When entering this course the last thing I expected was a digital emphasis, and I have to say I much enjoyed it. Being an electrical engineer I really enjoy technology so this class was able to really appeal to my interests. One of the major pieces of work that we did in class was creating a blog; I had never made one before but enjoyed the process. This blog served as the central hub for all the classes’ assignments, it seemed like a really unique and effective way of organizing the classes’ work. Another huge part of the class was service learning, which functioned as our subject of research. I worked with Job Corps because I knew I would be helping students with math which I enjoy doing, since I work as a calculus tutor on campus.
At first I wasn’t sure what to do research on with Job Corps. I came into the class expecting to choice a topic of my choice to write about. A subject I was really interested in was space tourism which I had a class on while attending a university in Tokyo. This original subject was really interesting to me because it’s a new industry not being utilized that could really help the economic situation, plus it’s a lot cheaper than people expect. Instead though our research paper’s topic was on the organization we were working with. I wasn’t sure what to write about until visiting the organization which then presented me with a certain exigence. The student I was working with was very unappreciative of Job Corps despite the great resources it was providing him. I also learned of Job Corps high dropout rate, and that’s when I decided to address the students of Job Corps to stay with the program. An audience that is also appropriate with the essay is those not in high school or college who should attend Job Corps to better their lives. When writing to this specific audience I decided to try to keep it very personal and use language that was not pedantic in any manner. If I had been writing the any authoritative audience however I would have been very formal and used a lot more logos than say pathos.
The research strategies I used in my paper where just trying to find information that could help support my essay. I used the Albertsons library data base to get a couple of really good papers. I really liked how the data base could break papers up into subject by majors and other really good distinguishing aspects. I also used Google though because it makes it so easy to find papers based on certain typed criteria. When using Google though I would always make sure the websites I was using were credible by using the methods learned in class. By checking the source publication of a website along with its extensive you can get a good idea of how trust worthy a website is. I would begin writing then decide ahead of time what kind of information I wanted to include in my paper. After making this decision I would search for that kind of material as a source. This was not always the case; I did have a couple of source before writing that kind of shaped how the paper would flow. Before this class I had never used any data bases beside Google and I now know how to use the library’s database for future projects.
Writing about Job Corps really opened up my perspective on the lives of students who do not attend high school or college and the alternatives that type of education. Working with the program was what really made the writing more personal and engaging. My goal for my paper was to motivate student s to stay with the program and not give up on it. I used my research to show why Job Corps is valuable and why its resources should not be squandered. The ideas found from research would be phrased into my overall goal of my persuasive piece.
The overall message I will take away from this class is the rhetorical situation and what exigence is present. I’ve never talked about this sort of idea before in an English class and have always done more focus on pathos, logos, and ethos for building a rhetorical paper. In the future I have one more English class to take, English 202. This is a technical writing class and will probably be very different from the work I’ve done in this course. I still feel by completing this class though that I will have a strong foundation for 202. If nothing else I got a lot of good writing practice from this class which is especially good for me because I tend not to do a lot of writing in my main courses. The only other kind of writing I do is on technical reports where the content is much more valuable then how the message is conveyed. This class focused on how to convey a message correctly which I feel is important because it makes the message more conveying.
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