Reflective- beachgirl04

Core Value 1. My work demonstrates that I used a variety of social and interactive practices that involve recursive stages of exploration, discovery, conceptualization, and development.

I was not an inexperienced writer coming into Composition II but it felt as if I was because of the new style of writing that was introduced in this course. My writing in the beginning of the course was far from what it needed to be as my Professor challenged us a great amount, which I am thankful for. I was given many opportunities to ask for feedback on each assignment assigned and revise after the feedback was given. I took advantage of all of those opportunities especially on my Rebuttal Argument. I was confused by this argument but then I went ahead and did it and did not really use any factual evidence of those who refuted that water is the most beneficial liquid to keep you hydrated. My professor commented on my original post the day I posted it and after many comments I was able to research more and change my rebuttal into actually refuting what I needed to as well as fixing style errors.

Core Value 2. My work demonstrates that I read critically, and that I placed texts into conversation with one another to create meaning by synthesizing ideas from various discourse communities. 

Each and every class meeting of this semester required critical thinking each second of the class. Professor Hodges stated during one of our classes that “we don’t have a thought in our heads,” my mind was puzzled. We then were assigned the assigned of “Stone Money”. Professor Hodges always forced us to be ready to have a counterintuitive mindset rather than any other type. The “Stone Money” assignment forced me to think in a manner I never had before. I listened to the NPR broadcast multiple different times refusing to believe that “money is fiction”, I had no clue how all the money I have ever saved up was not a real number. I then went ahead to read about Yap’s monetary system and the Bitcoin and it started to make more sense to me that money could be imagined instead of being real. It took me three different sources as well as an explanation from Professor Hodges to understand that the island of Yap’s system is reflected in our own system today.

Core Value 3. My work demonstrates that I rhetorically analyzed the purpose, audience, and contexts of my own writing and other texts and visual arguments.

There is no better example of this than the Safer Sawsassignment. There was so many different audiences for this argument and the audience is who determined the argument that I was making. I was required to analyze multiple different sources and understand why each source felt a different way towards the issue. Each of the different sources provided portrayed their arguments in different forms such as videos, articles, newsletters which made me realize how multifaceted all arguments are. Along with this, Professor Hodges performed a lecture that “ a black sneaker is not the opposite of a white sneaker, because there is no opposite of a sneaker,” (Hodges lecture.) I now always consider who my audience will be and the questions my readers may come up with so that I answer them before being asked.

Core Value 4: My work demonstrates that I have met the expectations of academic writing by locating, evaluating, and incorporating illustrations and evidence to support my own ideas and interpretations.

The visual rhetoric assignment that our Professor assigned to us was to watch a 30 second video clip but we were not allowed to have the sound on. We were instructed to analyze the illustrations second by second of the video and include details, the meaning of the illustration presented, and to come up with any questions or thoughts about the illustration. At first, I just wrote down what I saw and thought it was enough. However, after the first time I viewed the video and wrote down details I did not put any additional thoughts or question into my responses. I looked deeper into each which forced me to be engaged with the visual work that I was viewing. I was shocked on how much meaning laid behind each second of the video. The more time I spent on this video, the more detail, meaning and questions I pulled out of it.

Core Value 5. My work demonstrates that I respect my ethical responsibility to represent complex ideas fairly and to the sources of my information with appropriate citation. 

As students growing up we have always been told “not to plagiarize, always cite, and to use reference pages”. It is so important to me to cite the work that I take from other authors because it is by no means my words or anything close to my words and the authors of the articles and websites I use deserve to get the recognition. Throughout the semester, I have cited sources in each of the assignments I have turned in even if I only took one short sentence from the article. All of the sources that I have used are in my White Paper. My white paper consists of all of the sources I came across while researching my topic, some I did not use but the rest I did. The white paper helped me organize my sources so when I had to cite them in my writing, they were easy to find.