Disclaimer:

Let me be frank, I had written a decent amount for this essay in days before, however I unfortunately left the window without saving and lost all of that work, so right now I'm kinda just winging it. Forgive me if it ends up being a little crazy.

Actual Introduction Essay:

Greetings and welcome to my ePortfolio, this portfolio will take you on my writing journey as I honed my rhetorical and analysis abilities in RIP and CR assignments in order to write the dreaded RA essay. In process work you will find all my efforts to analyze diction, metaphor, and audience which improved my ability to objectively look at articles to find what parts of an argument are compelling and which are not and for what reason. Also found in my process work are notes and a piece of work where I attempted to emulate the authors we were reading in order to exude different tones, by both breaking down articles in rhetorical analysis, recording in note form what made arguments convincing, and taking the reigns as a rhetor, describing the magnificence or folly of Disneyland. I would come around in my RA essay to utilize all these  skills to break down Pico Iyer's article "Why We Travel", identifying both his message, and how it effects his audience, with my previous process work as a guide. All my rhetorical abilities were channeled into one gargantuan effort which culminated in the birth of my RA draft #1, and boy it was a mess.

Lacking in both a conclusion and a complete analysis of the rhetorical techniques that Iyer had so masterfully used in his convicting article, I wallowed in a moderate amount of shame at the effort that I had so haphazardly dumped into my first draft. Would my ancestors disown me? Had I well and truly failed both Dr. Lance, and the world of writing? Alas such thoughts may or may not have crossed my mind. But, thankfully, my both my man Alan Wang and the good Dr. Lance offered their critics and advise to better my essay. Dr. Lance mostly wanted me to analyze Iyer's rhetoric instead of just relaying his message, and Alan was pretty much just telling me how awesome I was. So after carefully considering the wisdom of someone who has suffered through vastly more difficult writing assignments, and also my man Alan, I added two paragraphs, with one detailing Iyer's use of metaphor to win the hearts of his audience, and the other to conclude the essay in a way that stayed true to Iyer's core message of travel while still taking a more critical view Iyer's motivations and rhetoric which his article conveyed. My thesis was also mended to be a more complete and complex argument which acknowledges Iyer's audience, and how his rhetoric conveys his message effectively. And I reordered one of my paragraphs to fit the essay better. By the time I had finished my draft #2 I was far more confident in the strength of my paper.

My greatest work thus far in probably any Writing or English class had almost come to fruition, but one more step was still necessary, revision. I had indeed added to my essay from draft #1, however after the essay workshop that we conducted in class, it soon realized that removal, reordering, and perhaps even more additions were necessary to round out my final draft. After re-reading my essay many times the paragraph that stood out to me as being the least developed and most confusing was my conclusion. This is to be expected because I think I finished writing my second draft the day before, or perhaps more specifically the night before. It was therefore rushed and lacked a final global take on Iyer's message, that a good conclusion will draw. As such I promptly whipped up a new concluding sentence, tinkered around with my word choice, and proceeded to delete nonsensical sentences and words, in short just cleaning up. Was the work easy? Definitely not. Did I suffer? Oh yes. But the end result was a carefully thought out, thoroughly researched, essay that demonstrates my current abilities as a writer to summarize texts effectively and accurately, develop focused and convincing arguments about rhetorical choices, and rewrite and edit language, style, tone, and sentence structure according to genre and audience expectations. 

Completing the task of reading deeply into an article, breaking it apart to find its meaning and why that meaning matters is admittedly a first for me. Despite having taken classes where we analyzed articles rarely did I ever consider factors such as audience or the writer themselves before this class. And having to find secondary sources relevant to my argument taught me to consider what my argument was and how it could best be supported. Therefore as a writer I can conclude that I have indeed grown from this brilliantly joyful and insomnia inducing writing course. Thank you Dr. Lance, I may not have sleep, but by golly can I analyze a travel article.