Edward 1 Ellen Edward Professor Ms.

Garvey WRD 103 19th November, 2012 Final Reflective Letter

Well, the commonly used phrase, time flies when youre having fun, can definitely be applied to the time Ive spent in WRD 103. From the Professor, to my peers, to the works Ive produced through this class; it has been a journey that has helped me grow and a journey I shall always remember. What I loved most about WRD 103 is the vast range of materials and prompts we covered and had the opportunity to work on. It definitely made me step out of my comfort zone, which only made me grow as a writer. Ranging from having to rhetorically analyze a political speech, do extensive research about which gender talks more, write a blog about the first amendment manifestations in the academy, and finally, create a multimodal about the discourse you believe you are apart of. All pieces that I have poured all I could in, and that I am proud of. As we kicked off our first lesson, we all quickly found out that our first essay was to tackle rhetorically analyzing a political speech. During this process I learnt about rhetoric devices, which I found I knew nothing about in the past, but also in turn found myself learning more about propaganda devices. I decided to annotate and analyze Michelle Obamas heartfelt DNC speech. Having the ability to always go back and work on this piece made me produce a writing that I am most proud of,

Edward 2 and that is why I also decided to make it the midterm paper that I would be graded on. I thoroughly enjoyed this assigned task as it involved taking a look behind the glitz and glamor of what makes a political speech so engaging. It has definitely forever changed the way I view the pure and sincere essence of a manipulating speech. Taking a turn on the political front, our next task was to experiment on the thesis, which gender talks too much. I found this all to be extremely engaging as our out of class readings indicated that there are many factors to that one simple question. I decided to hypothesis that, it cant be either or and that it truly depends, because I found that its not the matter of it being black and white, but grey. I went on to observe conversation, from a distance, between a male and a female who have just met for the first time, and took note of who dominated the conversation more. My results led me to believe that it wasnt the same gender taking dominance throughout 4 of my observations, therefore making it easy for me to report what I expected all along. It really meant a lot to me because its a question that I constantly find myself defending in a world where women are often accused of talking too much. I presented my statement and backed it up with significant researched evidence. As the second half of the quarter began, I had no idea what to expect would be our next assignment as the first two writings where complete opposites; night and day. Id have to say however that this third essay was easily my favorite piece to work on as it fired up my emotions and had me feeling strong opinions. We were introduced to a video in class about a UCLA student, Alexandra Wallace, talking

Edward 3 about the Asian population around her school campus. I was in complete disbelief whilst listening to the video that by the end I had a million words going through my mind, but was so taken aback that I was left speechless. I knew from then that this was going to be a great catalyst to whatever the purpose of this piece of writing would be because I was already so emotionally involved. When we were finally told what the purpose of this assignment was going to be and in what format it was supposed to be written in, I knew that the stars where simply aligned just for me. Having to write a blog in response to the first amendment and its manifestations in the academy, I knew I already had strong opinions about the topic but I had to find a way to state how I feel with facts and evidence. I decided to use Alexandra Wallaces video as a catalyst to refer back to in response to the prompt of this essay. Just like I felt with my rhetorical analysis piece, I found this piece of work to be the one I was most proud of, deciding to use it as my final paper. As our final project, we were given a task to find what our social discourse was, and explain and exploit that to the whole class. Having to figure out what community we are apart of that defines who we are in one aspect our lives, was something I really had fun with. What made it even better was that we had to be creative and incorporate the use of technology with it. When I first got introduced to this project I thought it was by far the easiest task we have been giving all quarter. Little did I know, I still had to organize my own thoughts, and figure out what I wanted to get out across to the audience, furthermore asking the question, what is the purpose of this piece? A question I constantly found myself asking throughout WRD 103.

Edward 4 Even though I thoroughly enjoyed writing before WRD 103, I definitely didnt write as much as I did before WRD 103. I actually dont think its that I didnt write as much, but more the fact that I didnt write with an open-ended frame of mind. WRD 103 has taught me the recursive way of writing, always allowing myself to go back and fix what needs to be fixing, which has definitely taken the stress out of writing in itself. The recursive process included, writing your first draft, bringing it in for peer review and going back to it for its final touch ups, whether thats scrapping the entire thing or just fixing a few grammatical errors here and there. This process is one of the many things I will take with me and use, not only throughout my education career, but also into my work force career. Being in WRD 103 is an experience that has definitely helped not only me as a writer, but also as a person by opening up my mind to look at things from a different perspective. Id like to thank Professor Garvey for giving me her time in furthering my education.