Rhetorical Situations

Walking into the first Rhetoric class then finding out that I had to write a paper on the first was a little intimidating. I felt this way because even though I know I can write, the fact that my staying in this class was dependent on this diagnostic paper and what the results were. I got the article, TV’s Negative Effect on Children by McCall, and read it several times during class while Ms. Jarmer was talking about what the prompt was asking for.

When I sat down to write the diagnostic paper, I read through the prompt several times back to back. I turned on my Pandora station which was set to Breaking Benjamin radio to help me focus on my work. I go to Word on my computer and adjust the settings then began writing my paper. I read the paper three more times before actually beginning my summary of the article. Half way through my summary I stopped and switched stations on Pandora and also reread the paper for more information. I finished the summary then started my opinion on what I supported. After rereading the article one last time to cement on what I really wanted to get across.

This paper was not my best work and I know that. I did not put my entire heart and soul into this work. When I was working I had distractions outside of the music that I had playing because I do worse in writing when I am in complete silence. I almost always take my writing for classes because I know that I can write well when I really like the topic that I am working on. When I enjoy my work, I do much better than I do on a project that I could really care less on. I truly am disappointed in what I did not do on this diagnostic paper. I really need to take even the little things in this class seriously because it affects everything that I want to perfect in my writing. This diagnostic paper also showed me where I need to improve on in my writing. The things I really need to work on are organization and defining the thesis of my own work as well as those papers that I may have to do a summary on then write a response to.  I hope that I can improve throughout this semester and later in my college careet.
Word count 410
Baylea H.