Rhetorical topic

                Writing the assessment essay was difficult for me in ways I did not anticipate. I expected to have a hard time figuring out the thesis and have difficulty with writing within the allotted four hundred words with only two hundred to summarize the article. When I first read the paper I was surprised to see that the whole point of the article was about parents moderating their children’s television viewing habits. Being who I am I decided to re-read the article a few times to fully understand the thesis and in doing so I completely over thought the thesis as the government having to moderate the viewing habits. Then came picking a side, and as with most topics I agreed with some parts and disagreed with others. The hardest part of an essay like this for me is picking a side when I do not generally pick sides in anything. Both sides usually have faults and strengths and I try to view the argument as a whole. So I did what I always do and flip a coin to see which side I am arguing for. I began to write and took occasional breaks so I didn’t burden myself with having to do it all at once.

                While I wrote my paper I thought about who my audience was. I knew that the essay was going to determine whether or not the teacher thought I should be in this class with my current writing skills and thought that I was not going to meet the standards. Most of what I have written has been fictional stories or research papers. So I followed the instructions set forth as best as I could and this helped me due to the fact that I did not feel the need to make it much longer than it needed to be. Having never written a college level paper I had no idea what assessment I would receive from the diagnostic essay. I had hoped that I would be able to stay in the class, but after hearing some rumors about the teacher I decided to go back a revise my paper. I was nervous when writing so I ended up making more mistakes than I would have liked. As a direct result I wish I could go back and change my misinterpretation of the thesis and would have not been as repetitive as I was.

 

                                - Codie Rome (400 words in essay)