Throughout taking this course, I have grown as a student through my writing and analysis of texts. I learned many concepts and will be able to use them in the future. For starters, my writing skills have improved with my understanding of the concept of both summarizing and analyzing. Previously, I have struggled in my writing with differentiating between the two concepts which caused my writing to be shallow and lacking original ideas. Through writing Project 2 in particular, I was able to improve this skill by summarizing the articles and also analyzing them. I learned that summarizing entails restating major points from the articles in a condensed manner while analyzing should be longer and includes original ideas relating to the rhetorical appeals that were used within the article. 

While improving my skills on analysis, I was also learning how to decipher the rhetorical situations and appeals used by authors in pieces of text. Never before had I had the opportunity to not only analyze the rhetorical situations in other genres but also create my own genres. Project 3 taught me how to use genre, audience, purpose, and other rhetorical situations in my writing. I was able to play around with targeting different audiences by formatting and styling my genres differently. I learned how to be creative and use different wording, and lengths of sentences, and incorporate pictures to adhere to specific audiences. 

I not only learned how to better my writing in this course. I was also able to develop skills such as time management and goal setting. With there being multiple projects I had to work on over a short span of time, I needed to prioritize a good work ethic in order to get everything done without feeling overwhelmed. This course led me to use a planner, which I had never utilized before. I planned out every day when I would on the assignments and how much of them I would get done. I worked on not only getting them done in time but didn’t procrastinate and was able to get feedback in enough time to edit my work as needed. 

I really enjoyed Project 2 because as I was writing everything came together and all the different components of my essay connected nicely. I was interested in the sources that I was analyzing which made the project enjoyable. Although I enjoyed this project and did well on it overall, there were some aspects that needed revision. I went back and made both global and local revisions. The global revisions I made included providing more information regarding the credibility of the authors for Artifact 1 and adding another analysis of a rhetorical appeal for Artifact 2. Before these revisions, I needed more information on the authors who wrote the peer-reviewed article, which is an important part of the rhetorical situation used. By including that they work in the Department of Psychology at highly credited universities, I not only enhanced the analysis by providing more information on the authors' backgrounds but also gave them credibility. For the other global revision made to my rhetorical analysis, I added a discussion of the exigence that the author used in the news report. I explained why there was a need to fulfill the purpose in an urgent manner. Before adding this, I did not meet the required amount of rhetorical situations needed for my analysis. 

Although there were not striking grammatical errors in my rhetorical analysis I still had to do some local revisions to make my sentences more concise and straightforward. In one instance the preexisting sentence said, “There are numerous aspects of culture that make…”. I made this phrase less wordy by changing it to say, “Numerous aspects of culture make…”. This slight revision made the sentence less lengthy and made my point more clear to the reader. I also went through my paper and every time I used the phrase “in order to”, I changed it to just say the word “to”. Finally, I changed one wordy line from saying “in ways which” to just using the word “how” in its replacement. 

I chose to include an infographic that I used as a genre for Project 3 and notes on sources that I used throughout the course, as my artifacts. The infographic is essential in demonstrating my growth throughout this course because it includes all of the key concepts I learned such as the use of rhetorical situations, genre, and creativity. It not only shows my ability to analyze genres but also create my own, which I did not know how to do before this assignment. The infographic displays an argument and adheres to a specific audience with intentional decisions such as the use of images, bullet points, and shorter sentences. The notes are on one of the peer-reviewed sources which I used all throughout the course. I chose this as my other artifact because the notes guided all my ideas and writing for all of the projects. I referred to these notes every day of the course. These notes demonstrate my use of organizational skills throughout the past weeks, as well as my ability to find peer-reviewed sources, summarize, integrate quotes, and analyze.