Final Self-Reflection

This is another end of a semester at the college, and we are also welcoming the long summer vacation. Looking back at the first half of the year, I felt a lot of feelings in my heart. Every day I have experienced in these six months has left a permanent mark on my heart, because these marks have witnessed such new growth. In the past months, I have gained a lot through continuous writing and learning. Time is such a ruthless head and does not go back, but we are chasing in order not to be left behind by it. I have a total of three big assignments this semester, each of which helps me achieve our course objectives.

The first assignment of this semester is argumentative. This assignment invites us to influence people who have represented us, whether they are working for CCNY, New York City, the state legislature, the US Senate or any other public agency, and we have to seek to change the minds of any other public figure who is openly involved in social issues. At the beginning of the essay, I first have to choose a current issue that I think is important and find out the solutions or policies that people advocate on this issue. I chose online shopping as my topic. I believe this is an interesting and timely topic. Online shopping is not only simple and convenient but also a wide range of choices. The benefits of online shopping are numerous and popular. Originally, we need to go to the retail store in person, run one by one and buy what we want to buy, however, online shopping can save time for those who go shopping. But as time goes by, the situation of online shopping is different now. More and more people are willing to shop online so that the trend of online shopping has made great progress. At the same time, “online shopping sickness” is getting worse. In this argument as a letter, my audience is Mr. Wilbur Ross, but in fact, my audience is for everyone. And my purpose is to let people know that online shopping, which everyone thinks is very convenient, has an increasing impact on people, and even has a negative impact on our society and the body. At first, my assignment was for Amazon. But my professor said that Amazon is gaining interest in online shopping, and they will not limit online shopping. Finally, I chose to propose to Mr. Wilbur Ross, who works on the US Department of Commerce, and hope that they can propose a reasonable solution for this. Throughout the assignment, I first proposed what I thought should limit online shopping, and then wrote a rebuttal. I think such an argument is more convincing. In addition, I also used ethos, logos, which is used the credibility of convincing an audience or persuading an audience with reason, facts, and figures.

My second assignment is literary criticism. This assignment requires us to conduct an in-depth study of a creative writer. And can concentrate on solving a problem that other readers will encounter difficulties or critics answer questions in various ways. In this assignment, I chose William Blake as the creative writer and conducted in-depth research. William Blake was a famous poet in the 18th century in Britain and he is one of the most important romantic poets of the early British. His famous poems include poetry collections, “Song of Innocent” and “Song of Experience”. I chose him because I have read many of his poems, and he slammed in his poems on social ugliness such as racial discrimination, child labor, religious persecution, and polarization between the rich and the poor in British society. The theme of my literary criticism is to discuss that William Blake’s poems describe the terrible situation of the lower classes and children in British during the Industrial Revolution, as well as the shameless behavior of the British political system and capitalists who don’t care for people and even Children in order to pursue their profit. His poetry mainly focuses on British society during the Industrial Revolution and the French purchase revolution. And we can also understand the real society at that time through his poetry, so I used the poem “London” to start my essay. In my assignment, I analyzed the rhetoric technique used by Blake in “London”. In my essay, I also discussed “The Chimney Sweeper” in both “Song of Innocent” and “Song of Experience”. The unfortunate childhood of children is the focus of the two poetry collections. In London during the Industrial Revolution, many poor children were sold to apprenticeships in the factory. They were exploited and enslaved by employers and deprived of their good childhood and human dignity. Through poetry, we can truly understand that the poet hates such a cruel social phenomenon and has infinite sympathy and concern for the children who suffer from it which also correspond to my theme. Based on the primary sources of the original poem, I also added some secondary sources of scholarly quality in your paper to help me build up the themes and explanations.

The third assignment is a creative writing assignment. This assignment is to compose an original short story, long poem, or sequence of short poems. And we can accompany this assignment with a reflective essay. We also can approach this either as our own creative project or as an imitation. In the beginning, I decided to write a long poem. The theme of my poem has come from the poem of Walt Whitman that I read not long ago, “I saw in Louisiana a live-oak Growing”. This poem describes the oak that he saw in Louisiana. In this poem, the author describes his thoughts about his friends, companions, and male lovers. In the whole poem, Whitman uses the oak that he meets in Louisiana to reflect his own similar qualities with it. Also, he uses “twig” as a symbol. Twig just like brotherly love, even though you may have people in your life, they can always be taken away. Oak can still provide some happiness without friends, but people can’t. This may be the difference between man and nature. The poet cannot understand how the tree can produce happiness in its lonely position. But the truth is trees can grow alone, but people need friendship to grow. In reality, however, everyone’s growth is lonely. It is also said that the longer you grow up, the more lonely you are. The sequence of my long poems begins with the childhood that has passed and then the future. I have described our growth as a kite which uses the simile. And our growth is indeed a kite, flying on the blue sky towards our dream. In the whole poem, I also use some repeated idioms or sentences, such as “just”, “tomorrow”, “maybe”, “said”, to emphasize the main points or express the thoughts and feelings that I have inspired in life and growth. The rhetoric used in this long poem may not be many, but my main purpose is to tell everyone that everyone’s growth is lonely, however, our life cannot be turned back. Instead of wasting your loneliness, look ahead and do something meaningful. In the course of life, don’t let the past become a stumbling block, and don’t let the future regret.

This whole course is about writing practice, not knowledge about writing, although we have to go through some of writing knowledge. In the class, we discuss our readings as models of technique, style, and rhetorical strategy which I can learn some new form its. Also, we will do such an analysis of texts, technical exercises, in-class writings, and draft workshops during this semester. In addition, most of the exercises that we have are work in groups. The exercises and reading in the classroom have taught me a lot of new knowledge and knowing the mistake that we may make when writing an essay. I also learned a lot in the three major assignments. In the first assignment, I learned how to use some techniques about arguments, such as ethos, pathos, and logos. These techniques have helped us be more powerfully to convince our audience in the argument. At the same time, we also have a clearer understanding of how to write an essay in a letter format. In the second assignment, I learned how to find research materials, including academic journal articles, magazines, and newspaper articles. This is very helpful for our future research assignment. In the third assignment, we analyzed various types of rhetoric and situations in many poems. At the time of writing, we also recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies. After that, we can apply that knowledge or skill to our other assignments or even in future which make our assignment be modified and improved.

 

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