Reflection

On reflecting my work from this past semester, I have noticed that I have grown as a writer and most importantly as an editor. My writing skills and rhetorical analysis skills improved throughout this semester. In my junior year of high school, I had extremely strong rhetorical analysis skills but that decreased as I took different English courses that focused on other aspects of the discipline. By being able to pick out my own topic for Project One, I feel that I was able to explore my own interests instead of being forced to research something that I wouldn’t have much benefit learning more about. By picking out my project for topic one, it also gave me some insight into what I want to do after college. Another thing that I learned this semester is that as time has gone on, I haven’t been able to write much in my own voice. This semester has allowed me to practice writing in my own voice again which I noticed has greatly improved, especially looking back at my first reflections to my more recent ones.

The skills that I want to continue improving on in the future are sharpening up my ability to clearly state my argument in my writing and work on how to better define and develop my line of reasoning. I have good ideas but sometimes I get so caught up with all the information that is in front of me that my line of reasoning starts to get lost within my essay. This is a skill that is important for me to develop, especially with being a pre-Law student so I will need to continue improving on this in the future. I also want to continue to improve on my sentence structure. My sentences will get so long and it feels that the contents of it will get lost within my wording.

The sort of revisions that I made to my Project One are mainly just changing my grammar and enhancing the clarity of my writing. I wanted to keep the main argument of my project, but I noticed that when going back over it a few times, some parts of it didn’t come across as I wanted it to. For example, the beginning sentence of my introduction paragraph was written awkwardly. I had a sentence and then ended it with a quote. After merely switching around the sentence structure, it immediately made more sense than before. In terms of grammar, I made revisions throughout the paper when I reference the “Deep South”. The capitalization wasn’t consistent throughout, so I just made sure that I was sticking with the same language throughout.

I picked out my Project One Outline and my Project Two Rhetorical Rationale Reflection because they both show my writing process. I am a huge fan of making outlines, it always helps me plan out my ideas before I write them. All throughout high school I used outlines for every single essay which has made crafting an outline a necessary part of my writing process. I figured it was only right that I include my outline from Project One in my artifacts since it is such a good representation of my thinking before I begin writing. The next artifact that I chose was my Rhetorical Rationale Reflection from Project Two which shows the viewers of my electronic portfolio the skill that I improved upon in this class which is explaining my reasoning behind making the rhetorical decisions that I did and the drafting process I went through. This skill is one that I began developing in high school, but this class really helped me better articulate the specific reasons why I made the artistic and rhetorical decisions that I did. Having to reflect on my own reflection was strange at first, but it was nice to go back and think about how I managed my time and how I drafted my artifacts. I found it especially helpful to think about the times when I had the most concentration to write, or what methods helped me get into the “mood” to write the best. That is why I feel that the Rhetorical Rationale Reflection does a good job of showing off the skills that I have gained taking this course while also showing off how I look back on my design choices and the overall process that I used to make my choices.

I am proud of picking out a topic that interests me, and that helped me learn new information regarding the topic I was already interested in. I am proud of how far my writing skills have come over the course of this semester. I am really happy that I chose a topic that was challenging for me, rather than just taking the easy way out. I want to go above and beyond in my work, and I feel that in all my projects, I was able to do so. I really am proud of how my website turned out. I am really interested in website design and it’s something that I have been doing almost my entire life. I built the website under my own domain name, so that I can continue using it after this course is over.

The research topic I chose shaped me by reassuring me that being on a pre-Law track is what is right for me. Reading the different court cases, I used as sources for my topic interested me so much more than I originally thought it would. I also learned that I really enjoy doing research, especially about society and legal topics/injustices. I really enjoy crafting arguments and reading through sources. I think that learning more about the social work aspect of this project really inspired me. I know that helping people and advocating for others is what I want for my future, and this project helped solidify that. I think that overall picking this research topic helped guide me into a more specific path I want my career to go.