About this Page

This is a page for my weekly reflective writing components. Semi-Weekly Reflections are an ongoing progress of our work and writing growth.

Week 3

Prompt: Analyze the rhetorical situation of your CNF.

The rhetorical situation of my creative non-fiction essay is to provide insight and gather an understanding of the importance of identity and how much volume it speaks. Readers will get an understanding as they read the stages I have gone throughout my childhood years to the present time that led up to who I am today. With the genre of creative non-fiction, I presented this written text by naming vulnerable moments I have faced living in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, NY and presented this to a general audience where people from Brooklyn are able to resonate with me and people who don’t live a similar lifestyle that I do, can comprehend what I am saying.

Week 4

Prompt: Annotate one article you plan to use in your research. Share what kind of
information you wrote in your annotations. Did annotating help? If yes, how? If no, why not? What else do you need to do to process this article?

One article I plan to use in my research paper was an article that we were assigned to read. The article is called, Media and The Development of Identity by Adriana Manago. The reason I decided to use her article was because it broke down many points on the impact that the media has on the persona of individuals who are deeply rooted on social media apps and the positives and negatives of the media. Adriana Manago is a development psychologist that studies the transition of social change and development and in her article she named the rise of digital age. Annotating her article allowed me to get two viewpoints of the story on how social media can help some people connect with others and also be detrimental to their self-worth as it can destroy them internally trying to be something they’re not.

Manago, Adriana, “Media and the Development Of Identity”, Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 10.1002/9781118900772.etrds0212. 2015, https://docslib.org/doc/6406659/media-and-the-development-of-identity, Accessed 27^th September, 2022

Week 5

Prompt: What have we done so far that has been helpful to your writing process? How might you apply this helpful information or tool? What has been confusing/What would you like to spend more time on? If the clarification/additional focus does not occur during class time, how will you acquire the knowledge?

One thing that we have learned so far when it comes to our writing process is being versatile. Too vague? Let me explain. Back in high school, essays were grades the same for me. I used to write exploratory essays, creative non-fiction essays and if they all had a strong meaning for the topic I was writing about. then I would get a high score for it. Now in Professor Rodwell’s class it’s different. We aren’t babied anymore when it comes to our writing and we have to meet the expectations of the writing prompt and if we don’t we lose points. Initially for my CNF, I wasn’t as vulnerable about my life until Professor Rodwell told us to allow our identity to be heard and allow the reader to comprehend who I am as a person. As time passed I did that but I still had some work to do as I didn’t connect back to the impact on how that particular situation connects to my identity. Essay’s now not only require to be great but also meeting the needs of the prompt, which I lacked in my exploratory essay as I wrote it in the narrative of Jamaal and not general.

I would like to spend more time being versatile and working on shifting my writing in terms of focusing on myself, knowing when to add anecdotes that pertain to the question and to generalize my topic. I will acquire this knowledge by writing more to train myself and get a better understanding on different types of writing formats.

Week 6

Prompt: Select one learning objective or one component of a learning objective. When, where, and how have you learned it? How have you developed in this arena?

One learning objective that I learned was creating outlines. I was taught how to create outlines back in high school whenever scholars and I would prepare for an upcoming essay we would have our topics and section our ideas on the outline so when it came to the point where we would have to write the essay we already have our ideas. I was never fond of using outlines to write my essay’s and I would just start with reverse outlines. Using outlines for my essay helps me construct my argument better, gather my evidence and interpret each idea and relate it back to my claim. I did my first outline on my RCA and it helped me develop my argument better. I was able to section my evidence onto the right claim and my reasoning brought new ideas to the table and not restating my evidence.

Week 7

Prompt: Analyze the rhetorical situation of your Exploratory Essay.

Researching media and identity, I wrote this non-fiction research essay to construct ideas on the impact that social media has on one’s self-perception, low-self-esteem, and persona. Presenting this argument in written text I was able to research different topics by many psychologists, scientists and other researchers who were intrigued by this topic and provide a paper people are contribute to the impact that media has on them.

Week 9

Prompt: Discuss your research sources. What media are you using? How do these different types of media support your topic/ideas? your writing work?

The media I am using is social media and I am internalizing the significance that social media has on self-perception and how people display themselves on the internet as that ties to a big key in persona. Social media is a very big topic so their are many platforms in social media such as Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and many more. Using these different platforms I am able to gather data based on the type of exposure people go through and how that exposure impacts their self-worth and their beliefs on themselves. Media helps my writing work by giving me new ideas in my writing to help me articulate media and persona better.

Week 10

Prompt: What theory or theories are related to your proposal? How do they relate to your research?

One of the theories that are related to my proposal is self-perception. The way people perceive themselves is important because it shows how individuals look at themselves when they wake up, when they go out and when they hang around others. Their traits/capabilities are important because that is what makes everyone stand out from others. This relates to my research because social media created a habit where some people would compare themselves to others and morph into their personality to feel similar and included. People who consume this mentality are more likely to be people with low self-esteem, social anxiety or low self-worth within themselves.

Week 11

Prompt: As you have continued your research and worked on your RCA, how has your argument evolved?

Initially I believed that the correlation to social media and self-perception had negative factors. The topics I had were social comparisons, social anxiety and unrealistic expectations. When finding sources there were mainly negative articles in terms of social media and self-perception but there were a couple sources that stood out to me. While there weren’t any sources that tied to the positive relation to social media and self-perception, sources named that the way people perceive themselves depends on, themselves. People who appreciate themselves and have high self-worth are more likely to not be disturbed by what others have and what they obtain online because they are more appreciative of themselves inside and out.

Week 12

Prompt: What is the relationship between your Research essay and your MMT? It may help to compare the rhetorical situation of each.

The relationship between my research essay and my MMT relate to the same idea. The difference is that my MMT is a comic that was designated for teens in our generation that act similar to the characters in the comic, while my research essay is general to the public instead of one intended audience. The message is still the same that the way people perceive themselves is negatively impacted by social media usage and can be detrimental to the way people act online and in person.

Week 14

Prompt: What have you learned that has proved most useful to your composition process?

What I learned that has proved to be the most useful to my composition process is revising what I write before I make any final decisions. My mom would always tell me that I speak before I think which is true, I speak impulsively sometimes. I would say an idea without constructing the idea fully in my head and that is what I do in my writing. When I do stuff like that it leads to a lot of run on sentences. This semester I had a lot of run on’s where I would say an idea and just be redundant with my reasoning. I never used to create outlines, so when it comes to writing I just wrote down what I was thinking. That significantly changed once I got into the mentality to think of my topics first, write them down, find my evidence, connect it to the right claim, and create a reasoning that relates back to my argument.