GOAL 1: I used a multi-stage, recursive, and social process for my writing and took into consideration feedback from my instructor, classmates, and other readers.

My work this semester in Comp II reflects the first time in my whole life in which I’ve ever actually rewritten my own work. By which I mean reworking a document or essay without deleting the entire work and starting again from scratch. Even last semester for History of American Education I wrote a 19-page paper throughout the semester, but there was no rewriting on my part. The paper was written in three sections handed in at separate times for revision, then at the end the final paper was just grammatical revision and a compilation of the parts. Because the paper being divided by a clearly-defined outline with titles and sections there was nothing more to the compilation than cut and paste. This semester there were several occasions where I’ve copied an essay and pasted it in a rewrite submission. At the same time as reading the paper I would rework the words to better suit the task. A good example would be my work for my Visual Rewrite. Compared to my original Visual Response the rewrite has the same chronology and stream of information, however it was rewritten and formatted to enhance the flow making it more appealing to read and more direct with the facts.

GOAL 2: I read source materials closely and analyzed them critically to learn how and why texts create meaning.

For this goal I’m on the fence on whether or not I’ve actually met preset criteria. I will admit much research put into my papers was mediocre and “tip of the iceberg”. I won’t say I regret anything, however part-way through the semester I pondered what it might have been like for me to have selected a different topic. As interested as I was in massive collaboration, I had severely miscalculated how little data there was out there specifically about the topic and how data subliminally supporting my thesis would take more work than what is conventional to research and redact into my final paper. Much of my researched sources are topics to support a fact, which in turn supports another fact, which may or may not ultimately support my thesis. If there is one thing I could have put more emphasis on this semester it would have been my dedication to research.

GOAL 3: I wrote with a particular audience in mind, allowing my purpose to shape the language and methods I used not just to communicate information but to persuade readers.

This, in my opinion, is something I’m usually fairly good at. Another thing I say with uncertainty because this is something that I might not be able to tell by reading my own work. Throughout the course I’ve considered the audience of work to Mr. David himself. Taking that into account much have my writing has been lower on the scale of formality (I feel as if the class, maybe from being on a blog/social environment, has a laid-back tone) almost as if it were a conversation I was having with Mr. David. This case is an exclusion because I am assuming the audience to be a board of trustees or a supervisor of sorts. I’ve taken advice from Mr. David whereas many of my rewritten statements are now bold and assertive. Instead of me saying something like “it could be argued”, I actually make the argument. Saying “…it could be argued that…” was just a way of shifting any blame to an anonymous source should it be wrong, however I could reword it as “…scientists confirmed that…” or “…my sources confirm that…”. If anyone makes a rebuttal to the following statements, they wouldn’t debunk my entire work because they wouldn’t blame me for the falsity, they’d blame the “scientists” or “my sources”.

GOAL 4: I demonstrated my information literacy by synthesizing my own experience with new insights and information from a range of outside sources to produce new material.

In my own paper I might not have displayed my full potential of this goal, however I could demonstrate my capacity for such information literacy with an example exercise. In bglunk’s Causal Rewrite I left a comment as an exercise suggesting they refer to the novel (or movie) Fight Club. On top of that I’m flattered seeing that they have used this information in their final paper. I was able to read their argument and take information from that a book that I’ve read four-years ago and make a viable connection between the two.

GOAL 5: My writing is ethical. Writing about meaningful topics, I have engaged responsibly with them and represented my ideas and the ideas of others honestly, fairly, and logically.

Through just my final Research Position it is evident that I display ethical awareness. There is no bias to my paper because all opinions expressed herein are backed by facts and solid evidence clearly displayed by my citations. My sources all back my arguments and defining statements with a clear flow of logic. I don’t make deductions from vague evidence. I hadn’t used my sources in such a way that I bent logic. When I cite Krystek  in the third paragraph I include only the necessary and the sufficient facts which are relevant and supportive to my claims. I don’t use a fact about Elephants to support my claim of oranges not being fruit. Furthermore I recognize a difference between correlation and causation, and nowhere in my paper do I confuse the two. I can compare the almost exactly identical graphs of ‘Us Spending on Science, Space, and Technology’ and ‘Suicides by Hanging, Strangulation, or Suffocation’. Just because the graphs (found here) are nearly exactly the same, it doesn’t go to say that the US researching STEM causes the suicides. This link could be followed to a gallery of similar, some amusing, graphs to demonstrate this.