Introduction: All the works that I made this semester were, in some way, related to the coronavirus pandemic. I thought that the subject was relevant and was worth exploring. One interesting thing about this subject is that it was evolving while I was creating some of my projects. For example, the Johnson and Johnson vaccines were taken out of supply and put back in while I was making the third project which was about the vaccines. This was also true about the first two projects. I covered the rhetorical map created by news outlets talking about the debates for the stimulus package in congress, and my second project was me creating an article covering the actual passing of that legislation. Also, since the pandemic has affected everyone all around the world, I had some personal connections with it. I received the Pfizer covid vaccine while I was working on project 3 and decided to incorporate that into the project itself.
Reflection: The works that I decided to include were the article I wrote for project 2, the infographic I made for project 3, and the original and revisited versions of project 1. Out of all the works that I made this semester, I like these the most and they represent a good range of different genres, many of whom I had no experience with prior. The infographic is my favorite out of all of them. I like the design and the way I presented the information. It was also the one that I had absolutely no experience on before this project. It was the biggest step out of my comfort zone, and I think that it paid off. The article was more in line to what I have done in the past. I tried my best to make the article appear like it was right out of a news outlet and it was one of the most interesting things I did. I put in links to other articles which support my points and added photos of important figures and places that were relevant to my article. The article is my second favorite project out of the three. The last two are the rhetorical map that we made for the first project. I decided to revise this one because it was the earliest of our projects and so it probably needed the most improvements. I wanted this map to more symmetrical because I thought that would be better to look at and I added in another element, advertisers. When we did our peer review of these rhetorical maps, I saw this element pop-up in others and thought that it was a good idea. I thought about it and realized that advertisers do have an influence on writers and editors for news outlets and so they have an unspoken role in the rhetorical map. These projects were the most time-consuming ones and the best out of all my work this semester.
going forward: Even though this was a required class, I still think that I learned a lot and will take some of it into my future. I will, most likely, have to write much much more and I'll also have to analyze others works. With the writing skills I learn and practiced over the course, I'll be better equipped the meet those challenges and write better papers. I learned a lot about multimodal composing and that will help me communicate more and more complex information to even more people. That will be a useful skill going forward. Also, with what I learned about rhetorical ecology, I'll be better able to analyze other works. Looking at how others papers and writings influenced my subject will help me better understand the piece and what I wants to say. This is not just good for the field I plan to go into, but it will be very useful in regular life. Everything from the news to social media has an ecology map and now I better understand the ebbs and flows of it.