Rhetorical Analysis

Literacy Narrative

This assignment marked the beginning of our class, during which I articulated my understanding of literacy and its personal significance. I also explored how literacy impacts society and permeates our daily lives, often without our conscious awareness. Surprisingly, I found myself struggling with the assignment. I like to think that my nerves and anxiety as a freshman in college played a significant role in that challenge.

Brainstorming Techniques

At the start of college, I was filled with motivation, but that enthusiasm quickly waned. I soon came to understand that, much like high school, college was still just another form of schooling. I had navigated high school effortlessly, but my first college assignment made it clear that I needed to put in significant effort to achieve a good grade.

Rhetorical Analysis: The Plagiarist

This text represents my analysis of Hugh Howey's "The Plagiarist." For this assignment, I examined the story and connected its themes to broader life aspects related to the concept of technology and virtual reality. Additionally, I highlighted similarities between the narrative and contemporary events occurring in the real world.

Initial Writing and Brainstorming Process

My motivation for school rapidly declined as I faced a barrage of assignments attacking me from all directions. As a result, I didn't plan for this assignment, feeling I no longer had the time to do so. I wrote the entire analysis in one sitting and chose not to revisit it afterward.

Reflection

When I reflected on my analysis of The Plagiarist, I was harsh on myself, recognizing that I hadn’t performed to the best of my abilities. This realization left me feeling extremely frustrated and led to a week-long period of depression. However, I eventually managed to overcome it on my own and moved forward, determined to improve on my next assignment.

STAR Summary

In the first unit of this class, I had a hard time grasping the point of what I was doing, which led to a lot of confusion and poorly written submissions. We initially discussed the meaning of literacy and rhetoric in the rhetorical analysis unit. We also read Hugh Howey's "The Plagiarist" and wrote our first analysis for the class on that story. I was in my first semester in college when I completed these assignments, and many different things were going on all at once, so I wasn't appropriately focused on any of my classes. I'll aim to do better next semester. The primary purpose of this unit was to introduce the topics for the class and get a feel for what we'd be doing later in the semester. We were given this foundation to build up to strengthen our rhetorical analysis skills and learn new things to add to the foundational knowledge. I thought this unit was challenging while doing it, but I soon realized it would only increase in difficulty from here. Now that it's all said and done, this was one of the most manageable units compared to the others, and I was complaining because I wasn't prepared to work hard for a good grade in college. After all, I never did in high school. Overall, this unit taught me how to understand rhetorical situations and that people use literacy every day even when they aren’t aware of it.

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