I felt that in this unit I learned how to write better because of the use of a few rhetorical devices and I learned how to organize my thoughts better when writing. Something that I feel that I already knew but now understand better was the use of language as a vehicle to achieve your aims, whether that be persuasion, to inform, or to tell a story like we did in this unit. Also in writing about my personal experiences this unit I clarified to myself exactly what my thoughts were about the issue, which I suppose was a type of personal growth on my part as a result of writing the essay. It is difficult for me to know exactly what the professor wanted their students to learn or to stay with them in a humanities type of class, there are no equations to memorize or math problems to solve, nevertheless I think that my professor wants us to learn how to discuss academic topics as a class. That is, to articulate our opinions on matters coherently and to raise further questions in the exchange of ideas. A question I have is how can we raise participation without making people feel uncomfortable? I myself have been guilty of staying silent when I have ideas to share so I have the hope that I can improve on this as the semester progresses.

     In critiquing my personal performance throughout this unit, in terms of the writing itself I believe my strongest points were my ability to be clear in what I am attempting to convey and to write without awkward phrasing as I had done in previous papers. The thing I am most proud of is that I was able to write four pages pretty effortlessly when in high school I had been struggling to reach 3 pages on my papers. A couple factors may have contributed to this such as the subject matter being a personal experience instead of a more academic kind of paper or perhaps the instruction was different, but regardless of what contributed to this success I am proud of it. If I were to revise the writing I did for this unit again I would probably add some kind of emotional metaphor or example to really hit the readers with what I had felt at that time. I believe I was successful in telling them what happened and how and where, but in trying to get them to feel something with my writing I believe I failed. 

     I would describe my participation as lackluster throughout this unit, which is something I definitely need to work on. The root of the problem does not lie in having nothing to say, as I do the readings and have some thoughts about them, but it lies in my uncomfortability with speaking in front of people. I am taking a public speaking class this semester however, so hopefully by the time I’m writing the unit reflection for the next unit I will have something different to say. As for my engagement in this unit I would say that I managed my time in writing a paper better than I had done for any paper that I had written in the past. In previous classes I would write the whole thing the night before, but in writing the first draft and the second draft and making slight adjustments in each step, writing the final draft was easy. The things I did in this unit to help me be successful was doing my assignments on time, writing the first draft in time made it easier to write the second draft in time which allowed me to finish the final draft easily. Finishing the writing assignments helped me learn ways to write more effectively by using rhetorical devices. I wouldn’t really want to do anything different in the next unit except perhaps finding some way to make participation flow more easily, but that is very difficult and I personally cannot think of any way to engage the class more without making them feel comfortable. Hearing others talk about topics that I also read and preparing things myself to say in class would benefit everyone though I think.

     Something I believe I could have benefited from in this unit was some more constructive feedback from my peers. While the professor’s feedback was of course useful, I found that the feedback I received from my peers was often vague and general, I would have preferred to have them say concrete things I should have changed or worked on. As for the structure of the course, I have to say that I do find enjoyment in our reading and writing assignments. The readings we have to do are interesting for the most part and the writing assignments have a clear purpose in improving my writing. I say for the most part because I just did a reading called “The Rhetoric of the Open Hand and the Rhetoric of the Closed Fist” that I found really dull but the rest of the readings up to this point had been pretty engaging. Something that I personally am not a fan of is the beginning of the day reflections, personally I would rather get straight into the class content so that we cover as much as possible, but I understand that maybe some students would like some questions at the beginning of class to spark their interest, kind of like stretching before exercising except for your mind. Something I would like to look into further would be the political activism against the Vietnam War in the 60s-70s.