by Evan Perez
5/4/2023
English 110
The City College of New York
Professor Vicars
Make sure this is the first thing on the page, so the very last thing you add
Self Assessment on Change Draft
When walking to my first English 110 lecture, I was expecting a boring introduction to a mundane and tedious course. It would have to take someone who was creative, patient, and engaging to make a freshmen English class feel worth showing up to. When I walked into class on our first day, I knew Professor Vicars was that person. Her enthusiasm lights up the room, her formal/classy attire gravitates our attention, and her intellectual and creative perspective on English writing prompts has genuinely made me rethink aspects of my life that I failed to see the first time. Professor Vicars has emphasized “Finding Our Voice” through a variety of prompts that hit numerous course learning objectives. So, how have I found my voice this semester?
Earlier in the course, we were examining how attitudes toward linguistic standards empower and oppress language users. One of the big things we worked on for this was our Written Literacy Narrative, an assignment that explores how language impacted our personal lives and our relationship with language. For this assignment, I wrote about my relationship with the Spanish language, starting off by giving some background about my struggles with learning Spanish and English at the same time as a Latino American. In my writing, I expanded upon the idea of how the linguistic standards of being able to speak Spanish as a Latino caused me to feel oppressed, as I mentioned in my writing, “I felt disconnected from my culture and to this day, I am still shamed by people when they learn of my lack of knowledge in Spanish” (1). As the writing continued, I illustrated my developing relationship with Spanish by showing how visiting my family in Honduras and being able to speak more Spanish there helped me feel more welcome and enthusiastic to learn more of the language. Writing this piece not only opened up some repressed emotions from the past, but it helped me improve my storytelling technique. Before, I think I would’ve gone straight to the point of the paper and skipped a lot of the build-up that is present in the final draft. The events and lessons of the piece are all true, but being able to practice developing a beginning, middle, and end to my writing, in general, made me realize the power of storytelling.
Relatively recently, we started writing our individual research papers for the class. We were assigned to pick a topic of our choice, research the topic, and then develop a stance/argument of some sort within our writing on the topic. I believe this assignment enclosed a large portion of the course learning objectives as it involves a lot of use of rhetorical strategies and the use of sources and citing conventions. For my research paper, I wrote about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, what it is, and why it is important to talk about it more. I had a lot of background knowledge on the topic, but I knew I needed to find credible sources to include in my research paper in order to develop enough context for my audience on OCD to be able to present my stance on why OCD needs to be talked about more. When looking for sources, I evaluated possible sources based on their credibility and accuracy. Since OCD is a psychological topic, I found a lot of .edu and .org sites on the internet that I could use, these sources were fairly recent and lacked bias based on their research-like written nature. For example, one of my sources is the journal of an undergraduate research journal from the University of Wisconsin La Crosse (1) discussing the disclosure of OCD and another source is an article from the University of Michigan Medicine talking about new research on OCD patients that reveals what “loops of wrongness” (2) are and why they occur. These two sources alone served me well in developing the context of OCD in my writing. Not only did I learn how to pick out credible sources, I learned new applications of citing conventions such as including the citing label in my text in correspondence to my citation page, something I was not very well educated on before.
With credible sources and a developed background for my audience, I proceeded to integrate a stance with appropriate sources as to why OCD and mental health, in general, should be talked about more. I did this by explaining the stigma around OCD and mental health and how it affects OCD sufferers by making them feel like they need to hide their symptoms or else it can cause their disorder to grow even more intense. I also added that according to the National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI), most mental health issues appear in adolescents and if more mental health services were implemented in schools, many individuals would be able to have access to the help they need. When presenting my call to action for mental health issues to be taken as seriously as physical health issues, I included:
“-one in six youth in the US (ages 6-17) experience mental health disorders each year and that half of all mental health conditions begin by the age of 14 and 75% by the age of 24. Furthermore, it is stated that earlier treatment is more effective and lowers the cost of treatment in the future when symptoms have grown worse over the years” (3)
I actually practiced a logos rhetorical strategy here as I explained if the mental health issues in youth are caught and treated early, then it would prevent many people from struggling and even save lives. This was an appeal to logic since it is made clear that if a problem can be stopped before it becomes worse, then the best course of action would be to provide more resources for students. I go on further with another rhetorical strategy, pathos, by sharing my own experience with OCD and how the resources at my school helped me get the treatment I needed. This was an appeal to credibility as it helped bring everything I laid out in my paper into a real experience that I, the writer, could illustrate to my audience.
Lastly, with this research paper, I learned the importance of drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing. We were assigned to present several drafts, with these drafts we would share our papers and be able to see what others were writing and thinking about. Being able to collaborate with others helped me review my own reading from an outside perspective rather than just in my head. From these collaborations, I have become more thoughtful of how I convey my thoughts and what can improve upon so that my audience can be on the same page as me.
As a writer, I have become more thoughtful and analytical in how I approach writing. Before, I would sit down and just write with no real guidance except for “how I felt”. However, through this course, I have learned to use my voice and feelings to make structured, interesting, and credible pieces that help me articulate my voice in a more concise and effective manner.
Citations
- “I’m So OCD!”: A Qualitative Study Examining Disclosure of Obsessive … https://www.uwlax.edu/globalassets/offices-services/urc/jur-online/pdf/2021/werner.lily.cst.pdf.
- “Stuck in a Loop of ‘Wrongness’: Brain Study Shows Roots of OCD: Psychiatry: Michigan Medicine.” Psychiatry, 29 Nov. 2018, https://medicine.umich.edu/dept/psychiatry/news/archive/201811/stuck-loop-%E2%80%98wrongness%E2%80%99-brain-study-shows-roots-ocd.
- “Mental Health in Schools.” NAMI, https://www.nami.org/Advocacy/Policy-Priorities/Improving-Health/Mental-Health-in-Schools#:~:text=Untreated%20or%20inadequately%20treated%20mental%20illness%20can%20lead%20to%20high,and%20youth%20get%20help%20early.
