When Will My Reflection Show Who I am Inside?

Nicole Shinn

Dear Rezza,

First of all, I just want to say that I really enjoyed your class. SO MUCH! ENG 105 has, by far,

been the hardest English class I’ve ever had to take, which was weird because usually English is

my easiest class. I really like how you didn’t treat us like an essay producing factory. Forcing us

to write a crap ton of essays in one semester about topics we didn’t get to choose and didn’t get

to really get invested in. This “essay producing factory” has been the style of my English classes

for the past few years, which detached me from investing and putting pieces of myself into my

writing. I’m glad to say that your class has given me the opportunity to reconnect myself to a

deeper and more personal form of writing, rather than a formulaic and robot-like style of writing.

This class has shown be the importance of not being a bullshitter. (excuse my language…just

kidding), That I should instead do my research and know where I want to go with my writing so

that my words are chosen carefully and driven and impactful, instead of just a bunch of fluff

meant to distract people from the fact that I actually have no idea what I’m talking about. Your

class has taught me many lessons, most of them about English, but also a few about life, and for

that I am extremely thankful.

With respect to my writing, I think the most valuable skill I have gained and improved on this

semester was effective use of the classical rhetorical strategies, specifically argumentative claims

and appeals to ethos, pathos and logos. My understanding of argumentative claims progressed

due to the very helpful rhetorical analysis homework that was assigned to us nearly every class

day, practice doesn’t make perfect but it definitely does make improvement. Before taking this
class, I didn’t even know that there were different argumentative claims, but now I can mostly

differentiate between what is fact, causal, definitional, value or policy, as well as what the

secondary claim of the argument is. Some evidence of me having acquired this skill can be seen

in my homework assignments, I really feel like one of the most difficult readings to analyze this

semester was Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail” but as it can be seen

below, I was able to effectively analyze the text and recognize rhetorical appeals and

argumentative claims.

Thesis & Claim Type: What is the thesis, i.e. the claim and major supporting
reasons/justification of King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail [Please write it as a Because
Statement]. Birmingham is the most segregated place in the nation, as a testament to his
moral calling Dr. King and his followers must spread the news of freedom and equality
throughout all of the South in order for African-Americans to completely achieve true
freedom. He must fight for justice because if he does not justice cannot prevail anywhere.
How would you categorize this argument? Fact, Causal, Definition, Value, or Policy?
This is a fact of policy, emphasized with the value behind the necessity for the policy.
Kairos and Ethos. As a rebuttal to the Eight Clergyman’s 1963 “Call for Unity,” Letter
from Birmingham Jail’s kairotic intersection of timeliness, multiple audiences, and
“place to stand” – ethos- is profound. King’s profession & identity create profound ethos
for a variety of audiences. What gives King the most credibility the Eight? With the
original wider audience of the time? With today’s audience [ie. you]? With the eight
clergymen King gains the most credibility when he appeals to the authority of the
clergymen, saying that they are “men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are
sincerely set forth” (pg. 1) by appealing to the fact that the Clergymen are men of
authority King gives himself credibility as a honest man with a good heart and good
intentions. King gains credibility with the wider audience of the time, those against the
Civil Rights Movement due to their opinion that it will cause violence, by revealing his
support for a nonviolent approach and by quoting Socrates and other high political and
religious figures such as St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and Paul Tillich to prove
that, by law of God and by law of strong historical priests who are credible for being
good and knowing what is true and righteous, segregation was wrong and since it was
fundamentally flawed it should be no law at all (pg 3). With today’s audience King gains
credibility by the accuracy of his facts that support his argument.
In terms of my Classical Argument essay, this essay was especially challenging for me because I

really cared about the topic and I wanted my argument to actively reflect the importance of the

issue of colorism. The importance of composing writing strategies and peer reviews was stressed
to me with this essay. Upon reading the introductory paragraph of the rough draft of my

Classical Argument Essay, my group immediately gave me some great constructive criticism

about trying to open up my essay in a way that would pull the audience in and relate to them at

the same time, by using some form of pathos. Their feedback helped me bring my intro from

something like this:

In light of Barack Obama’s historic presidency, the condition of African-American

people has been brought back to the forefront of our nations mind. With a black president under
our belt, surely the fruits of slavery (racism, segregation, prejudice, inequality, etc.) has fallen
away right? Wrong. Minus the bonds of legitimate enslavement, the people of color in this
country, especially African-Americans, are still in conditions paralleling those of the antebellum
south, the south during the civil rights movement and the era of Jim Crow laws.

As you can see this segment of my introductory paragraph is pretty intense and more of an attack

than an opening of an argument, also I have some very unfortunate word choices. I’m talking

about the problem of colorism, and then refer to having a black president “under our belt” which

just sounds…bad. Anyway, after some peer revision and constructive criticism my intro

improved tremendously and ended up looking more like this:

Tupac’s iconic “THUG LIFE” tattoo held a significant double meaning. In one respect
the tattoo represented the lifestyle he and many others led. And, in another respect the tattoo was
an acronym, revealing the true cause of ills that have plagued humanity since the beginning of
time. The “THUG LIFE” tattoo is short for the phrase coined by Tupac, “The Hate U Give Little
Infants Fucks Everyone.” Essentially, the hate the majority gives to the minority eventually
spirals into a domino effect of hate that “Fucks Everybody” for generations to come.

I was able to logically relate my argument topic to Tupac, a figure well known for his stance on

many racial issues and other issues that plagued minority communities during his time. By

relating my argument to him, any pathos associated with Tupac and his works would now be
more affiliated with my argumentative stance, and I would be appealing to readers emotions

rather than attacking them like I did in my first draft.

Another part of my Classical argument essay that I really struggled with was formatting,

especially singe APA formatting was new to me. In high school I only ever used MLA, so when

I heard we would be using APA I was pretty worried. Now that I’m looking back on, I definitely

should’ve spent more time reviewing and double checking my citations and reference page

before turning in my essay, but unfortunately, I did not. The final draft of my paper had an APA

reference page that actually wasn’t in APA at all, it wasn’t in alphabetical order, I didn’t italicize

the right things or put the right things in sentence case. Here is a sneak peek of my horrendous

reference page:

References
Crutchfield, Fisher, Webb. (2018.) Colorism and Police Killings. The Western Journal of Black
Studies. doi: 10.1111/j
Goldsmith, A. H., Hamilton, Darrick., & Darity, William, Jr. (2007). From dark to light: Skin
color and wages among African-Americans. The Journal of Human Resources,42(4),
701–738.
Hall, Ronald. (2005). An empirical analysis of the impact of skin color on African American
education, income and occupation. The University of Michigan: Edwin Mellen Press.

After seeing my reference page covered in blue ink, I was pretty distraught. I shared how

distraught I was with you, Rezza, in a conference about my Advanced Appeal and you shared

with me some great teacher knowledge that kind of doubled as life knowledge which was pretty

cool. Basically, you confirmed that my reference page did suck, but that didn’t mean my career

as a writer was open, it just meant that I made a mistake and the best thing about mistakes is that

you can learn from them so that next time, you do better. So, I decided to revise my reference
page for my website portfolio and while I’m sure it’s not perfect it is definitely an improvement

from the first one:

References
Crutchfield, Fisher & Webb (2018.) Colorism and police killings. The Western Journal of Black
Studies. doi: 10.1111/j
Cunningham. (1997) Colored existence: Racial identity formation in light‐skin
Blacks. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 67:3, 375-400, DOI:
Goldsmith, A. H., Hamilton, Darrick., & Darity, William, Jr. (2007). From dark to light: Skin
color and wages among African-Americans. The Journal of Human Resources, 42(4),
701-738
Here is the last thing I will say about the essays you had us write this semester. I really loved

them, especially the Advanced Appeal. I think that learning to write a satire essay, though it

wasn’t perfect, was definitely one of my favorites and one of the best things I’ve done in an

English class. My satire essay really helped me figure out how to bring out my own voice in

writing, and I learned to play with sentence structure and length to bring my writing to life. I

used to write all of my sentences super long with a bunch of commas. Now I don’t. See what I

did there? Also, in my Classical Argument Essay I used a one sentence paragraph for the first

time ever, which was very cool to say the least. Here is some evidence of my new and improved

writing, featuring never before seen sentence length variety!

Good news for all the light-skinned little girls, you get representation! Sometimes! Sorry
little dark-skinned girls, apparently Hollywood doesn’t know that you exist. Because even when
roles that call specifically for dark-skinned black actors or actresses come along, like the
character of Starr Carter in The Hate U Give, Hollywood gives the role to a light-skinned
actress instead of trying to break the type-casting. But hey, I guess any representation is better
than none. It’s kind of like Hollywood is scared of being called racist so they’re pulling the “I
have a black friend, so I CAN’T be racist” card. Except it’s the “We have black actors so we
CAN’T be racist” card. Yea you guys have black actors, they are just like 99.99% light-skinned,
or too old to represent this generation of black people. So, congrats Hollywood, you aren’t
racist…just colorist!
This semester we read a lot from Heinrich’s book “Thank You for Arguing” but I would have to

say that chapter 30 Run an Agreeable Country was by far my favorite chapter in this book,

mostly because Alexander Hamilton is referenced a few times. In all seriousness, I enjoyed this

chapter because Heinrich relates literally everything to rhetoric: the origin of Christian mass,

medical terminology like dialysis, and the birth of the American republic (Heinrich p. 362-362).

He even claims that our lack of argumentative behavior and discourse as Americans is what is

wrong with our nation, stating that “rhetoric could help lead us out of our political mess” and that

this country in rhetoric and its decline has “deprived us of a valuable tool of democracy”

(Heinrich p. 362). Essentially, this chapter presents the argument that many of the problems in

this country, especially those of political nature, relate back to the fact that we as a people don’t

know how to argue correctly anymore. People have forgotten the value of a proper liberal arts

education. Hamilton argued that those educated in liberal arts would serve as a neutral and

logical thinking placeholder among the classes, and while they would be small in number by

“being neutral by definition, they were bound to hold the swing votes” (Heinrich p. 366). This

neutral position of those educated in liberal arts would allow for a more effective system of

checks and balances than we have now in the country. The new “swing vote” in the Supreme

Court is an avid conservative, who has consistently swung right on a majority of issues, this

making the title of “swing vote” now redundant in our country. Heinrich’s book focuses on

teaching you how to argue, and chapter 30 emphasizes the importance of a healthy rhetorical

discourse for the progressiveness of humankind in general and for the effectiveness of

government institutions.

Now let’s talk about the website portfolios. I have looked over several of my peers’ websites and

I am truly amazed, obviously I learned more about my peers by skimming their “About Me”
sections of their websites, but I really gained the most insight on my classmates by analyzing the

styles of their websites and the outstanding works they have produced this semester. The first

website I looked over was Harrison Klopp’s, I really liked layout and design of his website, it

was very peaceful and calm and the photos the animals he used were stunning. Next, was Nick

Sanchez. His portfolio was very minimalist, which I liked. The best part of his website was the

“Press” tab, which plainly reads “If I was an exciting person, some exciting stuff would go here.”

I thought that was funny. Then I looked at Sarah Lopez’s website, which had a picture of her on

the “Home” page that added a very personal touch. I really liked how she added a description

below each of the links to her works this semester. I played a game of “eenie meenie miney mo”

and ended up on Roland Royals’ page, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I liked his use of more

relaxed language like “Yo, what’s good!” and how there weren’t any blank spaces. Lastly, I

looked at my friend Lisa’s page. I liked Lisa’s contact page a lot, it was different than what I had

seen on other websites, she had a way to email her from the website which was unique.

Overall, this has been a great semester of learning and personal growth. I have truly enjoyed your

class Professor Rezza, and I’m sure that the lessons I have learned, both academic and life, will

be of great help to me as I continue my academic career here at Arizona State University. Thanks

to you, I have learned how to not be so robotic with my writing, how to learn from my mistakes,

be vulnerable enough to share my work with others to get feedback and most importantly the

importance of arguing for what I believe in, the right way. Thank you for being a great educator!