Preview

            Over my first semester in my General Writing class, I have noticed my writing evolve from what it once was in high school. What used to be long and very winded sentence effectively leading nowhere, I now have made the transition to adding more impact behind these long drawls. My writing style in other ways has matured too. Such an example could be that when using philosophy I can relate it to real world applications. I feel the main difference between this and how I used to write in all my writing classes in high school was that these had real world application.  Even my diction and grammar have improved.  My creativity sprung up immensely, and my basic understanding of pathos, ethos, and logos grew to a new height.

The diversity of words used among my papers, such as in my We are Legion essay “With our crusade against terrorism, an act such as the NDAA on the archetype of freedom is nothing more than disgracing the shrine of liberty we have created in our own self-image,” I have increased my word play with more collegiate word play and metaphorical use. That just being on example, I am sure you can find multiple examples amongst my essays.

This class also combined creativity with factual support. Kind of like we could chose anything we wanted, as long as it wasn’t too outlandish. I feel like I found the line and danced on it a little too much. With my essay Jesus Loves Mountain Dew, I created an ad that I made on the spot and made it as outrageous as possible on purpose. I wanted to demonstrate how the ridiculous advertisement was. Beyond the crazy picture that heads the paper I demonstrate that it served a purpose, showing the world of advertisement will hold nothing sacred, including religious figures, just to make a quick buck.
            I felt that the emphasis on the call to action portion of all these papers is what changed the whole game for me. In high school it was write to satisfy a rubric. Now I have to write to something that might address the world. That was the best part of this class; that people can actually go and look up my writing. I was finally writing for a case of activism, for a purpose, and I feel that’s what pushed me to exploiting pathos, using logical reasoning, and social justice to flow through the paper. My favorite thing to say during all of these papers, except the advertising one, was that “If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.”

 I feel that pathos, while it’s the cheap way out for persuasion purposes, its one of the best ways to show a topic. If you combine pathos with logical reasoning and deductive thinking, it doesn’t strike me as bad. Through the semester I have learned that you can never truly change someone’s opinion or stance on something. Rather the goal should be to modify it, and pathos is a great way to put the foot in the door. This is how I came around to creating my third project about bear bile. I establish this immense sense of pathos, and then leave the video indirectly telling the viewer that they need to take action, even providing a link to help.

It was nice writing about something that isn’t literature and philosophy. Like I said, its nice having the call to action and real world relevance. It was a new experience that definitely helped everyone involved because throughout school we have only written, if not primarily written, about literature and history and such. Now it’s on the web, and everyone can see it. Except instead of being about whatever book we read, it’s about our own topic. I don’t know, it was just exciting to me. This was definitely a great class to increase my writing ability. My favorite part of it all was the free will we were allowed to express.