Dear Mom,

Good Afternoon Mommy. You always ask me how’s school going and, in this letter, I will tell you all about it.

First of all, mommy I know you are a published writer, but those genes did not past down to me. Since I was a kid writing never was something I was drawn to. It would literally take me hours to complete an introduction I was satisfied with. But on the contrary my teachers always would tell me how good of a writer I was. Maybe that was just their job make kids feel like they are doing a fantastic job even though their poetic language or story telling is absolutely painful. I remember in first grade my teacher Melissa made me read the worst poem a kid could write in front of the class. The poem was called “ I don’t Like”, personally it wasn’t much of a poem but it went something like this “I like dogs, I like cats but I don’t like snakes, I like Ice cream I like cake but I don’t like ” something I don’t remember it word for word but you get what I was going with. She really must have loved that poem because for the next four years in that school till I went to sixth grade this lady made me come to her class and read this pathetic poem to her class. This is when I began to realize maybe my writing isn’t as bad as I believe it to be.

I have been in college for three years and this is my first writing classes. Honestly, I didn’t have the highest of hopes. I knew I wouldn’t fail but to do A+ level work wasn’t really an idea. But the first week Mr. Duran began using familiar words I’ve previously heard in high school and a couple new ones. So initially I began to get comfortable, feeling that some of the terms I already knew. Words like diction were always a huge thing for me in previous years because an author’s choice of words will always make for better a piece of writing for me, including my own. If an author’s uses too much descriptive language I get lost quickly in the concept, so I knew in my own writing descriptive language is always limited to clear references that the average Joe could imagine. I would not use language that would take more than five       seconds to imagine because a divergent from the text any longer would quickly lose the reader.

So, diction was always a big factor in my writing. He always used terms like “rhetorical”, which I have only heard in one usage before Mr. Duran and that is when Mikey (my brother) would say a question. For example if he was making frozen pizza looking at the directions and would say “How long do I put this in the oven for?” and the sassy sister I was I would respond by saying something like “You have the instructions don’t you?”. This is where he would use the term saying, “That was a rhetorical question.” I was not 100% if he was using that term correctly back then but he was a high schooler I was not going to tell him he was wrong. But then Mr. Duran taught me the writers’ definition for rhetorical. Which made me think about all the rhetorical situations I have had and didn’t know the word to sum up all the interactions. I picked up on the term rhetorical elements and rhetorical situations quickly. To describe a situation of communication in any sense of the words seemed to be nothing more than natural.

In class rhetorical situation analysis first became eye opening when we had to do rhetorical analysis of three articles on the same topic. It was interesting when you decipher how an author communicates the same point with different rhetorical elements. But do not confuse this as it being interesting with it being easy. First, I had to actually read and comprehend these published authors writing. It took me at least an hour to talk myself into sitting down and reading one article let alone three or four. I struggle to just sit in my room and just write, so I have to set an alarm on my phone for an hour which I dedicate to just writing and I can’t pick up my phone once. Once that hour is up, I set another alarm for 20 minutes of phone time. I browse Instagram as if it is the weekly coupon catalog, looking for the best deals to occupy my time with the small amount of currency I have left. Then the 20 minutes would be up and the hour long of writing would begin again. During this hour-long writing session, I would begin by writing my outline. I find starting out with an outline which seems to give my writing the best outcome, this is because I can ask myself questions. I find trouble in extending my writing pieces with interesting information but when I began with an outline, I can always ask myself another question within my outline. The outline always gives me tunnel vision, I have trouble with directing my writing on one topic once my mind starts moving in a direction it’s hard to reel its back in. Another tool I have during my hour-long writing session is to constantly reread. If I can see where I came from, I can better imagine where I am going. As I said in the beginning of this essay writing does not natural come to me, I make tons on grammatical errors and I have 3 billion tricks to get to a destination in my writing.

So even while I am writing this I am pulling a couple of those tricks out the bag. I began getting to catch on to things the further along the semester went. Writing became less tedious and more fluid with ever assignment and discussion. I realized I really began to catch on when I began to create my composition in two genres. The make point of this assignment was obviously the genre aspect. Which through the entire semester never moved me, as much as the other rhetorical elements did. This is because the initial definition of genre was not the definition we used as a class, that alone took some time getting used to. Because I was not use to this foreign idea of genre to implement it into my writing was hard and now, I had a whole assignment solely based on my comprehension of it. I first began the assignment by figuring out what the different genre of writing were. This assignment I wanted two similar genres that would affect different groups of people because of its content. I choose a meme and a cartoon. The main thing about genre is there are guidelines as you can see, I love an outline. These guidelines are what makes a composition belong to a certain genre which completely changed my mind about genre.

In contrast to genre is the medium and stance two things that I had the completely opposite feeling initially. Medium was something easy and a given because all it says it how is the writing communicated. Stances was a little more difficult. All forms of writing do not take a stance, and if they do it’s not always clear. But again, I liked stances because it was clear on what you were looking for, identify the authors position on the topic.

In conclusion mommy I loved the class, I learned a lot. I learned a lot about myself as a writer and showed me I am always growing and I’m not as bad as of a writer as I believe. Once I find the motivation to create a good piece of writing it exceeds my expectations every time.

Love,

Your Favorite Child

Brianna Pomarico