Introduction

            Writing 37 has been a great experience and has challenged my expectations and limitations as a writer. Coming into Writing 37, I was not excited on the idea that I had to write on subjects that I did not really find interesting for most of the quarter. My mindset on writing was not the best since I always wrote papers on historical or factual subjects not rhetorically like we did in Writing 37. Throughout my journey in this course I faced many struggles but through progression and determination to improve my writing I was able to create works that I never thought I was able of creating.

            My journey to enlightenment began with the constant struggle to realize what “writing rhetorically” actually meant. Most notably, through my CR 1 exercise, I was mainly writing about what happen in the story of The Women Warrior. Frustrated, I began to watch videos on rhetorical situations and I read sample RAs from other students while also referring back to the AGWR on taking side notes. Still with a young mind, I showed improvement of my understanding on what writing rhetorically actually meant through CR 2. Here I being to mention how Kingston uses “word choice” and “organization” to set a “negative mood throughout her audience”.

            Continuing my work with the RA, I found the RIP syntax exercise ground breaking to my understanding of rhetorical analysis. I came to realize how simply switching syntax between two styles of writing makes a huge difference. Whitman’s humorous lines no longer created humor since syntax was replaced with Baldwin’s, which created a serious tone.  This exercise ultimately made me choose to write my RA on Baldwin’s, Notes of a Native Son and write about how Baldwin uses different techniques and style to communicate his message to the audience.

            Working on my RA I struggled with my thesis statement and the organization of my claims. Initially my claims where all over the place as shown on my first draft. I was very vague with my claims such as where I mention that Baldwin switches from a “limited first person point of view to a more universal point of view”. I knew that my thesis statement was not so great, so I decided to make my thesis statement a work in progress and develop it as I wrote my body paragraphs. My final thesis stood out the most and I was satisfied with it even though it may not be perfect.

            Through discussions with peers and meetings during office hours, I learned the importance of re-quoting and not assuming the reader knows what I am talking about. For example this particular sentence had no guidance, “Baldwin chooses to dehumanize himself to show that, like and animal, he too must wait and decided how he should attack his prey.”   As shown through my second draft of my RA, I did not re-quote what I was talking about, even though the reader may go back and look for the specific quote I was analyzing, they would have more difficulty reading and understanding the points I was trying to get across. On my final draft I re-quoted to guide and make sure the reader knew what I was talking about, “Baldwin chooses to dehumanize himself to show that, like an animal he ‘would have to strike from a distance’ and must also wait and decide how he should attack his prey. This provided more clarity of my purpose to the reader.

After finishing my RA I realized the effectiveness of Baldwin’s strategies of building trust between audience and writer by exposing them to some of his personal experiences. I saw potential in this great strategy so I chose to incorporate it to my own RIP project. Even though personal essay and advice column are not the same genre, some of the same strategies can be used to communicate and build trust with the intended audience. Reflecting off some of my graded RA comments, I received advice that my RA contained “some glitches in writing” and “overlong” sentences. Even though this was a minor problem in my RA, it could have potentially destroyed my RIP project since I had to be clear with what I was saying in my advice column. With this in mind I made my sentences less wordy and only incorporated words that I had to use. For example this sentence is not relatively long but it still expresses personal information, pride, aggression and superiority, “I have had several relationships throughout my life but one stands out the most, no—it literally stomps on the rest.” As a result I said what had to be said and my sentences could be read with ease.

One of the main struggles with my RIP project came in the form of voice similarity between the question and a response of my advice column. The RIP Doubling exercise helped me think how I can create difference in voice with different word selection. As a result I removed some curse words and included words like “amigo” and “brother” to make some voice difference in the response. By the end I took into consideration that since both the letter writer and one of the responders are male, they will always have a similarity in voice and if I were able to switch voice between both writers, the structure of the letter writer serving as the ego and both responders as the superego and id, would fail.

            I have gained so much insight about rhetoric and many other aspects that were introduced to us in this course that I went form a mindset of frustration to now being interested and excited to learn more. Really understanding what I was reading and associating myself with similar topics is what I believe allowed me to make interesting points on my essays and explain them with support.  Being a college student with a very limited schedule can be hard to manage time to do research on a topic and associated oneself with it. Most notably while working on my RIP project, on my free time I would read different types of advice columns and think how I can create my own unique column. This allowed me to associate myself with my topic and gain insight on how I should write my column. Overall I plan to carry the knowledge I gained form Writing 37 to my personal life by becoming an effective communicator and to future courses like Writing 39 C. I already started associating myself with the subject I plan to research in 39C and thinking rhetorically about how I can frame my project.