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Reflective Statement At the beginning of the semester, I was excited to begin the class because I thought I would learn

a lot from the volunteer work that is the basis of the class. I thought that I learned all I needed to know about writing in high school. I didnt foresee the growth that would occur in myself as a writer. My writing process grew as I wrote each paper over the semester. By the end of the semester, writing became less of a fill in the blank process and more of a form of communication. We read an article called Shitty First Drafts which really affected my drafting process. In high school, there was a lot of forced planning that was put into writing papers that I did not enjoy. It seemed a lot like they expected near final drafts to be produced right off the bat, which is intimidating. The idea of just writing what seems logical and getting the ideas down was very helpful to me. This skill came most into play for the narrative essay because it didnt require outside sources, just my thoughts. For works such as the research paper, however, a more linear process was required. If you went in without a plan, trying to find relevant sources would be near impossible to find with all the information to sort through. For this, making a research paper proposal helped organize my thoughts and where I wanted to go with my paper. I think that the evolution of my writing process is made clear especially in my research paper because that is where I break free the most from the standard five paragraph introduction support conclusion format I was taught to live by in high school. I think my writing evolved by becoming less linear and defined. Rhetoric is meant to communicate ideas with others and to convince them of some argument or position you take on an idea. I think that the principles of rhetoric are displayed the most in my research paper and the visual essay because both take stances on some issue and are

the most convincing toward my viewpoint. All of my works show my understanding of rhetoric in some way because Research and critical reading were necessary to my development as a writer this semester. The readings contributed to my views on violence and helped to shape the topics I chose. Although not all of the projects were explicitly research based, most required looking at outside sources to draw ideas from to help support the ideas in the papers. I think my development is clear from paper to paper because more course material is integrated as the semester progressed, and my experiences with Take Ten helped to shape my ideas. Take Ten is a program that teaches a variety of ages of students conflict resolution skills with violence prevention in mind. This aspect of the class had a big impact on my writing projects over the course of the semester because it gave me a different perspective on what violence is considered to be and how it effects kids when they are exposed to it at home and in the community. Some of the children told me stories about their family members being in jail. One moment that really stuck out to me was when a student presented a picture of a person holding a gun and police men surrounding the person, and proceeded to describe his classmates as being the people in the picture. I was shocked by this, and I realized how necessary programs like Take Ten are in schools. I also realized that the bulk of the violence prevention needs to begin at home. Doing this service helped me to relate to our readings through my observations. I related the reading Shes All That a lot to my experiences because of the nonphysical violence through gossiping and name calling that I saw in the classroom. This helped me to choose my topic for the analysis paper, because I wanted to take a deeper look at that kind of violence. I hope that my students took something positive away from our lessons, because I learned a lot and greatly enjoyed working with them.

*What was the purpose of each of the major assignments in this course? How did those assignments build on one another? How does your writing reflect your mastery of the intended learning outcomes of each assignment? The conflict narrative was meant to get us thinking about violence and to help us work on our descriptive writing. It made me think about what I considered violence to be and my personal experiences with it. I think that the amount of reflection that I put in before writing the paper shows because of the amount of detail I was able to put into such a specific event. We wrote the analysis paper to begin working with integrating sources into our works as well as to develop our argumentative writing. This essay was when I began to look at the role that violence plays in our society. I was able to find connections between the readings we did in class and the show I was analyzing. Our research paper served the purpose of constructing arguments and synthesizing sources in order to support our arguments. For this essay, I believe I grew the most in my writing process because of the amount of planning that went into it. The visual essay helped us use rhetoric beyond just words in a paper. We communicated our ideas through different media, still making arguments and proving a point. I enjoyed writing this essay because I was able to look at writing in a different way, and think about how my reader would interpret the visuals I put in and how this would help them to understand the bigger picture. The essays all build upon one another because of the compilation of my knowledge on violence and the growth of my drafting process. I am most proud of my research essay because it took the most time and effort for me to write, and I am proud of how it turned out. Before I picked my topic of the misperception of the mentally ill being more violent than the rest of the population, I did not realize that I would not be able to find any sources that perfectly fit my argument. This is not a problem I had ever run

into when writing a paper, so having to synthesize sources and do so much research was new to me. I think it highlights my growth as a writer because it does not follow such the linear format that some of my other essays follow. I wrote it in a way that presented the information in a logical manner, without having to feel like I needed a certain order or format. Over the course of this class, I learned a lot about violence and grew as a writer. I am glad to have chosen community based writing and rhetoric over all of the other options because of the experiences I gained from working in the community as well as the skills I learned in the classroom to develop my writing.

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