Core Value 1. My work demonstrates that I used a variety of social and interactive practices that involve recursive stages of exploration, discovery, conceptualization, and development.

I demonstrated this core value of exploring the ideas in my work and revisiting to develop it better. My whole thesis has been a work in progress since the beginning of the year. My thesis looks at the role of familiarity when it comes to preference of music choice. Over time it has changed from comparing it to food to animals to babies. This has been because of a long process in which I am able to look at my work over and over again, to take lectures into consideration as well as small grammar lessons. I have been able to continue to discover and develop my paper. Therefore, the work that best cumulates this core value is my research paper. 

Core Value 2. My work demonstrates that I read critically, and that I placed texts into conversation with one another to create meaning by synthesizing ideas from various discourse communities. 

This class inspired me to think in a way none of my other classes have taught me. We looked at situations from all directions and analyzed them critically. For example, we talked about the Challenger explosion and talked about how while the O-rings were the cause of the explosion, NASA wouldn’t have launched the rocket in the first place had it not been for the media pressure resting on the launch for carrying teacher Christa McAuliffe. This idea of looking around not just for the apparent cause of something but investigating the whole of an argument to find all sides. This was shown in my Causal Rewrite wherein I explore different ways of looking at familiarity, from food to animals to babies and how that transfers to music choice.

Core Value 3. My work demonstrates that I rhetorically analyzed the purpose, audience, and contexts of my own writing and other texts and visual arguments.

Although you may have the best argument in the world written for the highest class researchers and intellectuals, if your audience is a bunch of 7 year olds, you’re not going to be very convincing. We explored this idea of writing to a particular audience in our assignment Elevator Instructions, wherein we wrote as if to an elevator. Through this exercise I learned that in order to fully convince your audience of something you must understand them completely. You have to think of what they want and the ways they might refute your argument in advance. For example, in this assignment, you couldn’t just say wait until all the people who want to get on get on because how is the elevator going to know who wants to get on? You have to write what the elevator understands, which is time and sensors etc.

Core Value 4: My work demonstrates that I have met the expectations of academic writing by locating, evaluating, and incorporating illustrations and evidence to support my own ideas and interpretations.

This core value is seen in my Visual Argument assignment. In this assignment we had to do where we described every single detail, seen or assumed about an advertisement. It required us to use and develop our locating and evaluating and interpreting skills. You could not just assume that some details did not matter, nor that the audience would assume the same assumptions as you given the same information. This assignment made me realize that there is so much that goes into every second of a film. It also made me realize how many assumptions we make over the most basic everyday scenes. Doing this assignment was long and tedious but I am glad I did so because it gave me a greater understanding of what it meant to scrutinize one’s work down to the last detail.

Core Value 5. My work demonstrates that I respect my ethical responsibility to represent complex ideas fairly and to the sources of my information with appropriate citation. 

My definition argument best shows my understanding of my ethical responsibility in representing complex ideas fairly. Out of my three parts of the research paper, my definition argument definitely had the most sources. I made sure to appropriately cite all of these papers and to summarize them in my own words so as not to take a quote out of context for my own selfish uses. I think this is a vital part of people’s ethical responsibilities, although you may be quoting them directly, you can take an entirely different meaning from the article and mislead your audience into believing something that never existed. My work demonstrates that I read each of the articles and fairly cited them so that my ethics are still standing and I was able to convey complex ideas.