Jaline McCallum

Hello, my name is Jaline McCallum, and I am a sophomore at CCNY. This Semester, I was able to see myself as a better writer. I’ve never felt like a strong writer, to begin with. I set myself up with goals this semester to keep improving and getting better. In this course, I’ve grown in able to find out rhetorical analysis and know that rhetoric exists everywhere. It’s in the magazines we read, the coins we use to pay for our daily activities, and on television. Basically everywhere. I was able to develop my strengths and weakness as a writer. Some strengths I feel I have is being able to explain myself well in my writing and being able to make connections that go together and make sense. A weakness I noticed is sometimes I hold back, and I can put out so much more from what’s in my head onto the paper. I feel like I have become more of a confident writer this semester as the professor let me know what certain things I need to fine-tune and improve on, and from that, it makes me more confident in myself that I can do better.

      An example I have of me improving myself as a writer is at the beginning of the semester, we had to write an essay about ourselves and basically write about “who are we?”. I had received a C on that assignment, and the feedback I got back was that I was holding myself back in my writing, and the professor wanted my voice to shine through. I took that feedback, and in the next couple of assignments, I improved my scores, showing my growth. I received an A plus on the exploratory research paper. That was my favorite paper to do as it was so interesting to unfold all these things that happen in our society, paired with rhetoric. My essay was about the rhetoric in Psychological thrillers and attractive men get away with anything just because they look good. It was very interesting diving into this topic and researching on sites like TikTok and tv shows to give examples of how we see this in day-to-day life.

   Overall I had fun writing this semester, which is a surprise to me because, in the past, writing was not my forte, but I enjoyed myself learning and growing as a person and a writer.