Ayden Justice

Haslam

ENGL 2010

5/20/2022

Pushed to My Limits

If I am going to be honest, this semester the senioritis hit me. I struggled to do my work

and do it well. That being said, this semester still taught me a lot. For this part of the class, I

chose to focus on the overpopulation and overcrowding in Utah high schools. The reason I chose

this topic was because I have seen the effects of this with my own eyes. At Copper Hills High

School, we have nearly 2,800 students. I felt it was important to inform people who haven’t

stepped foot in a high school in over 10 years to see the impact it is having on students and

teachers. Forming my opinion for this project was not a hard task. I obviously know that

overpopulation is a problem because I see it everyday. That being said, I also see the positives

that it can have too. So while I went in looking for the problems with it, I also didn’t shoot down

any ideas that said it might be a good thing too. I think that my favorite part of this semester was

the research that we had to do. It was hard and annoying at times, but it really improved my

ability to find credible sources in many places. I really liked the articles that explained why it is

important to have good relationships with your teachers. I tend to get close to my teachers, and it

reinforced my idea that it is important for the success of both parties.

Choosing mediums for this semester definitely proved to be hard. I tended to want to

stray away from writing because I figured it would take too long. I ended up doing a writing

piece for all of the projects either in the original drafts, revisions or adaptations. I think this

definitely made me realize that writing is a huge part of informing on a subject whether it be
through stories, interviews, facts, or opinions. I think my favorite medium was the propaganda I

created to persuade. I think that it was a creative way to put an opinion out there. I did struggle

with it a little bit because creating the propaganda to look like the originals I was recreating but

also putting my own twist was hard. It definitely made me work my brain.

When I was adapting, it took me a while to figure out how I was going to do it. I knew I

wanted to turn my audio interview with Ms. Catten into an essay but I asked over 15 questions

that had very extensive answers. The whole video took half an hour and I didn’t know how to put

it into words without writing a book instead of an essay. I decided that I was going to build

paragraphs and talk about answers to questions that were similar to each other. I feel that in

doing this, I had to find the most important information and leave out the fillers that happened in

the interview. I think this was definitely a favorite work of mine. I also felt that the original

profile project didn’t have the impact I wanted it to. Because it was 30 minutes long, I knew that

no one would truly be interested in listening to it, although the information was great. So I think

that an essay was definitely the route to go.

I think that the least favorite rhetorical appeal that I had to use during this semester was

ethos. Writing my flash memoir was a pain in the butt because I struggled to be below 500

words. My story ended up being around 700 when I finished so I had to work really hard to cut it

down. I think it did teach me that I don’t always have to write as much to get a point across. I

also learned that writing can help people do things, be things, and make things in the world

because that is what I spent the semester doing. Through writing I got to inform people about my

personal experience with overpopulation along with the experiences of teachers and other

students. I think that this shows the most in my profile project and my information effect project.
They both have very different information, yet seek to inform about important aspects of the

issue at hand.

This semester has taught me a lot and has also pushed me to my limits especially when it

came to research. It often got frustrating trying to find new sources, especially about Utah, for

each separate project. I am glad that I had this class to teach me more about using rhetoric,

researching through credible sources and working with a partner to get the things I needed to

done.