English

Conscientious Learner: 3

During class, I am on task, taking notes, participating in discussions, and trying to make the discussions interesting. (3)
At the least I will meet the homework requirements for class, and I often try to exceed them by bringing in outside sources, raising questions in my writing, and going beyond discussing the prompt. (3.5)
For reflections, I sometimes use them in a way that helps my future writing, although some of them are pretty surface level and don't help me as much as introspecting on my work outside of the class. (2.25)
I am capable of bringing in outside sources and read outside of the classes on the topics discussed in class and frequently try to dig into texts as much as possible. (3.5)

Collaborative Discussion (2.75)

I always come to discussions having done the work before hand and having formulated an opinion about it either through annotation or writing about it. (3)
I provide evidence that is fully fleshed out and fully relates to my position. I also try to cross reference multiple pieces of evidence when discussing literature to strengthen my position. (3)
Although I try to refer to the ideas put forth by others, I do sometimes adhere too vehemently to my original positions and try to justify it further even when provided an alternative argument that makes more intuitive sense. (2.5)
I am extremely groovy (see above). (4)

Textual Evidence (3.25)

I am fully capable of analyzing subtext and making connections within the book to come to a conclusion about where the text is going, what its underlying message is, and what is being said about society within a book. I also believe I can analyze texts above my grade level and still understand most of the claims being put forth, both textually and sub-textually. (3.5)
In my Kindred essay I was able to find quotes that not only supported the theme of lived experience being a meaningful component of understanding complex social issues, but also link quotes from the book in with the reality of exploitative labor practices paralleling chattel slavery. This shows that I am capable of finding strong evidence from pieces of media to support a claim and tie it into modern day issues. (3.5)
Although it doesn't come as easily to me as finding strong quotes, I am capable of finding ambiguities and expanding on them to theorize about how the book's story will change over time, if the ambiguity is purposeful or not, and if it is what the author was trying to achieve. (3)
I'll admit that I am not the best at finding allusions in text, but when they are pointed out to me or when I keep a specific analytical framework in mind I am reasonably competent at finding allusions and analyzing their meaning and relevance to the text (2.5).
As for writing in an engaging and complex style, I really can't tell if my writing is engaging. I am reasonably sure that my writing is appropriate, complex, and multi-faceted, but it would be a complete guess on my part to say that it is engaging. Personally, I find my writing engaging, however I once watched an hour and a half lecture about the security features of elevators, so I might not be the best judge. I certainly strive to make my writing interesting to read, but I'm not sure that comes across clearly. I put work into making my writing engaging because the last thing I would want is to write an essay that is both long and boring. Judging by the grade of my JRP I'm assuming that you weren't absolutely bored to death, so I'll say that I fall somewhere in the middle of the engagement-spectrum. (3.25)

Supporting Claims (3.25)

I believe I can support a claim with evidence reasonably well, but I am imperfect at it. Often I look back at my essays and see that I am using arguments that could be stronger or should even be entirely replaced by other sources. I can make a strong argument with the evidence I do use, but I feel like I could refine my essays much more if I did 2 or 3 more drafts. (3)
I can certainly thoughtfully concede points in essays and admit when a point is argued well. This is shown in both my JRP and my Kindred essay. I do have trouble finding well structured counter arguments some times, but when I do I find it imperative to engage with them in good faith. (3)
I make frequent use of advanced sources, at least for my arguments. I cross analyzed data in my Kindred essay and used multiple books and journals in my JRP. I admittedly have a hard time finding academic counter arguments, so those tend to be pretty basic arguments that I respond to. (3.5)
Integrating ethos, pathos, and logos into my essays is something that I've definitely improved on throughout the years. In the beginning I was challenged to include anything other than statistics, but a concerted effort in my JRP to include some form of case study into my arguments allowed me to reach a deeper form of writing than what I was previously doing. I still don't use it effectively a lot of the time, but I am definitely improving in that realm. (2.75)
I am quite confident in my ability to understand complexities of different issues. I try to stay pretty level-headed when establishing my arguments, as this allows me to see things from different perspectives and adjust my positions as needed. I do, however, think that at some points my views become dulled due to not rejecting outside viewpoints. For example, in my JRP I should have taken a much harder stance against the Republican party. I was overly focused on the idea that a singular dogma guided most of the republicans, where as I should have spent less time teasing out why they act as they do and approached the topic from a more consequentialist perspective and argued why their actions border on the end of American democracy and how many of them can reasonably be labelled fascists. (3.5)

Evidence: For my JRP I used 4 books, 2 journal articles, 2 documentaries, and 13 news/research articles.

Integrate Multiple Sources (2.75)

I have integrated multiple different media types in my papers throughout the year. I have included graphs, quoted videos, books, essays, articles, and news stories. (3)
Although I am not a statistician I usually check the methodology of the sources I use when it is a formal study, and I am also willing to note when a study is correlative versus when it is causative. (3)
I can definitely identify the different political leanings and moral bases upon which my sources lie and create a healthy mixture of partisan and non-partisan sources. (3)
I do not do a good job of representing where my research fails in my essays. I tend to write with an air of confidence (which I am worried borders on sounding sudo-intellectual at times) that makes it hard for me to fit in honest explanations about where I went wrong due to the change in tone that would occur. I absolutely should work on this because it would bring my writing down to Earth more instead of its current over-inflated level. I think this writing style was especially clear in my Kindred essay, where although I made some good arguments I also made some really poor ones and my essay was overall quite cluttered. If I was able to make it sound less smarmy then it would have been a good essay, but as it stands I am pretty unhappy with the overconfidence I exhibited in a disorganized, messy essay. (2.5)

Determine Themes (3.5)

I believe I can track the development of a theme throughout a book and see how it changes with the characters over time. This is clearest in my analyses of The Great Gatsby because you can track how the characters' relationships with money really fundamentally shifts throughout the book. I could also see how different themes interacted with one another, for example how Tom being both a man and coming from old wealth put him in a uniquely privileged position compared to other characters. Another example of this is the work that I've done for the Death of a Salesman work. I was able to see how Willy and Biffs experience in the American workplace parallels the ideas of the American dream and discussions of freedom that we had in class(3.75)
I have also shown ability to provide insight into how different literary frameworks could be applied to the same work and come to different conclusions. My Gatsby reading is yet again a good example because I provided evidence for a queer reading of Gatsby, however I was able to temper that with the explanation that there was not as much evidence when compared to other frames like a feminist or Marxist reading. (3.5)
As it stands I didn't really compare texts, but I was really hoping to write an essay about Death of a Salesman because I wanted to compare the character Willy with Patrick Bateman from American Psycho because both stories deal with similar themes, just from different economic perspectives. In my previous writings I was able to draw similarities between the color line idea and the ideas in Kindred, but I never really capitalized on this. (3)
I was able to provide a description of the texts for everything we read, and largely was capable of digging deeper into what the author put forward and if their ideas were true or not. I didn't do a great job at bringing this into my writing, but I think I did reasonably well in some of my section/chapter reflections. (3.25)

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