Final Self Assessment Memo

Throughout my academic life as a writer, I have only been good at a couple types of writing. The first is technical writing, such as lab write ups, science experiments, or reports. This type of writing is me telling others what I know, learned, or discovered. Technical writing only includes facts; it does not include what I think about the subject or how I feel about the subject. I think that I am good at factual writing because that is what I like to read. If I am going to learn about a particular subject, I want to know all the facts, so that I can make a decision about what I think about that subject. I do not want to read someone’s opinion on the subject because I don’t really care about his or her opinion, I want my own opinion. Consequently I like to stay in the world of science and math where there is one definite answer and it can be proven as true.
Throughout my years as a student, various English teachers have tried to make me incorporate emotions and opinions into my papers and my primary goal in their class was to trick them into thinking I was doing what they asked me to do, but not actually do it. I would disguise my opinion by stating it as a fact and supporting it with evidence. Overall, I think that all of the papers I have written throughout the years were made up of my opinion because I was the one choosing which facts and arguments would make up my papers, but I would never state “I believe…” in any paper I ever wrote. To express emotion I would use facts that may or may not bring up a certain amount of emotion in the reader, but never, of my own accord, use a personal story.
When you take someone like me and put me into the world of rhetorical analysis, you will find that my papers include primarily logos arguments. I don’t really use ethos or pathos arguments because those types of arguments would not appeal to me as a reader. I did ok in the first unit because I could read a story and analyze what types of appeals the author was making. However, I struggled when I had to incorporate a personal story of rhetoric into my paper. In my second draft of unit two entitled “Everyday Rhetoric” I attempted to give a story to illustrate the rhetoric in action. I used a story about a woman, who was not me and did not have a name or background, who went to the grocery store and bought girl scout cookies even though they were not on her list. The problem with this story is that it was so impersonal, it had absolutely no pathos appeal, because no one cares about a nameless woman, who didn’t ever exist. After a long, painful process of resisting letting go of that story, I finally included a story about my roommate convincing me to start jogging with her in the final draft. This was a step in the right direction; however, I simply used this story to illustrate different aspects of rhetoric, meaning I just used the story as a fact, not an ethnical or pathetic appeal.
Throughout the first unit, I never included how someone using rhetoric on me affected my opinions or emotions. I never really included any type of appeal, other than logos, throughout the first unit, but the assignment was more about analysis so I could still perform the assignment without using pathos or ethos. I simply wrote my papers on what rhetoric was and how it affected people’s everyday life. I never included what emotions and reactions rhetoric stirred up in people who experience it as an emotional appeal, nor did I explain to the reader what rhetoric means to me and how I felt about it as an ethnical appeal. The first unit allowed me to get away without using any type of appeal besides logos because I could state what rhetoric was and what it did. I could also state how it affected people and how to use it. All of these arguments could easily be made using only facts.
I ran into more trouble in the second unit when I had to use different rhetorical appeals to convince an audience of my opinion. My first essay was awful in this respect. Again I was successful in my logos appeals, but I did not include any ethos or pathos. Because of this my first draft did not incorporate any type of my opinion on the subject of Marijuana legalization. In a persuasive essay, the opinion of the writer is critical to the success of the paper. My first draft went through all the facts of prohibition, good and bad, proving the good and disproving the bad. Although this was not my intention, my first draft seemed to be more like beating the reader over the head with facts, than explaining to them why legalizing Marijuana is wrong. The next two drafts were easier to incorporate a pathos appeal into. For the second draft of unit two, where I was writing about why prohibition was wrong, I found a story from the news about a couple who were registered medical Marijuana users that were arrested for Marijuana possession in the state of Washington. This story was easy to take and present the Olson couple as victims of the injustice of Marijuana prohibition. I was able to create a pathos appeal through that story and string it along throughout the entire paper and even into the third draft.
My revision for unit three will be the first draft of unit two, where I failed in my attempts to incorporate ethos and pathos appeal. I will be writing to a different audience this time, an audience who would be more moved by emotion than logic. Instead of writing to a group of people who believe that Marijuana should be legalized, I will be writing to a mother of a child who is in prison for Marijuana possession. This will be a challenge because it is nearly impossible to convince a mother that something is better for society even though it may not be better for her child at that point in time. She will not be persuaded by facts, because she is primarily attached to Marijuana legalization emotionally because she thinks it is wrong that her child is in prison. She associate legalization of Marijuana with the unjust punishment of her child. To break that emotionally based opinion, I will need to use an appeal to pathos. Also, in order for me to use a pathetic appeal, she will need to trust me first. This means I will first need to make an ethnical appeal to gain her trust, before she will even consider listening to what I have to say. I think the best way to do this is to write her a personal letter. It will be a challenge to write the letter in a way that the reader understands the situation without me simply explaining the story because that is not something that you would find in a personal letter. My goal in this revision is to only use pathetic and ethnical appeals, using facts at only the beginning and end as the groundwork for my opinion. This would be in essence flipping my normal writing style where I would possibly start with a story, if I had to, and then go into a strait four pages of logical appeal and conclude with a restatement of the facts and how they are applicable to everyday life.
If I can accomplish this revision, I will improve dramatically as a persuasive writer. I know that not putting my opinion in persuasive essays hurts my ethical appeal more than it helps it. And most people do not want to hear pages and pages of facts because it could make them feel overwhelmed with the amount of information or like I am treating them as if they were stupid. I do not want my readers to feel either. I seem to think that talking about my opinion in a paper is not right because it is tricking others into thinking what I think. But without my opinion about a subject, readers will not trust me as a writer; therefore, they will dismiss any arguments I make to them logically before they ever consider their validity. First I must establish a trust, or ethos, between my readers and myself through my opinion and pathos, then I can convince them that my opinion is right through logos.