I believe writing could be defined as a way of expressing oneself, your own ideas, and your beliefs. When learning about rhetorical analysis, my past beliefs about writing were contradicted in a way that I now knew that my personal beliefs could not be included in this writing style. To analyze each article, I forced myself to refrain from incorporating my own ideas and experiences about gender inequality. When writing my essay, I attempted to write as much as I could and then go back and correct any mistakes. I feel like my strategy worked pretty well when trying to interpret my ideas onto paper, however, I also think I did not try my hardest to reevaluate my thoughts and make sure they worked well with the prompt. I found this assignment to be very eye-opening. I realized not everything will be perfect on your first try and it was difficult to come to terms with that when trying to edit my final draft. I realize that I may be a perfectionist, which could be good or bad, but when writing I now understand how my mindset needs to change to succeed in this class and for any other writing in general. It becomes extremely easy to convince yourself that your writing is great just because you wrote it. You become very close-minded to constructive criticism because you think your work is fine the way it is. This is my problem. I think the best learning experience I can take from this assignment is to be open to new ideas and to understand that good work takes time. I look forward to improving in this class for future assignments and learning more about myself and my writing.

I believe that writing is the process of attempting to intentionally transfer consciousness from the medium of one’s mind to a tangible format such as paper. Any form of writing will strengthen this view and teach one more about oneself. The rhetorical essay was in line with what I know about writing as it is just another outlet of creativity to relay information from one’s noggin to a tangible medium albeit a slightly boring one. I do say this with all the kindness possible but such assignments leave the student (particularly me) drained by the end of it. I think this is because other than a goal of a good grade there doesn’t seem to be much in regards to satisfaction while writing it and when finished. I will say that it is not feasible to understand higher concepts of writing without digging through the mud first and figuring out the different parts of a nonfiction piece is an important testament to that. In the rhetorical essay lies the potentiality for more exciting understanding in the future and I don’t believe that is too bad in itself. I also think this assignment really exemplifies the ability to follow a process and with that process still create vastly different works because of the range of subjects. This in itself can be a wonderful skill to master though I personally have not always been enthusiastic about this type of work.