After taking this course I feel more prepared to participate in argumentation with others.

This class helped teach me how to communicate to certain audiences, different styles of
argumentations for different uses, fallacies made in arguments, and the importance of time
management. Before taking this class I would overload my arguments with claims that were
irrelevant due to the decision makers because I thought that I needed to include any and all
information that could be relevant. I now understand that you have to gear your entire argument
towards the decision makers, and this often means including or excluding certain claims as they
fit the situation. I never understood how important the decision makers were when creating an
argument, but now I understand them as one of the central points to build cases off of. In the
future I will keep my decisions makers values and understanding of the topic in mind.
Writing my argumentation on renewable energy and carbon capture helped teach me a
very valuable lesson- time management. Completing small parts of the argument and building
up helped me so that when I began writing the transcript I had most of it already written and I
just had to put some fillers in. I typically scramble while writing arguments but with most of the
work already done it took me significantly less time than it would have to finish the assignment.
In the future I really want to start prioritizing my time management, not only to ease some of the
stress but also so that I can produce more quality arguments and assignments. As I continue
school and my work load grows it will be crucial that I improve my time management. This
assignment also helped to teach me how to gear my arguments towards specific decision
makers. Seeing as my argument was addressed to politicians I had to appeal to more of their
values- the citizens and financials. If it weren’t geared towards researchers I would have
centered my argument around the health of the earth and all of its inhabitants, but that wouldn’t
have been as effective as my other argument.
I learned a lot about argumentation and time management from this class and I can’t
wait to apply what I’ve learned in discussions with my family and my future classes in
philosophy.