This semester has been very informative in the task of inciting thought deeper than the

superficial surface. In the past I had often viewed rhetorical situations as a stuffy topic reserved
for academia; in reality, these situations are an integral facet of everyday life. It would be
difficult to find a day where one did not participate in some form of rhetorical situation. A large
part of being in a rhetorical situation is understanding the current situation of the discourse at
hand. Without a deep understanding of what a section of a discourse community is talking about
and how the community relays its information, joining and adding to the conversation is nearly
impossible. My eyes have been metaphorically opened to the fact that while there exists a near
infinite amount of discourse communities, the means in which many of them work is very
similar. These situations are however unique enough where they all have different outcomes. I
have also learned the importance of a dynamic, question based research process.
I associated research only with the dry, academic context for most of my life; after this
semester I realized that such is truly not the case. Research is all about furthering your
knowledge and by extension the knowledge of everyone also participating within a particular
high-level conversation. However, research doesnt have to only be for research papers and
journal articles. Every time a person opens a Wikipedia page or an entry within a magazine, they
are researching the conversation of a particular discourse. Everything belongs to a discourse;
something as trivial as what Kim Kardashian chose to wear last Friday night to something more
serious such as an innovation to modern medicine. Not to say that the entertainment discourse is
comparable to the medical community discourse, but whether you are searching about a celebrity
or an unfamiliar medical condition, you are completing research. The main take-away I got from
this semester was the reinforcement of how everything is related in some fashion, regardless of
how seemingly unapparent it is.

Another topic that I have grown more comfortable with over the course of the last
semester would be the production of meaningful, analytical and persuasive argument in addition
to incorporating previous, relevant research into my claims. In the context of high school
classes, developing analytical arguments was nearly non-existent. From the time I entered the
fourth grade to the time I finished my junior year of high school I was indoctrinated to follow a
seemingly algorithmic process and at the end I would be left with a perfect essay. Before even
arriving in college, I knew that there was something wrong with that picture. Overcome with a
desire to improve my writing I have changed the way I inspect sources and their content. While
performing research for my current research paper, The Black, The White, and The Grey, I was
tasked with differentiating the various schools of thought regarding hacking and during this time
I looked for a deeper connection between each source I amassed and the previous sources I
already had. While the semantics of many types of security systems may be different, the
general techniques employed are often very similar. A popular concept within my research was
the hiding of information within a computer system in memory that is otherwise unreachable. In
one journal entry the authors technique involves encrypting the information using an industry
standard hash function while another authors implementation involved encrypting with a
symmetric function and then encrypting the files a second time before rearranging the order. I
had to look at not only how these techniques were being used but also why and in what context
did the need for these programs arise.
The biggest issue that stemmed from a lack-luster high school English course experience
is the revision process. In high school the term revision is associated with content on the
sentence by sentence level; in actuality, revision is a recursive process that changes over each
recurring step. Taught as an algorithm in secondary education systems, the revision process is

much more so a heuristic. Like a rhetorical situation, each revisionary situation is different from
the last. At a higher education level it is expected that the lower order concerns, such as
grammatical and spelling errors would be at a minimal level; it follows that attention to facets
such as content and general intent of an argument holds greater value. Focusing upon concerns
at the global level, such as organization and overall intention of the piece is tenfold more useful
than nit-picking where one could include an additional comma or exchange a word. As my
academic career has blossomed I have realized the necessity of this idea more and more. I feel
like my perspective has truly grown in this time.
As a whole, I believe I have a solid mastery of all of these techniques. While I am far
from perfect, through dedication and practice I have developed my critical lens to observe
situations on a high level. It is no secret that expanding ones capabilities in regard to critical
thinking is a difficult task. What it ultimately comes down to is the drive of an individual to
progress and achieve a greater understanding of why people act the way they do in situations,
rhetorical or not. Through the daily assignments and lectures my professor gave, I made a
meaningful growth in the way that I look at situations and their constituents. While it may have
been annoying in the moment and I may have had little motivation to complete all of the
assignments, it ultimately was the driving force behind my progression. As the stubborn person I
am, it is very difficult to admit I was wrong but I had the class completely misjudged the first
time I walked into the doors.