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Megan Ciesielski Final Portfolio Introduction to Professional Writing As I have grown older, and arguably wiser, I have concluded

that I am far from being a master of writing. When I walked into my Writing about Literature class, freshman year, I was certain that I was the best writer that I could be. I was wrong. I now realize that my writing process is ever evolving and changing, just as it was then, even if I did not see it at the time. Most importantly, this course has taught me the value of treating writing as a process, rather than a one and done deal. There is more to writing than simply throwing some words onto a page. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end. I have learned that rhetoric and the three appeals, ethos, logos, and pathos, play a prominent role in that process. It only took three and a half years for me to get to that point. Beginning my college journey with confidence, I wrote my first paper for my Critical Writing about Literature class. Since it was some time ago, I can be honest. I threw this poem analysis together the night before it was due, and did not look at it again until I got feedback from Dr. Myles. By then, I really did not care what she had to say about it. It was done. I had my grade. That was that. My process consisted of scouring the description of our assignment, simply to establish the formatting required. I then sat down and wrote until I finished whatever it was that I thought my professor wanted to hear. My concept of revising was the frustrated erasing of text when I hit a mental block. In hindsight, it was not the best way to go about writing anything, let alone an assignment for class. As time progressed, I learned that in order to effectively write something, there has to be some sort of editing or revision. I began to read my papers aloud, so I could catch any strange phrasing, or parts that did not flow well. I like to think that this minimal revision helped to make

my writing better, although it is difficult to say whether it was actually effective or not. Sadly, this was the method to my writing immediately preceding this class. My final paper for my Communication Technology class underwent this process. Ill allow it to speak for itself. However, with that being said, I was confident that I had mastered writing papers, because now I had a first and second draft. Sadly, that was my mentality when I walked into Introduction to Professional Writing at the beginning of this semester. I have a drafting process, I have this all figured out. Luckily, I figured out that this was not the case as soon as we did our first assignment, the resume and cover letter. Just as I had done in the past, I created a cover letter rather last minute, and brought it in for evaluation. As I read it aloud, I realized what needed to be changed right away. However, there was something new this time; I had immediate feedback from someone else. She gave me several ideas on how to improve my work, things that I had not considered and that I felt were valid. I followed her advice, then repeated my little process with someone else. More changes were made. It was then that I realized the importance of revision. Any group review work I had done previously, had yielded very few actually meaningful remarks about my work, and I believe that is why I never considered it a very effective revision process. To have it actually improve my paper was a drastic change, thankfully one for the better. I was proud of my finished product. After my breakthrough, I did not really feel like I was learning anything. I felt that most things we discussed in class were relatively common sense, and everything else was rhetoric, something I could not figure out, no matter how many times I Googled it. I gave up on the class for a while. It did not help that I was struggling immensely with time management. As I battled with myself, trying to make time for my schoolwork, my job, my boyfriend, and social life, I

stopped caring about writing at all. Luckily, after Thanksgiving break, I had an epiphany while skimming through my notes. I finally understood rhetoric. This helped me to finally have some motivation to catch up on the work I was missing, because I actually understood what I was doing. It all related to writing as a process. By planning my work, thinking of discourse communities and my audience, I was finally able to understand the drafting process, and convince myself that it was important. I now know that in order to write a successful paper or article or anything, I need to use the rhetorical appeals. I can establish myself as a trustworthy person, someone that knows what I was talking about with ethos. I can logically argue something with logos. I can appeal to my audiences emotions and make them feel angry, enthusiastic, or empathetic with pathos. I believe that this is something I could do prior to the class; I just did not actively think about it while I was writing. In other words, I actually developed a consciousness for it because of this course. Learning to plot my usage of ethos, logos, and pathos, was a considerable improvement to my writing. However, I still seem to struggle with breaking old habits. I have been putting a lot more work into writing, but I continue to put it off until the last possible moment. I hope that this can be changed next semester, as I drop my hours at work. I will have more free time to spend working on my writing and improving my writing process, and yes, I do believe it has become a process. My website is proof of that. I had to improvise and create the final site at the last minute due to technology not functioning the way it is supposed to. However, I was able to salvage most of my text and visual content from my original Dreamweaver piece. I spent hours creating, manipulating, revising, and reworking all of the content from the site until I felt that it was adequate. I made it a process, instead of pulling it out of thin air at the last minute.

I have come a long way in three and a half years. It hasnt been the easiest thing. However, coming to the realization that my writing process is going to change, has been an overall positive experience. I learned this semester that the rhetorical appeals actually have a purpose, and can make or break a paper. I learned that taking the time to plan a piece, actually makes it better. I also learned that group revision, or revision in general, isnt always terrible, and that some good can come from it. I have also made some goals for myself, and next semester intend to complete all of my work prior to the night before. In summary, I believe that this class helped me to come to terms with the fact that I am not a master writer, but I could become one, I just have to work on my writing process and not just the writing itself.

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