LAST BLOG POST EVER!

When I came to Wesleyan, the one thing I was scared of was writing papers. I could write amamzing speeches, poetry, and fun narrative stories, but I have to admit that my style and advancement of writing was very low. When I got to here, I learned that I had some bad habits that needed to be broken. For instance, I have a habit of using the word "you" a lot. I finally broke that habit, although it still arises here and there. But I first noticed it in this class.

I have always liked writing and seen it as something that I never really struggled with, just never felt that I was taught properly. I like writing observations and free writes, stuff that isn't so much structured. However, I extremely dislike rhetorical appeals. I think that every time I feel like I know what I'm talking about, I'm wrong. It was what I struggled with the most, but I think I did very well on my 2nd paper, "Return Ye Children of Men." I started to grasp what it meant to look at things rhetorically and its going on beyond what I would normally do while looking into a paper or picture or video.

I have always been a last minute writer. I can't focus if I try to do it earlier than a couple days before it is due. But I have a process that I love and think it works great. I always write my papers in a 2 day process. I will write a majority of it in one night, usually I get to a point where I am tired of writing so I stop. The next day, I go back and read over what I have already wrote, make changes, and then continue to finish my paper. Once I am done, I read it once more. I do this for my rough drafts and final drafts, and I also edit after every peer review.
The peer reviews I thought would help a little more than they did. I tended not to find them as useful as the teacher's own critique. With my last writing project, I was not happy with my peer reviews. I hardly used them as a reference for changes in my paper. I benefited most from hearing what you, Josh Ware, had to say about my paper. I believe the reason I got a decent grade on my last paper was because I listened to your critique and applied as much of it that I could into my final draft.

During the course, I felt that I excelled mostly in the area of description. My favorite blog post was to the video "What Hurts the Most" and I think my observation was one of my best. I also thought our first writing project, "The Elephant Museum" had good writing in it. However, I learned that I struggle with responses. That was my main critique in the paper, and I knew writing the paper that it was something I struggled with.

Although I did not like this section of the course, rhetorical appeals and analysis has definitely transferred over to other ares outside of English. I applied a lot of the concepts to my term paper for my LAS class. Unfortunately to all the speech kids that I judge for high school speech meets, I am now more picky when it comes to Oratory speeches. I look for rhetorical appeals used in the paper, what their argument is, and if it makes a point. The rhetoric process definitely helped me grow as a writer, and as a speech judge, despite my mumbles and grumbles about it.

Overall, I feel that I have grown as a writer since I entered this class. I have learned about rhetoric and observation. I know that the concepts I have learned have made me a better writer and will stay with me throughout my years at Nebraska Wesleyan.