Reflection Essay

CJ Jacobson

Professor Giraldo

English 1010

April/10/2019
 For me writing has always come easily, I have always been successful in all my English classes,

getting straight A’s, and on most occasions picking up and understanding assignments quickly. In my

English 1010 class we were assigned the project to write an Rhetorical Analysis Essay, before this course

I had no idea what a Rhetorical Analysis Essay was. But after spending weeks at home and in school,

doing my homework and paying attention to detail, I was finally able to write a Rhetorical Analysis

Essay. In this reflection essay I will discuss the benefits from writing my Rhetorical Analysis Essay how

it refreshed my memory on writing essays, the new tools to I learned to use when writing, and the patients

it took me to write the essay. To start off this essay I was amazed how different writing an essay in high

school was from writing an essay in college.

In high school, writing an essay is a simple process. The teachers in high school do the writing

part of the essay with you during school. There is practically no way of procrastinating the assignment.

Through writing this Rhetorical Analysis it refreshed my memory on writing essays and how different

writing an essay in College is different from writing an essay in high school. For example we were

expected to read and annotate both Blue-Collar Brilliance, Mike Rose, The American Scholar (2009)

and Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew Crawford, The New Atlantis (2006) if we had not completed that

assignment on time and efficiently it would have affected our essay as a whole. In high school the

assignments weren’t as fast paced and if you didn’t do a specific assignment it wouldn’t affect any other

assignments usually, which was a completely different process when writing this essay. If we hadn’t

completed our assignments it could have affected our work and made our work more sloppy or confusing,

while doing those assignments we were also taught new writing tools.

With each assignment our Professor gave us, we learned new tools to use in our academic writing.

For example, we where given a assignment were we had to fill out a grid, in the grid we had find

Rhetorical Devices from the authors given above and explain how this could be used as a technique for an
author to convey their claim. On my grid I used the following quote and annotations from Mike Rose’s

article, “Gradually I began to see formal education as a means of fulfillment and as a road toward making

a living.” (Mike Rose, Blue-Collar Brilliance, Page 2) Interpretation and Explanation of how the passage

is an example of the strategy you chose: This strategy showed his own personal experience with

education. Notes about how the strategy would impact the purpose and audience (how is this example of

the strategy “working” in the text?): This evidence shows the reader the other aspects of people at work

and not just Blue-Collar individuals but other educated people too.” Through doing this assignment it

showed me how to find different authors Rhetorical Devices which used later on in our essays to use as

evidence to support our own personal claims. It took me lots of patience and hard work through each of

these assignments and to understand each tool I was taught.

Patience, that is the first word I think of when writing this assignment. This assignment took so

much effort and patience, why? This assignment for me was not only difficult to understand but took a lot

of work and effort to write. For example reading, and annotating through Crawfords eighteen page article

and Roses seven page article, then having to dissect each paragraph and find evidence that support each

authors claim, then to having to write claims based on the two authors claims. It was an extremely

difficult process to wrap my head around. I also had to have patience with my peers and classmates, with

each rough draft and revision we did on our Rhetorical Analysis Essays was also followed by a peer

review. During these peer reviews our class mates and even our Professor would read through our essays

and critique them in a way for us as the writer to successfully revise our essays. All of these processes I

had definitely never done, but it definitely improved my academic writing process, and showed me new

and unique tools to improve my writing.

Through writing this essay I learned a new writing process I also learned new writing tools, I got

a refresher on writing essays, and I also gained patients while writing this essay. I learned how to do each

of those following situations by keeping up and correctly doing my assignments, following instructions,
and reading thoroughly through each assignment and worksheet. Through writing this essay I learned a

new and very important form of academic writing, and how to properly word and critique another author's

writing. It was a new learning experience, this assignment stepped me outside of the box and threw me

into a new form on writing I didn’t even know existed, a form of writing that academically improved me

as a writer. When writing an Rhetorical Analysis Essay or any other essay always make sure to be patient,

read through the information carefully, and you will definitely be able to write any kind of essay.