In this class I learned more and went into more depth about the word composing. Prior to this class I saw and heard the word composing only pertaining to things like instrumental music and lyrics to songs. After looking further into it I have learned that you could compose anything as long as it is made by you. For instance, in this class we did a lot about composing and it ranged from pictures to essays to social media accounts. I have also learned that basically everything is a genre of something, when before this class I though of genres as only being for songs, books, and movies. I do not think that this information is necessarily valuable, but I think it is cool being proved wrong or furthering my knowledge on certain words and ideas. What I did learn that was valuable in this class was the importance of peer workshopping. Although peer workshopping is just a suggestion it is always helpful and advised to get a second pair of eyes to look at your work. They will be able to catch things that you miss since you have probably been looking at your work for so long that you have gotten used to seeing the mistakes and often overlook them. What I like about peer workshopping is that there is no judgment while looking at the work. We can point out each other’s mistakes and read each other’s personal writing without even thinking twice about it. It was a very casual atmosphere which made it less stressful to get critiqued. There were always more compliments than criticism which is good to hear sometimes because I feel like I am always criticizing my work too much.

            From this class I can take what I have learned about rhetorical appeals to apply them to future contexts because I feel like they are helpful with getting to the audience of your composing. Logos (logic), pathos (emotion) and ethos (ethics) are all different forms of rhetorical appeals that can be used to get to the center of each person looking at your work. I think every person can be persuaded or intrigued by something if you use the right rhetorical appeal that works on them. I could use these different rhetorical appeals in my future work for things like presentations and trying to get others to volunteer for events or donate money. I can use different rhetorical appeals that I think will aid me in getting to the core of the audience.

            My ideas about writing have changed a little bit since the beginning of the semester. Prior to this semester when I would write for my English classes I would write what I knew my teachers wanted me to write to get that A because high school was always about pleasing the teachers and giving them what they wanted even if it risked your creativity. In this course I felt like I could do both. I could be creative with my work while still meeting the requirements but not stressing out as much since it was more laid back and some work, like the journals, were only graded for completion. I feel like it made my writing more laid back and informal, which in my opinion is a good thing, since we are meant to be writing these to be posted on our websites which are in a public space, and not just for the teacher so you want to be able to reach out to everybody.

            I think of my projects I like all of them because I like the idea of how they all tie together with the idea of community service and helping others. Project one was about past composing that I have done and each artifact that I chose had to do with volunteer work or helping others. For my second project I interviewed a public defense attorney whose job is to defend others who do not have that much money to afford a lawyer so she helped others when she thought they were being treated unfairly by the judicial system and she advocated for them when they needed it the most in their lives, so they could avoid whatever punishment or sentencing was going to be given to them. For my third project I made in Twitter account live tweeting an earthquake and helping the victims of it by telling them what to do and where to go and by also getting people to donate towards the fund of rebuilding the city. Although I do like them all my favorite is the Twitter account because I love twitter to begin with and making one and tweeting from it for class was very fun. I liked being able to use emojis, hashtags, and gifs and being graded on it because those are things that I use in my everyday life for fun and incorporating them into my work for class made doing this ten times more fun. I think my least favorite project was the first one just because I had to go back through previous work and dig out stuff from high school that I thought I would never have to see again. It was a really fun project to do, reflecting on past work, but I just did not really like it and would have preferred to compose another piece of work.

            If I had another week to revise I think I would add more to my third project because I felt as though I did not have enough time to complete it. I thought it was completely due on that Thursday night, not just a rough draft, so I did it all in those two days that we had. If I had known we had longer to fix it I would probably try to go back and do more in depth research to make it seem more real and maybe would have been able to tweet more or link more websites or a real charity that aids other victims of earthquakes or natural disasters.