Gonzalez 1 Valentina Gonzalez Professor Erin Ashley Mink Garvey Composition & Rhetoric I WRD 103 Section 415

5 November 5, 2012 Rough Draft of Final Reflective Essay The First Year Writing Program at DePaul University is essentially described by the famous quote, Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome. Being in WRD 103 has essentially defined the quote for me in terms of becoming a better writer, reader and critical thinker. The First Year Writing Program has taught me that writing is a process. The writing process can be termed as a cycle that has no end. For instance, the first draft is never the final draft because along the way, there are more drafts, peer reviews, and edits. Becoming a better reader and critical thinker go hand in hand in the writing process which is the reason that the doing is more important than the outcome. The writing process has made me a better and more effective writer and is a technique that I will use in my WRD 104 class and other courses that involve any sort of writing assignment. For that reason, I must never forget my journey in WRD 103. My journey as a writer in WRD 103 began with the Rhetorical Analysis essay. I was terrified. I was afraid of being unsuccessful, when in reality I should have never been scared because in essence, that would truly be the beginning of my adventurous, successful journey. I would say that it was the beginning of a successful journey because that is when I was introduced to a new writing process. Through WRD 103, I was introduced into writing a rough draft, conducting peer review that focuses on the effectiveness of the essays and editing. At only the beginning of my journey, I had already accomplished several of the learning outcomes for First Year Writing. In my opinion, one of the most important outcomes was addressed in the Rhetorical Analysis, and that was Processes.

Gonzalez 2 Processes is an outcome that truly gives meaning to the writing process. For example, an important aspect of the outcome is to be able recognize and articulate the value of using multiple drafts to create and complete a successful text. Comparing my first and last draft of my Rhetorical Analysis made me realize the great, effective changes that were made my final draft successful. For instance, the first draft of my Rhetorical Analysis was not as effective as it needed to be. As my thesis, I stated, the ending of President Obamas speech to the Democratic National Convention uses pathos in order to persuade America that he is the right candidate for president. This thesis really was not effective because even though I addressed the rhetorical language that President Obama used, I did not include why it was important. However, by my third and final draft, my thesis read as, Appealing to pathos demonstrates how politicians are successful when they appeal to our emotions. However, one must be cautious because our emotions can disrupt logical decision making which is important when voting for the United States next president. It was not until my third draft that I had an effective thesis that captured the true reason for writing the rhetorical analysis. This is a reason why the doing is what attributes to success. Without going through my drafts, my final essay would not have been clear. Possibly include topic of revision. The second stop on my journey to a successful quarter was the Joining the Conversation essay. Through the second essay, several parts of the writing process were extremely important. For example, without peer review, my essay would have had a weak conclusion and my credibility, or my ethos, might had been questioned. In my first draft, my peers noticed that I did not include any limitations of the conversation that I analyzed while in my second draft I included examples such as the fact Erik, the male in the group, did not speak as much as the women because he might have simply not been interested in the subject of the conversation. For this reason, I

Gonzalez 3 believe that peer review is the most important component of the writing process. This part of the process is essential because, like in my case, peers may be able to notice something that you did not. Not only that, but you are able to feed off each others ideas and thoughts. Also, through the second essay, another learning outcome was accomplished. The learning outcome of Critical Reading, Thinking and Writing was met in regards to integrating my own ideas with those of others. For instance, the goal was to make a hypothesis about gender communications but to include the ideas of others that we have read. For example, my hypothesis was based on Deborah Cameron and Janet Holmes articles, but I also added on my own opinion, like the fact that men would talk more even in a female-dominated environment. add information about being a critical thinker and how I analyze someone elses work. My journey continued as I wrote a blog post that would address the very controversial topic of the First Amendment. Writing this blog post helped me take a big step with my writing. This is an assignment in which I took chances because the genre gave room and allowed me to do so. A learning outcome that was addressed was Knowledge of Conventions. For instance, I was able to apply a variety of genre conventions ranging from structure and paragraphing to tone and mechanics. My blog post, titled Is This Acceptable Language?, shorter paragraphs, one liners and used rhetorical questions were used. For instance, one paragraph consisted of only rhetorical questions. I stated, Is this acceptable? What does it matter? Theyre just words, right? and
the next paragraph stated, WRONG. The use of rhetorical questions really engages the audience while the capitalized word emphases my thesis, even if it is at the end of the blog. My approach to writing in different genres was to take advantage of the different styles because they do make a difference and attract a certain type of audience. For example, if I had used long paragraphs and very formal writing in the blog post, I probably would not attract the typical blog reader.

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The final stop on my journey was the multimodal essay on my discourse community. The multimodal essay was so different than anything we have ever done before because it needed to be as effective as use rhetorical techniques just as in an essay. All aspects of the presentation had to make your central claim clear to the audience. For example, I demonstrated how my Mexican-American neighborhood held beauty besides its negative stigma. To do this, I used colors such as red and green and used images that enhanced a sense of community and togetherness. Through this multimodal essay, I learned how to edit different contexts. Overall, I have reached the end of a successful quarter and not because of a good grade, but because I really have learned the effectiveness and importance of the doing.