When I take a step back and analyze my first paper for this course, I see a Literacy Narrative. As I peel back the layers, the paper becomes more complex in terms of its rhetoric situations as well as the number of Course Learning Outcomes achieved. This paper was not perfect by any standard, but I think that for my first paper in this course, I accomplished the goal, which was exploring how my empathy for a character dealing with mental health issues helped me grow as a reader and writer.

The genre is the simplest description of this assignment: my essay was a Literacy Narrative. I explored my experiences mostly with reading, and a little with writing. Another simple descriptor of this assignment was my audience: Professor von Uhl. The exigence was a little tougher to convey through this essay. The exigence was having intimacy with people, and letting them know why I became a writer. While I revealed some intimate moments in this essay, such as some mistakes I have made, I did not expand much on why I became a writer. In this Narrative I merely stated some tips on how to make your writing appeal to others, which included making your characters human by making mistakes. This ties into the purpose of this assignment: what I hoped to accomplish. By explaining tips for writing, I allowed others a glimpse into choices I make when writing, such as staying raw, real, and allowing growth to occur throughout the piece. The stance can be broken down into two parts: the writer’s perspective, and the relationship between the writer, the audience, and the medium. My perspective was about the importance of allowing yourself to make mistakes, and how crucial it is to realize that others make mistakes as well. It was through these mistakes that I gained empathy for characters, because as I read about their mistakes, I reflected back on my past. While I tried, the relationship was not balanced between the writer, the audience, and the medium. The medium, being the essay, stood as the canvas for this essay to take place. The reader and audience drove this essay, and the audience and writer should have been equal, but they were not. For my next essay, I now know to spend more time emphasizing the writer instead of the audience. With this in mind, the next step of reflecting is acknowledging what I accomplished in this essay.

Due to this assignment, I became more familiar with types of genres. The most popular genre I wrote in for high school was analyzing literature, but this Literacy Narrative allowed for introspection of myself, a new genre I rarely have been able to write. For this assignment, I wrote more drafts (approximately four or five) than I would normally for an assignment. I have been used to writing one draft, trying to make it perfect and organized as I went along, and revising it once before turning the essay in. I can successfully say I have achieved a Course Learning Outcome, by using a new technique, brain dumping, as well as creating numerous drafts. Because I am in another English course this semester, called Writing Resistance, I have been noticing rhetorical terms far more often. I am slowly learning to look for the audience in a piece, due to the language interwoven in the piece. I am beginning to differentiate between the author’s purpose and stance. In this assignment, I did not make every rhetorical term clear, but I know the terms now, and am working on incorporating them into future assignments as they stay in the back of my mind when I write. During this assignment it was crucial to know my audience, Professor von Uhl, and my purpose, informing others of how writers can reach out to their readers, and how I gained empathy for a character. As I edited and revised my drafts, I tried to add transitions and drive my purpose throughout multiple parts of my essay in order to accomplish this task. To me, the peer review was the most helpful discussion had in class, because I learned what exactly I personally needed to fix. I learned to expand on how I made mistakes, and to give more detail about the book’s plot and its main character. Knowing my medium was another crucial Course Learning Outcome that I partially achieved. I knew my audience was a writer, so I made sure to discuss what I enjoyed about the writer of the book in my essay, and what writers can do to relate to their audience. For future assignments, I will need to establish a stronger relationship with my medium, to guarantee a definite understanding. Given that this assignment did not require any outside sources, I only need to research main facts about the main character, and no citations were necessary, as I did not use any quotes or paraphrase any information. The last, and quite important, Course Learning Outcome was integrating summaries, argumentation, and critical analysis. I achieved this Outcome, but not to the degree that I am satisfied. I summarized content of the book, I argued the importance of having characters make mistakes, and I analyzed how I learned to empathize. All of these factors could have been supported in a stronger way, with more evidence to synthesize the entire piece. Overall, the majority of the Course Learning Outcomes were met for this assignment, just not as perfectly met as they could have been-something I can work on for future assignments.