Fieldwork revision Liz Lane Mary Elizabeth Buckingham WRD 103 Reflective Letter I have found WRD 103

to be an enjoyable class thus far. I have learned rhetorica l skills such as common rhetorical skills such as pathos, ethos and logos. I hav e been pleased with the assigned readings. They have all been interesting and I like the way they are applied in class as well as discussion. The essays have be en on interesting topics that I find interesting to write about. I have always l oved writing, and I am incredibly thankful for the essay prompts we have been gi ven. In the first essay I analyzed Obama s Inaugural Address. I initially dreaded writing this essay due to my detest for politics; however I found it to be an interesti ng topic. Dissecting the speech and finding the way they used rhetoric was surpr isingly amusing. I focused primarily on the way he used pathos and embellished l anguage. In class we discussed rhetoric and the ways people apply it in speech-s ettings to present themselves with the ability of twist their words in order to manipulate their audience. I think this essay was a good representation of my wr iting. The way I stated facts, and the tone in which I used to convey what I tho ught about the speech was true to my writing style. I have found the rhetoric we learned in class to be applicable to other writing assignments, and find it to be a good way to get points across. I feel that due to the rhetoric we talked ab out I have gained a lot of knowledge that I didn t have prior to this class. We also talked about propaganda in politics. I thought that that was very eye opening, because before this class I had never really noticed just how much glittering ge neralities politicians use in their speeches, campaigns and so on and so forth. Perhaps it is because before I ignored politics and would have had no reason to analyze their speeches. Oddly enough the Obama essay turned out to be the favori te of the quarter. In the class we also discussed gender roles. I think this was important to go over, however though I do think genders play a big part in comm unication; I think that personalities override gender. I went into detail in my paper. The observation process was interesting, but I found that writing the ess ay solely off notes and memory was difficult. It was difficult to know what exac tly was expected in this essay because it was such a subjective topic. The Fieldwork essay was again a pleasant topic to write about. Although it felt a bit creepy to lurk around a Starbucks and taking notes on stranger s conversations , it was strangely fun. I felt like a less cool Nancy Drew. I was excited for my initial concept for this essay which was to hang around the contemporary wind o f the art institute and listen in on people s conversations and determine whether or not they had a good perception of art, or if they were simply faking knowledge to seem hip. Unfortunately due to time restraints I had to settle for a setting with a less beautiful backdrop. In this assignment we were to discuss the ways g enders reacted to different situations, and, deciding to be difficult, I instead argued that personalities are why people act certain ways. Instead of focusing on the vagueness of genders I decided to narrow on in individuals and how they r eact to situations because of their personality, not their gender role. This ess ay was tough to write because the whole essay basically revolved around your not es and memory. It was tough, but I think it was a good learning experience becau se now I have a better understanding of the types of notes I will have to take i n the future for assignments similar to this one. I have enjoyed the topics we have gone over thus far in the class and I have fou nd them to be good tools to use in my writing, and I know I will use them later on in my writing as well. I look forward to learning more and moving onto new ma terial.