Final Words Blog Post

I think I learned a lot of things about myself as a writer throughout the course of this class. The first thing being that I really love writing, and I think I am pretty good at it, especially after this class. I have learned my voice and how to address audience without saying it. I think that was my biggest hurdle overall, audience has been a struggle for me but I think I am finally getting it, especially after my Autoethnography blogpost. I think I have also learned that writing can be so many different things. You can write formally or informally, and we write every single day of our lives so it is important develop the skill and be able to communicate well.

My knowledge of travel and the travel industry has definitely been widened through this class. I honestly never thought much of the act of traveling I only thought of the destination but now through hearing other people’s stories that are different then mine I am going to think a lot more about it. It was crazy to me how much of a roadblock traveling was for some people, depending on the situation traveling can be a really hard thing to do. When we learned about how the TSA operator has to press a button for male or female when going through the security machine, my mind was blown. This one fact really helped me understand why traveling was in invasion of privacy and uncomfortable for some people. This also helped change my perspective of the travel industry as well. Knowing that people with disabilities and different sexualities and whatever else they identify with are not traveling because its a huge uncomfortable process made me think, “why are no airlines or companies jumping on the opportunity to be more accommodating so they would get more business?” It seems like a missed opportunity to me. I am hoping in the future more companies will change to be more inclusive of all people who want to travel.

My definition of rhetoric is the was you write in order to convey a message. I don’t know how much my definition of rhetoric has changed but I definitely better understand how to use rhetoric effectively. I have learned that there are many different ways to convey the story you want to tell, wether that be the classic ethos, logos, pathos or using the pentad. I think this class gave me a better understanding of rhetoric as a whole put more importantly that there are more ways than just ethos, logos, and pathos which I learned in high school.

The thing that was most challenging for me in this class was being able to have a defined audience in my writing without saying it out right. In the beginning of the course I honestly did not even understand why I needed an audience and why that was important, but now I realize it is because your writing is most likely going to have a set group of readers, who do you want those to be, and why? Then I thought I finally understood audience but I did not know how to imply my audience, I was very confused about that, hence why my Bourdain piece is a letter. Then finally after more work at it I finally figured it out with my autoethnography. I don’t think I am an expert on audience at all but I think slowly over time and drafts I will continue to work on it and understand it better and better.

I think it is important to read, write, and think rhetorically in todays world because it gives you an advantage in life. I think today with the media there is so much information coming at you, wether that is reliable, no one really knows. It is important to be able to look at that information and read it for understanding and analyze if you can trust it and what it means to you. After that you can think rhetorically and critically about it and form your own opinion and then communicate the opinion you have formed to other people. Not knowing how to read, write, and think rhetorically can be detrimental in the way where you will have to rely on other people’s opinions about topics because you will be unable to understand them yourself. Being independent, intelligent, and direct are important characteristics to have when communicating about a topic especially today when things are so split and extreme knowing what is going on and being informed and knowing where you stand. This is why I think it is important to think, read, and white rhetorically in todays world.