My Journal Entry,
Looking Back on the Semester and Finding My Creativity Through Writing
The theory of writing to me is being able to convey a message and idea through a body of work whether that be a paper, poem, poster, or meme. In this body of work, it should be clear what the exigence, purpose, audience, genre, and stance are. What I found will be most important moving forward in my scholarly life is that an essay does not only have to be the classic intro, 3 body paragraphs, and conclusion. I found this out through the second essay in which the model essay I chose was far from this, which was my main struggle of that essay. The essay was broken up into different sections, with headers, and had graphs that I had to incorporate into the paper which was very difficult. This is something that in high school I never did, as the structure for papers was all regular in paragraph form. In the end, I believe that I was able to complete the essay with feeling better about having to dive into new things out of my comfort zone. Breaking off from the usual is the most difficult part of life, and I hope to take this skill beyond just this class.
Before this class, the theory of writing to me was being able to hit all the points in the directions, while never breaking off of the usual intro, body paragraph, conclusion. I also really never thought of things like memes, posters, and poems as “essays.” I would never rewrite my papers and just felt that on the first go-round it was good enough. This class really showed me that the main point of writing is the process of rewriting. I really experienced having to rewrite through the first essay and the third essay. On the first essay, I had written the first draft the night before the peer review. I had felt strongly about this but had received a lot of good constructive criticism on it from my professor and my peers. With this information on the final draft, I took in all of the criticism, made changes, and got an A on the essay. I did not feel as confident with the second essay because the draft that I submitted was only the introduction and I did not take into account the struggle that I might’ve dealt with. I did have to rewrite my question a total of 4 times with the original one being “What effects does climate change have on outcasts in society such as those incarcerated and those in poverty” and the final one being “What effects does climate change have on those in poverty in the United States?” My essay number three is where I had felt this the most through the process of making an Instagram slideshow and poster where there were many changes made that took me hours to complete with there being over 20 different iterations of them. Overall feel like through each essay I figured out how to better be more critical of my own work, in a way that helped me improve it.
When looking back I feel like what really contributed to your theory of writing most was the rhetorical terms that I learned at the beginning of the semester. I feel like they really change the things that I think about when writing. When rereading my work after finishing I try to make sure that it is clear what my purpose, audience, genre, and stance is. This is a vital part of my rewriting process. I also feel like now when I watch things like video essays, and read things such as articles and essays, I can go a layer deeper in thought. I also think that when doing future research projects when choosing my sources I can analyze them from a deeper point of view through a brief Rhetorical Analysis.
Now that I have what I feel is a better theory of writing that is not so one-dimensional I think that my ability to create knowledge will now be greater. The reason that I say that is that I feel like I found my creativity in writing through this class. Before this class, I only really thought of writing as a chore instead of art. Now I think that I can bring the knowledge that I learned in high school in my 4 years of Art class into my writing. I can bring the ability to take a step back and look at my work, really think deeply for days on my writing, take criticism as a positive, and let my feelings flow into my work. I think this will really add deeper layers to my work even if what I am bringing to the table is simple.
Applying my theory of writing will help me in my future school work, making research more thorough, and my work clearer and more in-depth. The most important thing is that I feel like I can use is my theory of writing outside of the classroom. I think that I can apply it to other passions of mine such as fashion, which currently I feel like right now I am very vanilla but aspire not to be. I find it very hard to branch off from what the normal as I am afraid of judgment from people close to me. I genuinely hope that just as I did in essay number 2, I will be able to branch away and really dress how I would want to. Another thing that I feel like another reason that I can’t fully express myself through fashion is that I can not afford it. After Virgil Abloh’s death, some words that really struck home with me were that if you cannot afford something then try and make your own. Hopefully, in the future, I can go down that path of making and designing my own clothes where I can use my theory of writing in design as an “essay” can be in the form of any art form as shown to me in my third essay.
To wrap this journal entry I hope that during my time here at city college I am able to learn and apply things to my life goals. I just wanted to really thank everyone so far that I have met here at City College and hope to build genuine bonds with people while building my confidence and knowledge.
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