Throughout my time in this class I have been able to negotiate my personal writing goals and audience expectations regarding rhetorical skills. At the beginning of the semester, I started the with mediocre writing ability. Although I still have plenty of room to improve, during the course of the semester, I made progress in some aspects of my writing and have reached many of the objectives in the course learning outcomes.

For example, in my “Where I’m From” writing prompt I struggled to give vivid active descriptions of the subject, my old neighborhood. Although I used plenty of concrete words, I still felt like I struggled to paint a clear picture of my surroundings in a way that brought it to life. When I compared this to the writings of the readings we looked at in class, I noticed how often language would be used to graphically convey people, experiences, and settings. This caused me to aim to develop my creative writing skills. In my most recent writing piece, my interview, I believe I showed a noticeable improvement in this area. In my site description, I was able to use more animated language to give my audience better imagery and keep my writing more engaging. For example, I described my interviewee as having “deep, dark, yet honest feline eyes” whereas before I would most likely describe her as having brown, almond eyes. By reading many examples of creative writing, I learned to focus on the character, shape, and what they communicate rather than just the color.

Another direct example would be in my earlier piece, where I described the streets surrounding my building as “clean , wide, and open”. Compare this description to another quote from my site description where I described a large classroom as having a “sea of chairs” to describe the high number of seats in class. While the former isn’t a bad way to describe the street, it is vague and leaves lots of room for how a reader may picture this environment. The latter however, is far more evocative to a reader and a much more creative way to describe a setting.

My time in this class, inspired me to set my own writing goals and change how I employ my rhetoric. It’s caused me to set higher expectations for my writing and how I communicate my ideas to my audience. I believe this outcome prove to be very useful in the rest of my writing and academic career and very effective in making my writing more interesting to read.