Laying in my bed in the dark bedroom of my apartment, I begrudgingly lean over and pick my laptop off the floor.  Need for sleep and feelings of anxiety course through my body.  I am almost there.  Only one more paper left to write for my W140 class, in which, I will describe the development of my thought process in writing throughout the course of this class and how I have grown as a writer by learning different writing strategies and tools from reading different pieces from various authors.  I will be revising my Feature-Style Narrative piece and Wix page.

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During the first semester in this class, I feel like I had a great deal of growth in terms of understanding the Rhetorical Triangle and genre.  However, since then, I have been able to utilize different writing strategies in different genres of writing.  I had never written a feature-style narrative before, so the process was entirely new to me.  I learned that I actually enjoyed this style and genre of writing greatly. In using the Rhetorical Triangle, I had to make decisions regarding “how” I was going to write my piece.  The audience that I was writing for was people who wanted to understand why people enjoy haunted houses.  For this particular audience, I had to make a choice of tone and language use.  This was not gear towards academic scholars; therefore, the language used was not elevated and more descriptive and storytelling.  The tone I chose for the piece was darker and more ominous, so as to draw the audience into the experience.  I think that my Immersion Experience piece showed my best use of multimodal discourse.  I was able to integrate images from my experience, comments from psychological researchers, and a descriptive account of the events to bring the audience through the experience, but also inform them along the way. 

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When we completed the feature-style narrative assignment and switch over to the new project of an argumentative piece, I was nervous.  In the past, I had written an argumentative piece for a class in high school and did not get a very good grade on it.  I knew that I had difficulties with getting my ideas and perspective across properly.  Once I started the research and planning of my paper, I realized that I had writing tools now that I was not aware of during the past.  These tools, such as; rhetoric, set-pieces, multiple source synthesis, and intertextuality, allowed me to make my argument stronger and to integrate my research in a more compelling and academic way. 

 

I went into the research process of my argumentative paper pretty open.  I knew that I wanted to connect my Immersion Experience and Argument piece together by talking about the body's responses to fear and stress.  During my research for the narrative piece, I found many sources explaining why people enjoy being scared in situations like haunted houses or going through the stress of other thrill-seeking activities.  I know that to be motivated to write the argument piece, I was going to have to write about something that I agreed with and felt strongly about. I found more sources linking stress in “safe” situations to increased happiness and brain function.  Since I found many sources agreeing with each other, I knew that I would be able to use multiple source synthesis in my paper.  I really enjoyed the lesson explaining what multiple-source synthesis is and how to construct it in my paper.  In one of my paragraphs in the Argument, I stated, “This agrees with the Harvard-educated, Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer, Rush W Dozier Jr’s book “Fear Itself”, where he states, “The fearful experience itself vividly focuses our attention and memory-making us feel alive.”  This sentence shows the connection between the two sources and where they agree.  This is vital to constructing multiple-source synthesis.   I was only able to find a few sources that disagreed and said that thrill-seeking activities are detrimental to your health.  I used one of the most compelling sources for my counter-argument and rebuttal. 

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My favorite piece that I read this semester was Jennifer Percy’s “My Terrifying Night with Afghanistan’s Only Female Warlord”, published in the New Republic.  This article helped me to learn set-pieces, introduction strategies, and conclusions.  Jennifer Percy begins her piece using a blend of the introductory strategies that we have learned in W140.  She states, “I’d been living in Afghanistan three weeks when my guide, a young Afghan named Sharif Sahak, showed me a photograph of the country’s only known female warlord, Bibi Ayisha…”.  This introduction tells us the setting, characters, and purpose all in one sentence.  I wanted to emulate this in my revision of my Immersion Experience Piece.  Introductions have never been my strong suit and it is my goal to be able to craft an introduction that uses the strategies in a compelling and articulate way.  Percy’s conclusion resonated with me.  It left me with questions and it was rather abrupt.  I really liked this ending because I saw through reading it for the first time and the emotions that it elicited from me, this was something that I wanted to do in my Immersion Experience piece.  I emulated this by leaving my conclusion open with a very ominous ending by saying, “When I finally reached the end, I sighed with relief as the fresh night air filled my lungs.  But still, James was nowhere in sight.”  It was very open-ended and the audience would be able to speculate on their own about what actually happened to James. 

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This entire reflection is a written example of my use of Metacognition.  This is a concept that we learned during the third week of this course by reading and discussing Nancy Chick’s piece, “Metacognition”.  This course has challenged me to think about the reasons and purpose behind everything I write and think.  My use of metacognition has transcended just this class.  I am a psychology and neuroscience double major, and this class has helped me think more in-depth about the drives and incentives to do things.  It has helped me to make both internal and external attributions to my surroundings and myself, and look at the broader scope of things.  The final paragraph of “Metacognition” states the learning goals of the process, “awareness of one’s strengths and weaknesses with specific skills or in a given learning context, plan what’s required to accomplish a specific learning goal or activity, identifying and correcting errors, and preparing ahead for learning processes” (Chick).  I feel that I have become more aware of where I need to work harder to make my papers even better, manage my time wisely for this course in conjunction with my other courses, and continually grow as a writer throughout the entirety of the semester.  A particular class activity that has helped me through my metacognitive process was Peer Review of my Immersion Experience and the Argument.  I was able to get their perspective on my pieces and see what they thought I was saying.  This enabled me to make proper revisions to get my point across properly.

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Works Cited

Chick, Nancy. “Metacognition.” Vanderbilt University, Vanderbilt University, https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides- mmmsub-pages/metacognition/.

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Percy, Jennifer. “My Terrifying Night With Afghanistan's Only Female Warlord.” The New Republic, 14 Oct. mmm2014, https://newrepublic.com/article/119772/my-night-afghanistans-only-female-warlord-commander-pigeon.