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.  The first example for meeting the recursive and social process of the writing would be my post Je Suis Charlie.  My first draft of the assignment was not perfect as no first drafts are.  After some time I requested feedback on the assignment.  Professor Hodges obliged and gave a healthy does of constructive criticisms in the form of global and local comments on the paper.  After reading and understanding the problems with the paper using the comments as a guide, I was able to make my second draft which was considerably better than the first.  The second example for writing being a social and recursive process is the Visual Rhetoric Rewrite.  Similarly to the first example, the visual rhetoric was not a perfect first draft, in fact I had some difficulty keeping it strictly visual until I listened to music while watching the video.  After asking for feedback Professor Hodges gave plenty of extensive criticism and suggested corrections to the paper.  Instead of revising the paper, which had a myriad of problems with formatting and content, I rewrote the paper using the guidelines provided by the professor.  The new paper adhered to the assignment requirements far better than the first and I in turn asked for feedback again.  The second round of comments from the professor were far fewer because of the increased quality of the paper.  Upon following the final comments on the paper and fixing my conclusion to the assignment, I finished and put it into my portfolio as a final draft.  The recursive process of writing is demonstrated by numerous revisions of an assignment to achieve the best product.  The social aspect of writing is demonstrated by the comments for revisions provided by the professor which contributed to my revisions.

GOAL 2: I read source materials closely and analyzed them critically to learn how and why texts create meaning.  Several of the works that we have completed this semester have created meaning in discussions and topics that we have been researching.  For instance, my Research Position Paper is about how happiness cannot be absolutely achieved by following a set of instructions.  My paper has added information and opinions to that topic of happiness.  Whether or not people agree with my findings or opinion, it is shaping the way that they would think about the topic.  Some researchers believe that research findings prove happiness can be achieved if you adopt a certain set of habits or a certain lifestyle.  I chose the position that research cannot do so, and regardless of whether or not I am correct, I have successfully added meaning to the topic.  People can read my paper and have a new outlook on the topic or it may strengthen their own opinions on the subject, either way, the text has created meaning.  We also evaluated claims made by other people in the Critical Reading assignment.  In it, we evaluated claims made by an author who was contributing information to a topic about PTSD being contagious.  While the author introduced meaning to the argument by writing the article, we contributed meaning by evaluating the quality of the claims made.  Giving readers of the article our evaluation on the quality of the information the author was contributing.  In both cases, our writing contributed meaning to conversations about PTSD and in my case, happiness.

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. Every piece of text has an audience whether it be a diary meant for oneself or a speech meant for thousands and this semester was no exception.  My Research Position Paper was written with the understanding that my audience would be people who are looking for happiness in self-help books and researchers who write the source material for those books.  My message to the audience being that they should take what they read with a grain of salt because there is not a cure all solution to being unhappy.  Without that audience in mind, my paper would have been written very differently, depending on who the new audience is.  Another piece that highlights the audience aspect of writing is the Critical Reading assignment.  Our critical reading assignments were about evaluating the claims made in the Contagious PTSD argument.  Consequently our audience would be peers, readers or potential readers of the article we were evaluating.  Every text has an audience and it shapes the way we write.

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. The greatest example from this semester was my Research Position Paper.  My topic was about how happiness is not achieved by following a specific set of steps, despite most of my research and sources were about authors claiming they had.  I chose a fairly original topic in which I could not find much direct support for my hypothesis, therefore I took a different approach.  I instead chose to disprove the claims made by my sources to support my thesis that happiness cannot be proven.  Originally I had chosen the topic that would have put me side by side with the researchers claiming that happiness is abstract but can generally be achieved with a certain lifestyle.  Upon realizing that the paper would have far less value supporting claims that were readily available, I decided to contrast them with the opposing argument.  In using good source material I was able to synthesize my own opinions and insights through my Research Position Paper.

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. One of the best examples for ethical writing would be the Safer Saws assignment.  There are countless points of view for the topic presented and each has their own take on the issue.  It is up to ethical writers to display each of their views effectively and responsibly.  As far as my personal example for ethical writing, I would choose my Rebuttal Rewrite.  The purpose of my rebuttal was not to bash and misrepresent my counterargument, it was to logically explain why my views on the topic were superior.  For my specific topic, I chose to explain logically why their points and arguments were false or did not provide enough support for their claims.  I did so ethically and responsibly to ensure that the reader not only received the best form of the argument, but the most accurate positions on the argument.