Core Value 1. My work demonstrates that I used a variety of social and interactive practices that involve recursive stages of exploration, discovery, conceptualization, and development.

Throughout this semester, my professor and I have had a cycle of him giving me feedback on how to better my work and my responding back with any further questions I had for him. I was never a good writer and I still am not, but I think I have improved and was challenged in this class more than any class before. The feedback is very helpful even though it discouraged me. I took advantage of the feedback that was given to me. Most of the time I found myself lost on where to start my arguments. The feedback my professor gave helped shape a better rebuttal. It gave me a place to start and many ideas branched out after just one minute of feedback. The feedback given helped me improve my writing, it also helped me lookout in future essays for the mistakes I made in the previous ones. Being able to go back and revise my essay is the exact way I learned how to improve my writing. This helped me clarify my rebuttal and give a better argument that is understandable. 

Core Value 2. My work demonstrates that I read critically, and that I placed texts into conversation with one another to create meaning by synthesizing ideas from various discourse communities. 

Most of the work in this class was analyzing articles to help gain an understanding of your hypothesis. The “Stone Money” argument advanced my techniques with reading texts critically and placing texts into conversations with one another to create meaning from various communities. We used multiple forms to educate ourselves. We listened to a podcast, read an essay, and wrote our own essay by reflecting on this article/podcast. A piece of stone money was really valuable; you wouldn’t use it for some everyday purchase. All of the evidence that was presented to me helped me find a way to strengthen the idea and demonstrated that the physical objects that we have traditionally used to demonstrate wealth or simply to “pay for things” have become increasingly unimportant, perhaps obsolete, eventually to be disdained. Stone Money made me explore my thoughts and develop an argument. 

Core Value 3. My work demonstrates that I rhetorically analyzed the purpose, audience, and contexts of my own writing and other texts and visual arguments.

Nothing demonstrates the process of analyzing, paying attention to the audience, and the contexts of my own writing better than the Visual Argument piece. This assignment was made so that a person can fully understand what is going on in a video without even seeing the video. The main goal was to describe every few seconds what is going on in the video. This helped me for illustration purposes. This was a 30-second advertisement, and I searched for every way it hid the intended message. I was able to explain why the director made the choices he did. The director wanted us to analyze the video.  The examination of the techniques improved my analysis and description skills. To perfect the Visual Argument Analysis, I had to rewatch the video over and over again so that I did not miss any context. This analysis improved my visual skills.

Core Value 4: My work demonstrates that I have met the expectations of academic writing by locating, evaluating, and incorporating illustrations and evidence to support my own ideas and interpretations.

I have met the expectations of academic writing by locating, evaluating, and incorporating illustrations and evidence to support my own ideas and interpretations throughout my rebuttal argument. I struggled to find sources or a rebuttal for my argument. The only thing I could think of was the opposite of the hypothesis. That was not good enough for me, however. I needed a rebuttal that was more relatable to today’s society. I wanted something that was well known by everyone. I needed help from my professor to get to where I wanted to be in this argument. I would have never thought that NFL football players are considered obese but their weight says otherwise. Finding sources on this topic alone was difficult but breaking apart the rebuttal piece by piece made the argument improve. 

Core Value 5. My work demonstrates that I respect my ethical responsibility to represent complex ideas fairly and to the sources of my information with appropriate citation. 

The White Paper demonstrates the sources of my information with appropriate citation. This also goes along with the Annotated Bibliography. These two pieces of work have developed throughout the semester. The process of looking for reliable sources with enough information was difficult. My hypothesis was specific and searching it by itself was difficult. I needed to break the hypothesis into pieces and research each one by itself. I found this easier and I got more information from each section of the hypothesis. My white paper and bibliography were a compilation of all the sources I have reviewed to educate myself on my topic.  Each source that was provided depicted counterintuitive ideas. That helped me in the long run with the argument papers.