Farewell!

Well, this will most likely be the last post I ever make on this blog...

But I gotta say, it's been a pretty swell semester. I'm glad I got to spend it with all of you, listening to your comments, eating cookies, and watching Hobbit and Sherlock videos every other day together. It was also fun being able to claim that entire long table (second from the back) all to myself for basically the whole semester... And to those groupies that I got to work with on our projects and peer reviews and whatnot, you guys are all really smart and fun people. Thanks for actually being awesome, helpful, and hard-working group mates!

I suppose the papers for this class really weren't that bad, now thinking back on them, even though I could have done so much better on them if I didn't procrastinate so much... I was surprised at how many useful things I learned from this class and how informative it turned out to be. I honestly wasn't expecting it to be, because it seemed like it would just be a rehash of AP English in high school. Maybe it's too soon to say, but I'm happy to say that I've gained what I hoped to from this class: it opened my eyes to new possibilities and techniques, helped me to become a better writer, and yes! I've completed a general!

Even though this class has ended, I'm pretty sure I'll still have about 150 things to do in 3 days. After all, my life always feels stressful, and I'll never stop writing (150 ha ha ha). And as for the 3 days...? I suppose I can reveal what that was referencing to now:
(I didn't write this, but I think it's got the rhetoric to be worthy of this class...)

“Time...cruel and fearful...

A swamp, where one is about to be executed for a crime he did not commit...

A sea, where a fallen musician can only lament his failure...

A mountain, where a leader is powerless to save his people...

A valley, where the ghosts of the past still fight a war that has long since ended...

A town...caught between it all...where the end begins...

And one boy...a hero...with all the time in the world...and no time at all...to save this world...

This is Majora's Mask.”

Yep. :) Welp, it's been fun! Good luck on finals and with the rest of your lives! And thanks Kaleigh Spooner for being an awesome professor! Au revoir!

Reflecting on Some Issues

I really don’t like research papers. This research paper on why youth are leaving religions was no different quite honestly; I really didn’t enjoy writing this paper at all. They’re just long and often about things I don’t particularly care about. The thing about this issue is that there are so many reasons why youth are leaving, not just one single narrow one. Also, I feel like I’m really bad at finding adequate, scholarly research. Anytime I do find something that may make a useful contribution, it turns out to be like a whole book that I would have to search through in order to find that one small, valuable piece of information. Regrettably, I feel like I wasn’t very good in coming up with solutions; my call to actions were very broad and probably not all that effective. On top of that, having to write an 8-10 page paper is just stressful.

Fortunately, there were some effective rhetorical devices that I used in my issues paper. These included pathos and ethos in my intro by revealing who I was and my own personal experiences and in connecting with my audience, and logos through the research and stats. I provided analogies (which made the paper more exciting, adding a bit of color to it), and I feel like I had good sentence structure and organizations. I like to think my paper was easy to follow and my argument made sense, despite the flaws. Because the multi-model project is like a mini research project but with an exciting design, I will be able to use these devices. I will need the research to make my claims reliable. Adding analogies, along with other types of imagery and tropes, will add extra elements of design, making the project that much more appealing, interesting, and convincing.

Style Academy #5

Before watching the video:
I decided I wanted to learn more about tropes and schemes today. I honestly don’t have much clue about what either of those are or what they do, so I’m hoping this video will help me be more informed and knowledgeable about their designated purposes. According to the lesson summary, tropes are tricks that turn or change the meaning of words, like a metaphor, and schemes are language patterns I can use to keep my readers engaged with my writing. Both of these sound like very useful tools I can use in my writing, especially schemes because I don’t think that I keep my readers that engaged. My writing sometimes sounds quite boring, so these tricks sound like great ways to enhance my writing.

After watching the video:
The purpose of tropes, I learned, is to compare two very different things to create and get some deeper meaning. They try to create an identification between two unrelated or unlike things. They are actually arguments. Tropes include writing devices like metaphors, similes, analogies, synecdoche, metonymy, irony, hyperboles, epithets, and litotes. So it turns out I actually did know some tropes; I just didn’t know they were all classified under the name of being a trope. Schemes don’t compare, but play with how words appear in the text. They include repetition, balance, omission, and transposition. I knew some of these as well; however, I wasn’t all too familiar with transpositions, so I got to learn that they invert certain words or phrases in a sentence to create an odd syntax. I got to see the rhetorical power that tropes and schemes have in writing.