Blog 10 (Portfolio preface)

Writing has not exactly been my forte for the past 6 weeks. I enjoy the art of writing and thinking and being expressively creative, but not the whole rhetorical analysis and research kind of thing. I'm not a big fan of being told what to do, how many pages to write, MLA format, bibliographies, or any of those important details. As a hopeless romantic and fairytale follower, the only thing I like being told is to write with a heart on your sleeve. My process of writing doesn't consist of a cup of coffee or a 20 minute run, it is mainly made up of an unlimited imagination. During my junior year of high school, I was introduced to an inspirational movie called "Finding Forrester". The moral of the story was: "No thinking - that comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is... to write, not to think!" After watching the movie, I tried as hard as I could to write without thinking. As impossible and difficult as that may sound, it actually worked. Ever since then, everytime I picked up a piece of paper, I would write until my hand couldn't even pick up a Twix bar. That process taught me to be unstoppable, limitless, and free-spirited... BUT, when I entered this class, it became useless. The type of writing I did in English 100 didn't just slap my free-writing-process in the face, but it taught me that in order to write a college paper, it is crucial to research. It's crucial to be outspoken, but to also take other points of view into consideration. It's crucial to cite every piece of information you provide in order to avoid plagiarism. It's crucial to write with class.

The first paper was the rhetorical analysis. Not only was it complete proof of my inexperience to college writing, but it was proof that I had no idea about what I was analyzing. I did my paper on Lisa Selin Davis' “Does Facebook Replace Time or Enhance It?” mainly because the word Facebook caught my attention. I was new to the analyzing process but once I read about it in the Norton Field Guide, I realized that I had been rhetorically analyzing things my whole life. This paper is probably not the best out of all four, but I did enjoy rewriting it for the portfolio because I learned from all my mistakes. The problem I had with this paper was just the lack of confidence I had in writing. It was the first paper I had ever written based on rhetorical analysis so I was a little concerned it wouldn't be as good as others. Once I received my grade, I eased up a little and came to the conclusion that I can write; I just need to boosten up my self-esteem.

The argument response paper was definitely my favorite. It wasn't the easiest, but it wasn't the most difficult. I enjoyed writing this paper because it gave me a chance to research. On a regular basis, I would never research on presidential eras and their associations with abortion-related terrorism, but researching isn't exactly new to me. I'm a day-to-day googler and if anyone were to look in my history page on my laptop, it would consist of Google. I love researching, but not on things I have to write about. However, this paper really caught my attention because I've always been a little on the fence about abortion. I wanted to write about this certain topic mainly because I agreed with the author's stance. I think it was a little difficult for me to be in agreement with the author because the whole point of an argument response is to disagree. Well not exactly, but in my opinion, it would have been much easier to write this paper if I had disagreed. The feedback I got from Ms. Bolaski really enlightened me on the whole process of writing. After I wrote the argument response paper, I felt as if I could write anything. Little did I know that next, we had to write a position paper.

The position paper was somewhat enjoyable but it was a little more on the challenging side. I didn't really like being obligated to have a certain amount of scholarly sources, or a number of sources in general, but it did help me with my research paper. I wrote about standardized testing and the new No Child Left Behind Act and how completely unnecessary they both are. I didn't really understand the whole idea of rebuttals or concessions, but once I read sample papers, it was much easier to comprehend. I wasn't as passionate about my paper as I should have been and I considered changing my topic but I had already done enough research to begin my paper. If I could change something about the paper, it probably would have to be the topic. After workshopping other position papers and reading every other interesting topic, I felt as if I could have written more creatively about something more appealing than standardized testing.

Last, but not least, the research paper... this paper was undoubtedly my least favorite. I did not enjoy one bit of it other than learning about drunk driving. This past year, I knew someone who had been killed, not by a drunk driver, but by driving drunk. It was probably the most life-changing event that could have happened. From that experience, I wanted to make sure that everyone is aware of how excruciatingly devastating a drunk driving accident is. Thankfully, the number of drunk driving accidents has declined. I did my research paper on the topic of drunk driving and how the number of accidents has decreased. I didn't exactly like writing it mainly because there were an infinite amount of statistics and reading so many numbers only led to a fat headache. I learned a lot from this research paper, and I'm pretty sure it provides proof of everything I've learned throughout the course.

Overall, every paper I have written has taught me that writing freely shouldn't be the only way to write. I came into the class thinking that my process would help me... but in reality, it didn't. College writing, as I said before, needs to be full of facts and statistics and citing and supportive details. What I write shouldn't come off the top of my head. I enjoyed the class and how open it was to different topics and I definitely enjoyed the amount of time we had to write each paper. It wasn't as fast paced as I had expected and altogether, it was definitely a big help to my writing career.