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.
My work truly does demonstrate that I used stages of development, exploration, and discovery. In all of my writing and especially my White Paper I used multiple stages of research and rewrites. My professor started off by assigning the task of finding 5 sources based on my hypothesis. I took the assignment seriously because in the end I knew that I would have to find more than 5 sources. I started off by finding around 8 sources, but later found out that these sources were not acceptable because they were not academic sources. These sources seemed to be legit and I was content with the information they provided but after researching and talking to my professor they all provided the same statistics, so I had no diversity in my facts. To fix this problem I simply found sources using databases through the Rowan library and sites like google chrome to find academic journals. Once I found these articles I then found an additional 5 to come out with around 11 sources. I researched all my articles again to find every important piece of information possible and that information is what would help me write my 3 arguments and 3000-word essay. After all that was said and done I then found out that I had to write out what the article was about and the purpose it had to my writing. So finally, in my third attempt at my White Paper I was able to come up with a solid and useful bibliography full of sources for my academic and argumentative writing.
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.
In my writing I always try to think from the perspective of the reader and to lie hidden images and devices in my writing. The best kind of writing is the writing that makes people think. In my assignment on Stone Money it made me think of money as a completely different way of thinking. I was told one day in lecture that on a small island called Yap people literally use stones as their way of currency. They trade among themselves in stones. The weird part about it all too is that they don’t even take it with them they literally just leave it there and just put their name on it or just somehow the entire island knows that that stone is now his or hers. In my writing about Stone Money I tried to describe the relationship these people on the island of Yap have with each other. How could an island of people literally just trade rocks around it’s insane to think about? In my writing I described the situation between the people and their trading. In my everyday life I always use cash and carry purchasing and to think about people trading stones and not even taking them, it is very counterintuitive. The Stone Money assignment made me think differently about the world and it made me paint a picture of reality that people really do live differently around the world and it is amazing how the people of Yap can get along like that.
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.
Nothing shows core value 3 more than my rebuttal argument essay. To write my rebuttal essay I had to think about the arguments that people are going to have against your argument. I had to come up with an essay that refuted all of the arguments people could have against grass field instead artificial surfaced fields. I looked at my target audience, there are people who agree with me and people who totally disagree with me. That being said my target audience would be the people in the middle trying to be swayed by a single argument. If I could knowledgably argue the points against artificial fields and plead my own case respectively I could draw the people in the middle towards my side. In my Rebuttal Argument essay I looked at the arguments people could come up with against my claims and refuted them. By using sources, I was able to find valuable information to refute these claims and make my own writing look professional. Analyzing these sources was the key to my essay as I would draw the important information from these articles to back up my claims and make my target audience fall right into my trap to bring them to my side.
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 all about analyzing images and being able to think outside the box. I think I depicted this value mostly in my Visual Rhetoric assignment. I actually had two attempts at this assignment because I got the chance to rewrite it. My first time through we had to watch a video very slowly frame by frame and guess as to what would happen next. It makes you think a lot about little details like the background and the frame work the depth of the image. Something can be happening in the background that viewers had no idea about and suddenly, they’re in the picture and people are left gasping as to how that could happen. My second time through I looked at the same video, but I analyzed it in a more in-depth way. I paid close attention to all the people depicted in the frames and looked at their movements. I also noticed that a lot of information can be found by simply looking at the objects in the frame. In my assignment it was all about texting and driving and the video showed how one guys day could go from happiness to unsettling just from people looking at you on your phone. It is unsettling to people when they look over at the car next to them and the other driver is on their phone. I believe that this assignment made me look at text more carefully and the images and made me think about the “what if” factor. I could then apply this technique into my writing as I posed questions to my readers and even to myself.
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.
This value is the most simplistic but it the most important. My work should be my work, and nothing should be plagiarized from a source. Therefore, the most important part was citing my sources. I demonstrated this core value in my White Paper. In my white paper I have my sources and the details about the sources that I would like to use in my writing. Later this would come to be my annotated bibliography. Throughout my writings over the course I had to use these sources in order to write my argumentative essays. By doing this I would use quotes from my academic sources and once I used a quote from the source I had to cite it in my white paper. Once I had at least ten sources my white paper was said to be complete.
Rowan Counterintuitive 