Category: Reflections

The picture above reflects how I felt about my assignment. The minimum words for the assignment was 600 words and I somehow managed to write nearly 1200 words. Looking over my work, I knew I had to shorten my assignment. And after an hour and a half, I had only managed to take out 200 words. This I believe was a big flaw of my paper but not only that, my research I did led me down a difficult recovery road. Prior to doing this assignment, I had looked up what a rhetorical analysis was. This can be found in my planning page. https://eportfolios.isucomm.iastate.edu/bsmlatic/2017/09/06/planning-for-the-rhetorical-analysis-assignment/. In the planning post, I actually defined pretty much exactly what they ask me to do which is analyze the writer’s techniques and persuasive skills. However, for whatever reason I decided to forget about my planning and began writing about the article in general. I believe I summarized the article along with exploring my author’s writing techniques. This wasn’t what was needed,  and I should have just taken out the summary part or kept it very brief. A few things that I think I didn’t completely screw up was my attention to detail. Sure I wrote a lot but the things that I did write about, I made sure to fully explain my thoughts and my ideas. Going into detail can be a good thing because it provides a clear picture of what the author is really trying to do. Another thing I actually altered from my rough draft to the complete draft was I added in headers for the first time. I usually don’t put headers into my papers because we had always been taught not too, but I decided they did organize the paper really well so I added those in. One thing I’ll definitely fix in the future is my APA style. I am almost 100% sure I messed this part up but to be truthful, I don’t know how to do the style.

September 5th 2017

In today’s reflection, we were asked to write about our thoughts on our summary assignment and post it here on our portfolio. The article I chose was one written for the McGregor vs Mayweather boxing match. On initial thought, I thought overall I did a good job presenting the article in a fair and non biased way. Not only that, but I had a few of my peers review it as I felt it was important to get another viewpoint from another unbiased source. Firstly this was one of my very first college papers I had to write and I wasn’t scared as I was nervous. With college writing, the obvious change is it’s more serious and because of this, as a writer I learned that you have to carefully reread AND rewrite to provide the best product. Most of my writing that I enjoy to do and had to do in school wasn’t a summary of a random internet article and because of this, I did feel a little bit out of my depth. The most important part for me was making sure I actually summarized the article clearly for the reader. I enjoy talking so often summaries turn into a long read which is incorrect to do. I felt that I did a good job giving the reader exactly what the writer intended and wanted the reader to think which I feel is an important part of an summary. Making sure to give the authors meaning or purpose of writing. I also mentioned that I got a few peers to edit and look at my work. All of them had told me that my grammar or my phrasing of certain words could have been better but my content and summary of the article was flawless. It was reassuring to hear and help solidify the mentality that I did a good job. Next time I write a summary like this, I think I will use some of the steps such as rereading the article and taking notes over initial points. One of my faults as not just a writer but as a person is that I often move too fast and because of this, sometimes miss key details. However, this is college and I’m in a space that will really let me improve myself so I’m confident that over time, I will grow and hopefully this problem will go away.