Hi friends! Welcome to this week’s blog post! 

This post is going to be some thoughts about rhetoric as well as a reflection of a rhetoric essay I wrote for my English class!

If I am being completely honest, me and english classes don’t see eye to eye very often. Don’t get me wrong, I love english and I think it is a great subject, however, I find that some common assignments done in english make me stressed and kind of annoyed. I am a STEM major, so the majority of the writings I do are lab reports and literature reviews. These essays are comprised of just the facts, there’s no need to add any stylistic language. These types of writings come super easy to me and cause me barely any stress at all. When it come english essays, I’m a mess. I’m a fairly good student and I like the work I produce to be higher quality, so when I’m faced with an entire essay on rhetoric I break down. I find it incredibly difficult to phrase sentences correctly, ensure my grammar is correct, and not fall off topic in the middle of my essay. The rhetorical analysis essay I wrote for my english class was a big example of this. I chose a Ted Talk by Taika Waititi called “Why Humor is the Key to Creativity” and although I loved the speech, it wasn’t the easiest speech to write a rhetorical analysis essay on. I was so lost and stressed about writing this essay that I ended up giving up after composing my first paragraph. Luckily I got some help and guidance and was able to write an essay I was proud of, but for a few days I was completely lost.  

I think part of the reason why I get stressed is because when I picture myself writing an essay or speech I dont think ‘oh yea, I’m going to say this because it will inflict an emotional response to my audience so they will like me better’ so when I read other people’s pieces I can’t pinpoint a bunch of rhetorical tools they used because I have that mindset. I need to get over this mindset because even if I’m not actively thinking about rhetorical tools to use in my papers and speeches, I still use them due to habit. I think that the rhetorical analysis unit in my english class was really helpful in enlightening me in that rhetorical tools are used in almost everything. I’m hoping, looking forward, that I put more energy in learning more rhetorical tools in order to make my writing better as well as make writing rhetorical essays less stressful. I always want to learn more tips and tricks on how to write essays so when I am faced with a similar situation, I don’t become overwhelmed. 

With that I leave you with a few questions: Do you get stressed out writing essays? Do you actively think about the rhetorical tools you want to use in your essay to make your essay more effective?