Reflective Essay

English has been the bane of my existence ever since I could remember. From the moment I hit kindergarten, I would choose coloring and number over letters and words. With that said my dislike for English class only grew stronger as I grew older. My high school English teacher would never give me higher than a 70% on any paper I wrote (even though we did at least a major paper a week) all four years of high school. I found this extremely frustrating because although I did everything she required from me, I would never get even close to an A on the paper. Because of this I became even better friends with math and science. There were formulas. There were formats. There were good grades. I seemed to be so much more successful and happy in the world of math and science. For this reason, I became very prejudice against English. Little did I realize that a few years later I would actually enjoy writing a paper.
It is interesting to look back at the Inventory of Concerns that I wrote at the beginning of the year. It sounds so bitter and guarded toward my enemy, English, and rightly so because it was. The theme of the Inventory of Concerns was that I was interested in learning the truth through everything I did. By the truth I meant, not anything that has to do with English because I knew that it was all relative and therefore not worth taking into account. English was comprised of opinions, not facts. And I wanted facts, not mere opinions. I guess that means that as a person I was very closed minded. Not that I wouldn’t consider other people’s beliefs or opinions, but that if they wanted me to make their beliefs and opinions as my own, they had to appeal to me through logic. Consequently, if I tried to convince anyone else to believe as I believed, I would give then lots and lots of facts and statistics and logical reasons as to why I was right, but never anything more.
All that to explain that going into this semester of English I already had a bad attitude and had drawn conclusions about the class before it had even started. The first unit served to support my strong dislike for anything that had to do with English. My initial impressions about rhetoric was that it was a way for sneaky politicians, overbearing parents, and annoying salesmen to make you do things that you don’t want to do. Rhetoric was this sneaky, tricky, evil, conniving (you get the picture) way to trick people into believing what you want them to believe, regardless if what you believed is the truth or not. In a way, I was right about rhetoric. But what I didn’t initially understand is that rhetoric is just a tool. Like a gun, you can use it to protect or to kill. The tool is not responsible for how it is used, that is the responsibility of the person using it. After hating the beginning of rhetoric, I was very relieved when I had this revelation and wrote it into my blog entry on the Joy and Campbell articles. In the blog entry for February 20, 2009 entitled “Ethics of Rhetoric (Joy/Campbell articles)” I wrote, “Ethical writing leads to a proper use of Rhetoric, writing to argue a valid point. Whereas, using rhetoric improperly to argue for arguments sake is unethical.” In my opinion, I think this was the first step I took in the right direction. I began to understand that writing is a tool that can be used of lots of different purposes. Whether it is scientific writing explaining the results of an experiment, using rhetoric to explain an opinion, or just writing a novel to entertain, it is simply a tool.
Going into the second unit, I was really excited to use rhetoric to prove something to someone. I thought that if I had the truth than it was my job to explain it to others. And finally I had met the area of English that I was good at, arguing with facts. I started writing my first draft and I figured out that it wasn’t going to be as fun as I anticipated because I had to argue both sides of one controversy. If I had been writing on any topic that I cared about or thought that I knew the answer to, I would not have been able to successfully argue the other side. It would have been unethical writing in my opinion. Why would you ever argue what you don’t believe in? It’s hard enough to figure out what you believe and try to convince others that it is true, once you add the dimension of arguing against what you personally believe, it becomes even harder. Luckily I had no strong opinions on Marijuana legalization so I was able to argue both sides. That experience was a very insightful experience. I realized that I am a very strongly opinionated person. I have a belief on anything that affects my life personally. I don’t think that I am opposed to altering those opinions as long as there are solid, logical reasons as to why I should. My hopes of liking English and rhetoric were further crush by the existence of ethos and pathos. At first I didn’t understand why they were useful or helpful. I thought to myself that all the sob stories about starving children in Africa is the aspect or rhetoric that people use when they can’t otherwise convince people to support their cause. I did not want to be an unethical writer, so I resisted using both ethos and pathos throughout the entire second unit.
Once again I was annoyed with English coming into the third unit. I hated revising. Especially the type of revision that involved not just changing a few grammatical mistakes, but completely starting over with a blank page. However, the best thing I did the entire semester was take a chance. I finally tried something that I hadn’t tried yet. I stopped trying to dodge the bullets of English by avoiding what I didn’t like to do, and admitted to what I didn’t enjoy in English. When I did this, I had a lot of apprehension because I knew that the next step was going to be that annoy process of actually fixing it. Then it happened. I started to do the revision and realized how easy it was to write my opinion and utilize my audience’s emotions to get them to understand my point of view. After I completed the revision, I thought that the flow of the argument with was much more natural with the presences of ethos and pathos before the use of logos.
I learned that I was wrong about the effect of opinions and emotions on the people you are trying to explain the truth to. I guess I either underestimated their importance or was just not willing to address anyone who is not like myself in that they do not rely on logic to make decisions. In reality, I would tend to think most people are not like me. Emotions and trust are two very important aspect of relationships to many people. Although I personally do not think this way, many people believe in and trust illogical aspects of their emotions and are more apt to make a decision based on a gut feeling than to carefully think through all the pros and cons of a certain choice. For this reason, it is essential to establish a trust with people, an ethos, and a sympathy for people’s situations, pathos, before you can convince them of a certain truth through logos.
My views of English have changed. I understand now that rhetoric is a tool. It is not a perversion of truth, although it can be used to do that, but it is a different aspect of truth. Rhetoric is a tool that can be used to show others what the truth is. The beauty is that it allows for various different, artistic approaches to convey the same idea. I had fun writing the revision, because I was able to use a creative side of myself that I didn’t even know existed. I was also able to release the opinionated, outspoken person that I actually am to speak my mind on a certain subject and not restrict myself by hiding behind the facts of a subject. It is the responsibility of the writer to be ethical in their writing and convey only the truth, not try to trick their readers into thinking one thing or another for arguments sake. Understanding rhetoric and the ethics of rhetoric has opened new doors to me as a person. I know that I like to write and be creative and let people know what I think. I also would like to try things that I have never done before. I would like to pursue a new interest by getting involved in public speaking about different issues that I am passionate about. I have also learned that listening is an important aspect in conveying the truth because no one will listen to me if I do not listen to them. Overall, my new understanding of English will help me interact with others by being able to communicate to others the truth that I know so that knowledge can shared.