A Look Back Into This Undertaking

        After reading a few more stories within William Gibson’s Burning Chrome, like “The Winter Market,” “Hinterlands,” and “Burning Chrome,” the professor assigned the class with a seemingly impossible task of writing a Rhetorical Analysis paper with at least 1800 words and four sources that described the decisions made by William Gibson in one of his stories. The prospect of writing a paper of that magnitude frightened me along with the rest of the class. Before college and Writing 37, the most a paper has asked of me is a personal statement with only 1000 words. Despite this daunting task, I set out to complete the assignment slowly but surely.

        When I began writing my exploratory draft, I fell into the habit of creating a structured essay once again with a simple thesis and the author’s message. Fortunately, I caught myself and avoided the trap that 10 years of high school and elementary writing curriculum have set. As I continued to write and the details began to come together, I started to visit Professor Eason during office hours for guidance on how to transition ideas.

        For example, at the end of the second paragraph, I described the functionality of the Highway and what’s purpose it served. This gave me the opportunity to describe how the Highway sparked the interests of the many nations which allowed me to portray the nation’s curiosity towards all entities. This fact would later be presented to support the idea that the scientific experimentation occurs due to the Earth’s curiosity.

        One critique that Loren had for my exploratory draft for the Rhetorical Analysis was the fact that my paper had an imbalance between synopsis and analysis. I would often describe the entire plot of the story without presenting any evidence that would bring forth my opinion about the authors decisions and his message. As I continued to write, I learned to condense the parts that were irrelevant to my message and, instead, focused on the plot points that were crucial to understanding my analysis. For example, I would often include plot points that portrayed man’s curiosity which would lead to more scientific experiments done.  

        An obvious improvement I could have made was a better transition from the paragraph describing the multiple human experiments conducted throughout history to experimenting on patients who are unable to give consent. In the paper I submitted, I made an abrupt transition and did not make it seamless; in my opinion it was sloppy. A simple addition of asking if being unaware of taking a placebo is similar to not having consent from the patient would have provided background context and presented the topic to the reader without making a sudden shift in conversation.

        Overall, I was surprised at the overall quality of the paper that I was able to produce when before I would have never though t I would be capable of accomplishing this task. The paper depicted the growth of my writing style from week zero to week seven. Through this writing journey, I have learned to avoid the five-paragraph writing structure that used to be ingrained in my head and have instead turned to a new style of writing where I slowly introduce background concepts and evidence before tying it all together. I have also learned to look for and analyze the more complex topics instead of focusing on the superficial tasks. This entire writing process has prepared me for future writing projects like the incoming rhetoric in practice project that I will begin in a few days.