Virgin, 1

Jessica Virgin

Professor Jorgensen

English 2010

11/12/2021

I have definitely started to notice that I point out the rhetoric in my everyday life so much
more and it’s even helped me with my job when I need to explain my side of a situation. I also
recognize it in every commercial or advertisement that I see now which is annoying to my
friends and family but honestly is kind of fun for me now. It enables me to categorize and better
understand the world around me.

I honestly didn’t give much thought to the rhetoric of music before this class, however
after delving into it my understanding of music has completely changed. I began to understand
what the artist is trying to say and it’s helped me create good symbolism in my own literature.

I loved this unit the most because it taught me a lot about myself and the power I hold to
make a difference. I think we don’t realize the capability and potential we hold inside of
ourselves to help those around us. It’s not as hard as we think and I know that I can use the tools
I learned during this experience for the rest of my life.

The TedTalk I gave was actually the easiest project for me because I was able to draw a
lot of it’s content from my own experience. I decided that I wanted to present it as an informative
story by drawing from my story and then inserting research to back up my main idea, which was
that the struggle with mental health in Utah is really bad. My story made it personal, but the
research that I used along the way proved that this wasn’t just my story, but a story so many
people statewide could relate to.

The only problem that I had with this class was that a lot of the information taught to me
seemed like a repetition of my junior year in high school. I also felt like the lectures seemed
redundant because we would just go over the homework in class. I liked the content of the class
and the projects though, I think those were the things that really taught and shaped me this
semester.

I know that I’ll use the skill of good rhetoric all the time in my school and work. It helped
me become a more literate, persuasive, and overall more professional person. It gave me tools
that helped guide my voice into sounding like something people want to listen to. It also greatly
helped in my other classes when writing papers, I could prove my point much more eloquently
and sufficiently.
 Virgin, 1

I loved the discussions we would have in class and I drew a lot from the comments of my
peers. I think that everyone learned a lot and was able to make rhetoric into a skill by the end of
the semester, compared to the beginning when a lot of us couldn’t even define the word.