While I was brainstorming ideas of local issues I wanted to choose an issue that was

very unique to Utah. And something that is unique here is the presence of the Latter Day Saint
church. I knew that opinions on the church are very black and white in the general population of
Salt Lake City, because of the relatively high ratio of non church members to member that
reside here. The perspective on my issue was already present when I decided to write about
the relationship of politics and the Latter Day Saint church, mostly because of the outcome of
proposition 2 in the 2018 ballot measure as I write in my flash memoir. I was mostly very
curious about the prospect and reasoning behind the outcome, and decided that exploring the
issue would be an interesting path to take for this english course. The medium I chose to
present my issue was what I would expect a mix of a memoir and persuasive argumentative
essay to look like. I chose this because of the sudden change of direction my issue takes
around the time I conducted an interview with Ethan Gregory Dodge (one of the founders of the
mormonleaks.io page.) The change comes in the type of politics the Latter Day Saint church
seems to stem itself in, and the reasoning behind it. So the memoir serves as a great medium
for presenting the dilemma I faced after talking to Ethan, as well as a good indicator of what
information is and isn’t easy to acquire with online research. I wish I had a bigger variety of
media for my magazine. I saw a lot of great videos, infographics, and cartoons while conducting
peer reviews. However the amount of writing I conducted in this class was very helpful, and has
definitely improved my abilities. Especially in my ability to write narratives and such. The 3
notebooks I used were the very first introduction on my home page, as well as 2 snippets of
information that help present and explain the sudden change in focus of my paper. The
notebooks were very helpful in the creating process of the magazine, and I had a sudden
appreciation of the effort I put into them through the past semester. The main goal I had when I
came into the course were to expand my knowledge of narrative writing, because it felt like most
of my highschool english classes were based on writing persuasively. I struggled with the first
assignment being the flash memoir, but mostly because of my lack of a strong personal story to
the issue I chose to write about. But when I ran into the conflict of my issue, writing about that
experience was extremely helpful in presenting my first hand experiences in words.

The two big ideas that were presented at the beginning of the course were something
that I would keep thinking about throughout the past months. I often thought about the aspect of
writing being a resource for people to use things and do things. I am a big fan of ancient
history, mostly in art which includes a lot of writing. The most ancient form of writing cuneiform
from ancient mesopotamia started out from the need to make records, for things such as
trading, farming, and keeping stock. Which are all rooted in human nature of adapting to do
things better in the world. But naturally cuneiform also turned into a medium of passing on
knowledge and stories to preceding generations. The Epic of Gilgamesh, which is the oldest
known story in history was recorded on the clay tablets merchants would also use to record
there trade. But even from the archaeological sites from all around the world, we can determine
a writing system isn’t required for complex storytelling. So the Idea of language and writing
being a resource for people to do things and making things in the world has been present since
the development of societies.
 Analyzing rhetoric is something I really enjoy doing, and learning more about. I feel like I
didn’t use rhetorical appeals as much as I have in previous english courses at SLCC. But the
knowledge I hold of them is something that I will always hold as an important aspect to analyze
the things I hear in my daily life. The past month I have used the knowledge I have on rhetorical
appeals more in my personal life than before, which is because of the impeachment hearings
taking place. The methods are immensely useful in determining logical fallacies in arguments,
and also emotional appeals in many speeches as well as the importance of timeliness in
persuasive stanze. These two big ideas were nice reminders of the importance of literature,
and the usefulness it provides in our lives. While also setting a precedent of the need for a right
to knowledge and education for the creation of a well informed public.