Coming into the class exceeds the expectations that I had for English writing and the overall knowledge and improvement that I’ve developed within this course. I assumed that this would be a typical writing class where it would be nothing new to essay assignments being the main focus. The voice that I have within my writing has been expressed through the lenses of rhetoric used in the texts and has expanded through deep analysis of texts that have been reviewed within the course. Rhetoric is persuasion in use of understanding concepts that are represented through visuals or ways that can deceive the audience into not seeing more than what is being shown. In class, we had a moment of focus on a particular text written by Eliza Haywood known as Fantomina: Love in A Maze where we see the author explore through gender roles, femininity, identity, etc. These genres are the general concepts portrayed within the story, as the author portrays a young female fooling the male interest into several personas that are all coming from her as she falls for him and emotionally hurts herself throughout the process. The way the story is told is for many open questions to be made in interpretation of the outcomes of the story such as Fantomina’s true identity, her purpose in her strategies, and so forth. The exploratory paper is where I use the genre/topic of identity and use the rhetoric presented in Fantomina to further develop my paper. Adding more to our learning of Fantomina, such an intriguing text that we used exciting activities in order to represent the knowledge of rhetoric that we have grasped through collage posters. It was a challenging task in the sense of using modern day magazines to cut out anything that can be used to represent to the viewer a summary of Fantomina without them having any prior knowledge of it. I loved the entertaining activities that we would do during class learning the material while enjoying the processes. In connecting my reflections of my own life experiences to my writing it has allowed me to express myself harder than I ever had before as it resonates deeper with who I am as an individual rather than just typing up an assignment without the enjoyment of writing because it must be completed for a grade. Within my personal narrative I was able to fully express myself using my personal life experiences, my native tongue, and challenges or things that I have struggled with and taking them as learning experiences since we all go through experiences that overall make us a stronger being. I haven’t written something so personal before for an assignment for a course, I let every word and thought into my writing be swayed as I just continued to write without overthinking or analyzing any part of it and it felt absolutely amazing. The letter to self was what I wrote in the very beginning of the semester and I wrote it as a reminder to myself to guide myself to persevere and a little reminder that everything is going to be okay, as a read it again towards the end of the semester I was astonished to see that this was my voice and my writing as I forgot as to what I left myself to read aloud for. I completely enjoyed everything that this class had to offer for the entire semester. This experience will be dear to me looking back at all of my college memories. Thank you.

having fun developing as a writer

developing an eye for a variety of rhetorical strategies to integrate that knowledge into their writing

to think through thorough thought

developing confidence as writers

develop strength and weaknesses