Hennessy 1

Ryan Hennessy
Dr. Erin Dietel-McLaughlin
WR 13300
10 December 2014
Personal Reflection
This portfolio demonstrates my change as a writer over the last couple of months. I had a
lot of experience writing in high school; however, I really did not learn a lot about the writing
process and how to successfully organize my thoughts into well-developed paragraphs and
essays. This class has helped me learn how to do all of this and more. Dr. E really helped me
learn how to write using my own, unique style, and not feel compelled to have to write in a strict
way, like I had to in high school. This change is easily seen in my portfolio, as my writing style
has improved and matured as the semester moved on.
Throughout the year, we were assigned several readings that discussed rhetoric. Also, it
was necessary for us to write about a number of the different styles of rhetoric, which also helped
me learn a lot about it and helped me with future assignments. We learned about rhetoric in film,
when we watched The Social Network. We learned about framing and other techniques used to
cause certain emotion by the viewer of the video. My TED Talk also taught me a lot about
rhetoric, as I was forced to learn how to give visual aid along with giving a speech. I had to learn
how to cause the audience to feel emotion and be drawn into the presentation.
Throughout the year we also were required to do a lot of research, in assignments such as
the research essay. I had to use the Hesburgh Library online resources to find different sources to
help me write about my topic, Wall Street post-9/11. I not only used online sources, but I also

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took out a book from the library. I read the chapters that I thought would help me on my paper,
and they ended up being an extremely important part of my essay.
As the name of the course says, multimedia was a major part of this course. Assignments
like the audio narrative and the TED talk were perfect ways to begin and end the year because of
the major part multimedia played in them. The first assignment, the audio narrative, taught me
how to use my voice to elicit emotion and make them feel connected to the story. This, in turn,
helped me later in the year with the final project, the TED talk. I did my best to captivate the
audience using tone and different phrases and also through multimedia, like PowerPoint and
different images.
Each assignment throughout the year built on each other. The audio narrative taught me
how to phrase different words and sentences to draw the audience into the paper, which helped
with all of the following assignments. The rhetorical analysis taught me how to cite and use
different sources to put a well-constructed paper together, which really helped with the research
essay, which was totally based on several sources. Following the paper on The Social Network,
the research paper was a tremendous help with the TED talk, as the talk was scripted by and
based on the research essay. Therefore, all of my research for the talk was done before I even had
to think about giving the talk.
Each major assignment had an intended purpose. The audio narrative was meant to tell
Dr. E a little bit about ourselves and teach us how to shape our paragraphs to help draw the
audience into our narratives. The rhetorical essay was intended to help us learn how to analyze a
film based on the different rhetorical strategies used in it. Following that, the research essays
purpose was to teach us how to find viable sources for the paper. It forced us to use different

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databases and learn how to use the Hesburgh library to find books. Lastly, the TED talk taught
me how to speak in public better, while also using a visual aid, such as PowerPoint.
Overall, I am most proud of my TED talk. I have never been comfortable speaking in
public, but this time it felt a little bit different. I felt totally in control of the situation and I really
did not feel nerves at all. I felt comfortable with my material, and I think it was some of my best
work with anything that had to do with writing and presenting. It was a great feat for me to get
up in front of the entire class feeling comfortable enough with my writing ability to speak about
my topic.
Finally, I want to thank Dr. E for her great help this semester. She helped me to
incredibly improve my writing ability, something I really struggled with in the past. If not for her
support, I would still be the writer I was all throughout high school. I am not saying I am a great
writer now, but I know for a fact that I am ten times the writer I was in the past.