Reflective Statement

Part I: What I Have Learned In The Course

What I have learned in this course is the identification, use, and strengths of rhetorical stylings. While I have always known about the strength of logos and its use — even if I could not properly articulate it beforehand — the rhetorical knowledge I have gained has made me more cognizant of writing and the use of language therein.
For starters, I enjoyed learning about the constraints of artifacts. While the urge to simply believe an artifact is infallible due to its source — like, say, a scholarly, peer-reviewed article in a journal — is tempting, even the most credible of sources can have constraints that limit its rhetorical strengths. For instance, the Bale article used for my first project is incredibly well-researched and communicates information in a clear manner, but its lack of emotional awareness and dated publication make it a source that needs to be propped up with more empathetic and recent artifacts to create a research paper worth reading. In contrast, I think the podcast-style video my brother recorded for my Project 3 is a very emotional piece that adds a great personal touch to that project, but, because he is not a medical professional, the composition is constrained by its lack of logos and ethos.
I also enjoyed learning about identifying and targeting the audiences of artifacts. In a manner similar to the infallible artifact urge mentioned above, I believe a common fallacy is to believe that every composition is created with the intention of attracting and being understood by every kind of audience, when this misconception is simply not the case. Every composition and artifact is created with an audience in mind, and identifying that audience helps the reader better understand the artifact. For example, while I think the Mullin book used in my Project 1 is a great source of knowledge about preventing birth defects, its language is relatively simple and augmented by easy-to-read tables and charts, indicating it is not aimed at an audience of medical professionals but instead anyone who can become or wants to become pregnant. In contrast, the Goldsby web page used in the very same project is a great resource on how to best support children with birth defects, but the word choice by the authors and the sources they provide themselves indicate that this artifact is aimed at medical professionals seeking a specific kind of care to practice, rather than nonmedical professionals simply seeking to help out.
As for the use of the rhetorical devices ethos, pathos, and logos, I would like to not dwell on them too much in this part because of how I address them and talk about their use in the parts below, but I greatly enjoyed learning about these devices and am now more aware of them both in my own compositions and artifacts and in the compositions and artifacts of others.
In summary, while I entered this class looking to improve my research skills for my nursing work, the knowledge I now have of rhetorical stylings and devices makes me an even better researcher than I could have imagined because I can analyze sources beyond the surface level. I believe this deeper analysis will help me with my nursing because it will allow me to identify the best artifacts and sources available and, therefore, use them in my work.


Part II: My Revision of Project 1

As it stands, based on the letter grade I received for my submission, Project 1 is objectively one of my best pieces of writing submitted for this class. However, one criticism I received on the peer review was the lack of a personal touch, which I remedied with a recent anecdote from my mother before the final submission. That said, with one source that had to be cut after my first round of research and my newfound knowledge on rhetorical strategies following the other two Projects, I wanted to add more logos and pathos to this essay as best as I could.
For the former and logos, I wanted to include information from the book Congenital Heart Defects: From Origin to Treatment by Diego Wyszynski, Thomas Graham, and Adolfo Correa-Villasenor. To clarify, the book is very technical and aimed at medical professionals with a good deal of knowledge and experience, but I felt its thoroughness on heart-related birth defects would help strengthen my essay’s point about the importance of treatment, even if I would have to simplify its jargon for the audience my Project 1 was trying to reach. As a result, I inserted the source into my essay in the treatment section, summarizing its heart transplant point as an extreme example given the additional pathos I also inserted into the essay.
For pathos, I wanted to primarily use many of the sources used in my Projects 2 and 3. For sources used in Project 2, I wanted to use both the non-textual artifact of Elsevier’s “Birth defects linked to fentanyl by geneticists at Nemours Children’s Health in Wilmington, Del” image and the news article I found it in, “Fentanyl misuse during pregnancy can cause severe birth defects” by NBC News’s Erika Edwards. As mentioned in my Project 2, I think these artifacts are important to pathos because they provide a humanizing face to birth defects. The photographed newborns are clearly suffering from health problems, and the angles they are shot at indicate these problems. However, at the same time, the infants are also photographed in a very cute manner, showing the smiles and silly expressions viewers expect from newborns regardless of their health states. For instance, despite their clear facial defects and skin irregularities, the infants labeled C, E, and F are all photographed in a way to show what a parent would likely lovingly refer to as a grumpy face. For sources used in Project 3, I wanted to include my oldest brother’s podcast-style video because I felt it also added a humanizing face to birth defects. As mentioned in the project and in his video, my brother was born with a heart defect because he was born prematurely, but, by receiving treatment and medication throughout the early stages of his life, the heart defect was eventually cured, emphasizing the importance of treatment and doctor and nurse knowledge in a very emotional way.
Overall, while I am still very proud of my original Project 1 final draft submission, I probably prefer this revision because it speaks better to my nursing experience — demonstrating both my technical knowledge of the field and the empathetic aspect that I try to bring to my practice.


Part III: My Artifact Selections

The two artifacts I selected for my portfolio were the locating sources assignment submitted on May 16th, 2025 and the most recent Project prior to this one, the multigenre persuasive campaign and rationale assignment, submitted on June 15th, 2025. I chose these two artifacts because I believe they best demonstrate how my writing has evolved over the course of this class. To clarify, while the Project 3 artifact was submitted less than a week ago, the locating sources assignment was one of the first assignments that I submitted for this class, being due less than four days after the beginning of class.
In the former artifact, my writing is very structured, and the sentences therein are rather matter-of-fact. While I believe this style of writing is important for informational and formal writing, it lacks pathos and can come off as very stiff and cold. However, with that said, this assignment in particular also lacks ethos or credibility because of its formatting. The assignment is written in MLA format, which is acceptable for writing assignments but fails because of my intentions. My intentions for this assignment, like many of the assignments submitted for this class, were to increase my nursing knowledge as well as my writing knowledge, and most scientific essays for my field should be written in APA format, not MLA format. As a result, even though this assignment is written clearly and logically, its credibility is undercut by such an amateurish mistake.
In contrast, the latter artifact demonstrates how well my writing has improved since the beginning of the class. To state the most clear improvement first, the artifact is properly laid out in APA format with a cover page, page numbers, section headers, and references cited. However, I believe this essay also demonstrates a better use of rhetorical styles through its use of several different compositions. While the first composition, the scholarly essay, is mostly matter-of-fact as well — though in a way with far more ethos and pathos than the first artifact — the other two compositions in the artifact are used with the purposes of primarily demonstrating ethos and especially pathos to contrast it. The Twitter thread composition demonstrates my new skill of using logos and ethos in the more pathos-heavy style of social media posting, and the podcast-style video composition demonstrates my ability to both connect to the feelings of others in composing and work with them and draw upon their knowledge to help me with my tasks — the latter two skills being necessary not just in compositional environments but the collaborative nature of healthcare work as well.
In short, I believe these two artifacts demonstrate how my writing has improved over the course of this class because they demonstrate the rhetorical strengths I now possess. Going into this class, I was always confident in my research abilities and ability to relay information, but, now that I know about other ways to communicate credibility and emotional appeals through my writing, I believe I am better suited to both writing in a professional setting and communicating with others through textual and non-textual means.