of voice in writing, and how it may affect the topic being written
about. I have also learned the importance of including multiple perspectives within writing. I
really have become more confident in my writing, and more comfortable with the idea of
writing. But for some unknown reason, I cannot see to recognize my mistakes within my papers.
I have found that I remain with the same strengths in my writing; organization, clear
voice, word choice, etc. But I also have better knowledge on how to “properly” write a paper, as
well as the different ways a paper can be written. Revising others papers has really helped me see
the many different ways a story or paper can be written, and the many different perspectives that
can be included.
But aside from my added strengths, my weaknesses remain the same; I continue to be
wordy, have a lot of misspelling, and my grammar could use a little work. As frustrating as peer
revisions can be, they really help me to see what was originally blind to my eyes. For example,
in writing The Big Lie Rhetorical Analysis, both of the girls in my group pointed out to me that
my sentences tend to drag on, I include a lot of unnecessary information and sometimes my
sentences are worded weirdly and don't make sense. So to fix those mistakes, I shortened a lot of
sentences, and I also rewarded a lot of sentences too. One example of this is when, in one case,
instead of saying “men with him in the meeting”, I changed it to “businessmen”. Another
example is when I wrote out my conclusion, and it was brought to my attention that the second
half of my conclusion was one long sentence, I shortened it from “Although there were those
misconceptions within the story, Veitch and Erskine did a good job in using logos in the
character’s explanations to help the reader’s better-understand the events of the 9/11 attack and a
good job representing pathos within the text and pictures of the comic to give the readers a
clearer feeling of the message of the story.” to “Although there were some misconceptions
within the story, Veitch and Erskine did a good job in using logos in the character’s explanations
to help the reader’s better-understand the events of the 9/11 attack. They also did a good job
representing pathos within the text and pictures of the comic to give the readers a clearer feeling
of the message of the story.”
After getting back the peer revisions, I was a little intimidated and frustrated with the way
they corrected my paper. I was mostly frustrated with the fact that their comments made it seem
like they didn’t read it at all, and that they were telling me to change the way is was written, even
though I wrote entirely based off of the suggestions given to me by our professor. I can see
where they come from in the sense that I need to slow down and make my sentences shorter, and
i need to take a breath. As frustrating as these peer revisions can be, they really help me to see,
overall, how someone else may read my paper, and how it would be interpreted. Because when
reading your own work, it can be extremely difficult to pick out those little misinterpretations.
While working on my segment 3 project, I’ve come to find that your research can affect
your writing in various ways. In my opinion, writing something you found while researching is
much easier than writing, just writing. Most of the time, anyway. When you write off of what
you’ve researched, it is easier to stay organized, know you are including all that you want to say,
and to make sure you don’t repeat yourself at all within your writing. It’s also more reassuring to
know that what you are writing about is legit, and it doesn’t usually require you to incorporate
your opinions within your writing.
I think it’s pretty obvious I didn’t have a set path on this researching, source-finding
journey of mine. I get distracted very easily, and when I don’t have a specific list of things I
should find, I tend to get a little irritated. Some problems I faced with this project was trying to
do my searches, but not knowing exactly what to search. Because of that, I would go off on
tangents, and sometimes just type in a word that had absolutely no connection to what I thought I
was supposed to be trying to find, just to see if it would take me somewhere interesting. This
project really brought out the lazy side of me. Why? Because 1, I hate technology, and not being
able to figure out the library database for the longest time was really making me want to just give
up. And 2, because of the fact that I wasn’t sure what exactly I was supposed to be looking for, I
didn’t take it as seriously. Usually I am a very well-rounded student that sends hours on
homework and has to get her work done right away. But this project, for reasons unbenounced to
me, I just wasn’t interested.
I found from this project that researching is a very important thing to become comfortable
with doing and to learn how to do it right. Once you’ve got it down, it can be a breeze. It’s just
getting to that comfortable point that is the struggle. I also learned that it’s VERY important to
get down your source information right when you know you are going to keep information from
that site. At the beginning of this project, instead of smoothly going through each site, reading it,
taking notes, writing my summary, and moving on, I read the article, wrote down the URL, and
went on to search another article. That continued until I found all 26 of my sources. The problem
with doing that is a few times, when I tried to click on the URL to take me back to the article so I
could properly cite it, the URL wouldn’t take me back. So I had to re-search all of the sources
that the URL didn’t work for, which took more time.
My opinion of this project is not a very positive one. I found it to be incredibly tedious
and frustrating. I despise assignments that are so open-ended because when there isn’t a set list
of things we need to do, there are so many possible ways to do the assignment wrong without
knowing it’s wrong. Also, the fact that a lot of the information we were looking for we weren’t
going to end up using anyway just made it more annoying. It turned out to be a lot of busy work,
which, at this time in the semester, is really NOT something any student is going to go into with
a good attitude. But I do see the positive impacts of this project, and why my professor saw it to
be an important assignment. I understand that in the future, everyone is bound to come across a
situation where they need to do research, and it’s better to know how to properly research
something, and where to go to find it, rather than wandering around google or some Wikipedia
site that is less likely to be a reliable source. Overall, as much as I hated this assignment, I found
it to be helpful and successful in preparing me for future research situations. So thank you.
I think by segment 4, we have become close enough for me to be able to say freely and
with no guilt that this project has been a pain in my ass. I had absolutely no idea what it had to
do with rhetoric, and I was so frustrated with the thought that it was so irrelevant to our class.
From trying to work with technology, my worst enemy, to the amount of work I ended up having
to push off and pile up to work on later due to my concussion. These last few weeks have been
absolute hell.
Starting out this project, I didn’t realize how nit-picky everything was going to be; that
every little thing had some sort of meaning or gave off some sort of emotion. For example, my
group’s topic for this project was the black plague, with a twist. Our group’s name for this
project is Wisconsin State Disease Control. So trying to pick a theme, pictures, font, layout, and
all that other crap took forever.
When choosing our theme, we wanted to go with something that wasn’t super light and
delicate or fun, because we wanted a serious tone, but we also didn’t want something so dark and
terrifying it would cause a panic (if it were real). Also, in choosing the background, we decided
to go with a picture of a down-town area, or a city with lots of tall buildings, with a grey, cloudy
covering. We decided to go with this look because it portrayed a more serious environment with
all the office buildings and the public that would be most likely to become effected by the
disease.
Within the website, we wanted to have a more serious look since we were coming off as a
disease control center, so we decided to make the headings a straighter, easy to read, font. But
not anything like a crazy “WARNING” font. Our layouts of our pages were simple, easy to
follow, and somewhat organized. Coming from a few 19-year-olds, I think we did a pretty decent
job trying to be serious and come off as a bigshot disease control center.
It took me until the assignment of our final essay to realize that this project had anything
to do with rhetoric. But it does, and so do a lot of things within the public as well, not just
articles or papers or books (surprise!). The rhetors of this website are both myself and my group.
We have multiple different audiences we are trying to get our message out to throughout our
website. Each page is supposed to pertain to a different type of audience; parents, doctors and
government officials, and the general public. Our ethos throughout the website is informative,
with the use of appropriate, mature language. Our pathos is more serious, but lighter depending
on the page and audience we are directing certain information towards. We use a lot of logos
throughout the website, which would make sense seeing as we are trying to keep the public
informed. Also, looking at other websites and seeing how their use of pictures really helped
bring focus to what the article or website was talking about, and it also made the website easier
to read because it was more than just words, we decided to include visual rhetoric in our website
as well. Our use of pictures, posters, comics, and videos we thought would really help catch the
reader’s attention and help them better understand the effects of the plague and what to watch out
for. It really helped make our website less boring, I think.
Our home page contains pictures and posters and a comic that is more child-friendly.
More for the less-serious public, in which we include less detailed information or bullet-pointed
information on what to watch out for. The transmission, history, and about pages are more
towards the general public. The transmission page is just one long, detailed article of how the
disease moves through the body, and the effects and changes the body goes through. It also
includes pictures of the common carriers, the physical effects the body goes through, and a
diagram of the brain and the different parts that are affected. The history page includes different
types of facts and information, and an easy to follow timeline of the Black Death. The about
page contains general information about the WSDC and how to “contact” us. The official content
page contains more detailed “must know” information within a PowerPoint, and protocol that
pertains more toward government officials and doctors.
The exigence of our project is supposedly the breakout of the Black Death. Only, this
plague breakout is different from previous breakouts. This breakout starts the same; disease is
carried on fleas, carried on rats or other rodents, transmitted to humans, causing flu-like
symptoms, soon leading to death. But the twist with this plague is that soon after the flu-like
symptoms start, gangrene begins to form within the body, causing it to rot from the inside out.
Once this begins, the rotting soon gets to the brain, in which the front temporal lobe rots, causing
disruptions of pathways to visual receptors, creating delusional disorders and an alternate reality
in those that are affected. Once they have developed these delusion disorders, they then see the
healthy public and those that are trying to help them as the infected, dangerous ones. And when
they feel threatened, they will attack.
Our purpose for this project I think is pretty obvious; to inform the public of this disease
uprising and to keep everyone well-informed and safe. Our project is entirely based on supplying
those who read it with information on this disease, how it spreads, how to prevent from getting it,
and other information we feel it is important for the public to have.
Some constraints we came across were things that had a lot to do with what we couldn’t
include based on the theme we picked or the audience we decided to direct our website towards.
For example, it was hard to include an appropriate comic that fit with what we were trying to say
when a comic seems more like something for a younger citizen, also without having a set place it
could fit nicely and still make the website seem organized. Also, because of the theme, we really
had to be aware of what pictures we put on our website and how those fit with our theme.
Meaning, since we have a more serious, informative theme to our website, we couldn’t really
incorporate humor or lightness to the pictures we posted.
This project was a lot different than I first expected it to be. It was a lot more difficult in
the sense that we spent all semester writing essays, and I know that this is the same sort of idea,
writing to an audience and shaping how we say what we say based on the audience we are
writing to, this project had multiple different aspects to it. We had to include a clear theme,
pictures, and multiple different kinds of informative techniques. Also, we didn’t really have set
peer revisions. Of course, because it’s a group project, we should automatically read over what
our group members have done just to be sure that it is all correct and in line with everything else
on the website, that’s hard to do when you have a million other things on your mind.
But although this project was difficult and frustrating as hell, I am pretty thankful that we
had this assignment, rather than having to write out a fifteen page essay on something that would
probably make my head explode. And, you know, for being totally freaked out and clueless at
what exactly we need to do for this project and how to do this project, I think my group, and
honestly this whole class, did a pretty damn good job with it.
This class, as stressful as it was, I am glad this is the writing class I decided to take. I
learned a lot more than just writing styles and techniques and big words and how to take
criticism and other stuff like that. I also learned different life lessons that are totally irrelevant to
this class. Which, sometimes, was actually a breath of fresh air away from the amount of work I
felt I was suffocating in. And the way Dr. Blaskiewicz handled all our stress and questions and
the way he treated us more as accomplices and friends rather than insuperior students really
helped, too. So thank you for that, and bravo on a successful semester. (Good luck at your next
job!)