Andrea Ramos 

Instructor Alice Lopez 

ENGL 2010 

05/04/2021 

Embracing the Writing Process

Throughout my experience of this course, I can say I learned quite a bit about the writing

and research process. At first, I felt a sense of excitement and urgency to find and share a

solution for the current homelessness issue in Downtown Salt Lake City. I felt it was so

important to share the information I had found about the Operation Rio Grande and how it had

been proven to be unsuccessful in my Information Effect Project. In my Profile Project I shared

about an influential community member doing her part for the unsheltered community. Where I

began to feel stuck was in developing my Persuasive Project. In my journey to find a solution, I

quickly found that if I were to continue down this fixed and rigid path, I would only hit dead

ends. I felt frustrated to the point of not knowing if I could continue writing about my social

issue for the rest of the semester. I knew that was not possible, so I had to address a redirection

of my focus. While I could not find a universal solution, I did know what wasn’t working in

putting Salt Lake City closer to a solution. With this in mind, I was able to shift my focus; that

the current approaches to the homelessness issue were creating a revolving door to the issue.

In my day-to-day life, I find myself to be drawn to and find more interest in mediums that

include some visuals aspects to them. From my own personal experience, sources that integrates

visuals are in a sense more interactive for my mind. When it comes to reading reports, scholarly

articles, or other academic sources, I find myself having difficulty staying engaged and focused.

I chose an infographic for my information effect for this reason. The infographic format allows
for the information and facts to be broken up and communicated straightforwardly. It allows you

to be informative and share important statistics without the use of too many words.

For the adaptation portion of the Magazine Project, I decided to adapt my Profile Project

into a photo essay. The person I highlighted on my project is primarily present on a photo and

video sharing platform, Instagram. This is where she shares most of her content, projects, and

stories. The use of pictures to spotlight and inform gave a more direct message of community

involvement and impact. When I was first working on my profile, I wanted to portray it through

a photo essay but felt intimidated by the process. I did include a couple of pictures, however,

after adapting my project into a photo essay, I found that the initial couple of pictures did not

relay the true message I was looking for. I share the adaptation of my initial Profile Project

because I was really proud of the outcome using really neat photo essay formatting website.

Unfortunately, I was unable to figure out how to properly format this content on my website, so I

had to revise the final Profile Project using the resources provided on the website.

While I can say that the revision process is a very important aspect of the writing process,

I had a better experience towards the end of the semester where we were assigned a specific

group. I felt the most inclined to adapt and change my Profile project into something visual and

have the pictures tell the story. This gave me the opportunity to shift my project into something

more visual and bring in a more personal touch. Revising also played a major role in the final

Magazine Project. It is always good to look back with fresh eyes to catch additional grammatical

or structure errors. The Magazine project allowed for this as well as the opportunity to further

develop our projects through additional revision.

This was my second attempt at English 2010, so I came into this course with the mindset

of trying my best to gain as much as possible from this class. I fell a little short of my goals by
not participating as much and missing quite a bit of the assignments. It is definitely a lot easier to

focus on school when you are fresh out of high school and do not have as many responsibilities.

However, the goal I have for myself now is to not be intimidated by big writing projects. This

course showed me that it is possible to successfully create a major project simply by breaking up

the process into smaller pieces. By revising and adapting the smaller projects, you can connect

these smaller components into a bigger and concise project.

When I think about what the idea “Language and writing are resources people use to do

things, be things, and make things in the world”, I think about how through conversation we

often communicate our interest, opinions, experiences with one another. Among all of the

subjects we communicate and share we often identify ourselves with these opinions and interest.

This is often reflected in the work that we do in the academic world. Academic writing allows

for the integration of critical thinking in developing our opinions through research. At times this

strengthens our views and opinions. This process could also unveil counter arguments and

information that contradicts our goals and opinions. In this course we had the freedom to choose

a local social issue to focus on and write about, across several different projects. We used writing

effects to communicate with our peers and our directed audience on our social issue. We made

our initial connection to our selected social issue through the narrative effect first in out Memoir

Project and then through the Profile Project. Through the use storytelling we moved our audience

and created the personification of our social issue. In my the Home Page of my Magazine Project

I included an assortment of black and white pictures to convey the story of the human experience

and struggle among homeless individuals. Like many other social issues, it is easy to disconnect

ourselves from situations that are not affecting our immediate lives. I felt like this was important

to strategy because of the constant dehumanization of homeless individuals across the media.
 “Rhetoric provides a method for studying the work that language and writing do” – What

specifically as a writer do I want to express and share and how can I do so. That is what the

statement above means to me. It can also act as a compass in directing the research process. With

the internet as a tool, we are presented with an endless number of resources and references.

Rhetoric allows for refinement in the sources we choose to use by magnify the specific issue we

wish to communicate. My initial goal to find and share a solution for the current homelessness

issue in Downtown Salt Lake City was too broad. With rhetoric I was able to zoom in and align

my writing. When I found myself stuck in developing my Persuasive Project, I needed to identify

other directions and what I really found to be important to share with my audience. While

finding a solution would be ideal, this redirection taught me the importance of being a flexible,

adaptable writer. The focus on rhetoric is an important tool to use in developing an

understanding how the choices we make as writers’ effects how we influence our audience to

support our message.