Final Reflection

The purpose of the final reflection is to inform my audience of an overview of all I have completed in this my Composition II class. I address all four projects geared to displaying how they could be applied to the six learning outcomes. I also give an example of the challenges and strengths that this class revealed. I end the essay off with the overall benefit of the class. 

Final Reflection

               Over this past semester in Mrs. Atkin-Gordeeva’s Composition 1 class we completed three main projects along with a sub-project that included creatively integrating an image to further enforce the ideas of project three. There were six learning outcomes expected for the students to achieve and I believe that I conquered all six of the outcomes. The first learning outcome, rhetorical knowledge, is to be able to “respond appropriately to various rhetorical situations, purposes, and audiences”. Critical thinking, reading, and composing are when the writer uses their writing to explore their thoughts and others’ thoughts about a topic and come to their stance on it while effectively communicating it to their audience. Writing processes is how the writer creates and edits their writing with and without the help of peers. The last learning outcome, knowledge of conventions, addresses the technical aspect of a paper such as “structure, paragraphing, tone, mechanics, syntax, grammar, and documentation” (Atkin-Gordeeva “Final Portfolio and Final Reflection” Rubric).

   For my This I Believe project, I chose to explain that to express and fully experience negative emotions is not negative within itself. I used the experience with my journey of learning how to emotionally process being diagnosed with a chronic illness that can only be treated by frequent brain surgeries. I think something that stood out about my writing is that I am very emotionally involved with my words and I love to express myself vividly, uncensored and honestly. I like to bring the reader into my world so, they can understand.

After reviewing my HOCs and LOCs, my peers made me realize that the reader doesn’t know my story like I do, and I tend to be vague when explaining things. My peers also noticed that I needed to separate my dialogue from my non-dialogue in order to be correct and add emphasis. When I read my writing, I realized that my word variety was not very diverse. I repeated the word “emotion” ten times so, I went back through and found words that are similar to the word emotion.

My rhetorical analysis project was based on the ad “She’s a Lady” produced by H&M. This ad addresses the modern appeal to the popular skepticism of the traditional expectations of what makes a woman a woman. H&M addresses this topic of feminism through displaying and encouraging body diversity, freedom of expression and opinion. This advertisement is geared towards women of all ages but naturally attracts the younger crowd of women because of the twenty-first-century values weaved throughout the video. Something that stood out about my project was that I chose an advertisement that didn’t cause a negative emotion but a more empowering advertisement that politely challenged the concept of woman.

I felt successful in being able to cohesively analyze an advertisement that was a video and has many themes and scenes. At first, I saw that my classmates picked a controversial advertisement that was just a picture and when I figured out that I was the only one who picked a video, I got insecure in my selection. I felt a little bit of confidence when I began picking out the screenshots I wanted to use, and I figured out three themes: The body, the composure and the position of a woman. Once I organized my thoughts, I was able to start analyzing and applying the pictures to society. I felt successful because I started out very insecure and scared to tackle this advertisement and then my classmates encouraged me, and I felt a lot more confident. In basic terms, I felt successful when I felt confident in my writing.

Through this project, I learned how to properly analyze an advertisement and apply it to context effectively and clearly. In my opinion, the strongest theme of the advertisement I analyzed was on the topic of the woman's body. I analyzed the presence diversity presented and how it contradicted the culture of the past and even the present culture. I did have to remember to not get too much off-topic with the application of it all and stay focused on the fact that I was analyzing the advertisement and applying it to the culture, not vice versa.

In the third project, the whole class was given the same general topic of growth mindsets versus fixed mindsets but we were given lead way on the direction we wanted the essay to go. The first decision I made was on the general idea I wanted to write about. I knew I had experience with a growth-mindset and how effective it was in my educational pursuit. As I continued to expand on the topic of the effectiveness of a growth mindset is, I ran into some “theory-holes” (holes in the theory of the growth mindset, that is). So, I decided to explore the defects of implementing the power of mindsets in the classroom. Once I realized there was a gap in the power of the mindset, I discovered the specific topic of my essay and my stance on the subject matter. My rough draft was just my article summaries patched together in a somewhat cohesive way with an introduction and conclusion. What I decided it lacked based on my peer’s revision was clarity in the ideas presented, clarity in my stance and clarity on the direction the essay was going. So, I went back through and simplified and split up complex sentences. I also further defined quotes from other sources. Based on my professor’s suggestion, I weaved and related the final idea and stance throughout the essay to further its cohesiveness. All of my revisions were to help my audience have a clearer idea and understanding of this topic and I believe that was accomplished.

The last part of project three was to create a meme that summarizes my stance in the form of an image without having to read a whole essay. My stance on growth mindsets is that it is positive as long as a student’s life outside their academic pursuit and success is acknowledged and addressed first. In my blog under the title, “Exploratory Essay Meme: Invention Work”, you are able to see how I generated and brainstormed what I wanted the meme to put out there. My natural train of thought was to somehow incorporate a teaching figure telling her student to have a "mind over matter" type of mindset. But as you can see the child is having trouble overcoming the fact that her parents are getting a divorce with a simple mindset change. The child is having trouble overcoming the fact that nowadays being an immigrant is being used as a cultural slur rather than a triumph. Although I didn't use this exact template for the final product, my polished meme communicates the same message in a much more minimalistic, yet more powerful way. You can access my polished meme on my blog under the title, “Exploratory Essay: Meme.”

My main strengths and challenges were definitely addressed to the fullest degree in my first higher education English course. There were two main challenges for me that I was able to overcome. The first being that I always bluffed my ways through high school papers meaning, I didn’t really have to be present mentally to write them because we were given generated topics with usually only two stances to choose from. I also wanted to be mentally present because we were finally able to choose topics that interested us as individuals. The project that required the most of me was the exploratory essay.  I was struggling and I realized that I wasn’t putting forth my best piece of mind in order to complete it because the subject matter allowed way more than two claims. The moment I began giving project three my full attention, I was able to nurture it in the direction I wanted it to go and find research that backed it up. Another challenge that was addressed the moment we began our project was my tendency to water down my writing with unnecessary words and sentences that only further confused the audience. I was always told in high school that my narratives were “too poetic” and my essays, “too wordy”. I, like a moody teenager (still am, just less of one), took this as an insult. Hearing from peers my age in my Composition I class that I needed to be really clear and organized about my story in my “This I Believe: Potent Emotion” project, is what I needed. The collaborative aspect of project one revealed that my style of writing was fine but I needed to aim for clarity and write appropriately for my targeted audience (which in this case, were people who knew nothing about me). A strength that I didn’t realize I had until this class was when I am fully present in my writing, I am able to manipulate a paper’s direction and organization for more efficient communication. Once I realized I had this strength I had fun trying to figure out where I was going with a paper. This can be supported by my second project. I had so much fun watching the advertisement over and over to find three to four main themes when there were at least twenty options to choose from.

Mrs. Atkin-Gordeeva’s Composition I class had a good curriculum and an even better instructor. One of my favorite things I took away from this class was creating a “shitty rough draft” is what makes a paper excellent. In high school, I was that kid who brought her polished draft to rough draft day. In making shitty rough drafts, I found my ideas were able to more freely find their way into existence and the organization was much easier. English classes are much more fun in college than secondary school due to the freedom of creativity that comes along with it. I feel I am prepared for academic writing but not quite yet in the workplace. I want to become more confident in my ability to make rhetorical decisions in my Composition II class before I apply it in the workplace.