Rhetorical Situations

Experiencing my first essay in college was not quite what I expected. In particular I was not too nervous about the situation which was contrary to my notion that I’d be jumping out of my seat with anxiety; the article itself was like many of the ones I had read in High School about some kind of negative influence on the world. This one in particular though was about TV’s Negative effects on children and like most argumentative papers it was very plain and straight forward with being almost completely biased for one side of the argument.  Whenever I look at this style of paper I often do not mind taking either side of the argument depending on which one I find more fun whether. I found myself in a more compliant mood and agreed with the articles main theme of TV’s evil influences on children. When I first began writing the paper I felt pretty self-assured until I hit the thesis statement, the advice of reading the article through a few times would have helped me tremendously when it came to sorting out the thesis statement but I was being hasty and did not want to put in the proper time and effort in which it takes to do a satisfactory paper.

 I knew my audience would be Mrs. Jarmer and the paper was being tested to see if I had the right aptitude for the course so the pressure was added. I had heard she graded quite harshly so I didn’t want to make a bad impression on my first paper so I ran it over an old high school teacher I had once to check my grammar. I am glad now looking back on it I did check in with my teacher because a lot of my grammar did have mistakes, thankfully they were small enough and easily changeable. Afterwards I went home to revise my paper this time having to put it on the computer which I have a hard time with since I often get distracted with Googling the latest clothing ads. I always try to clear whatever electronics I can away from myself before I write because I know my writing will not be as proficient and take hours to complete if I do not. Having gotten advice from my teacher I was more confident in my paper, I was not too worried about turning it in and was pretty proud of the paper I had written.

-Ashley Koanda