Chelsea Waddell March 12, 2014 English 1102: C.

Douglas

Dear Connie, Compared to 1101 this class is completely different. I find this class more difficult because it introduced me to argumentative style writing and required me to dig deep into my interest, develop a line of inquiry and thoroughly research it. In high school I was only required to do one paper that required extensive research, so I feel relatively new to the extensive, indepth research that is required for our line of inquiry. In my previous reflections, I have hinted that I am not a big writing enthusiast; this is still true mostly because writing intimidates me. I am not sure what it will take to make me feel otherwise. Reflecting on my daybook and all the work assigned thus far, I believe that my daybook is above average and deserves a B. Honestly, in the beginning of the semester; my daybook would have deserved a D. I was not working as diligently as I should have been working, but not only in this class but all my other classes as well. I was overwhelmed with my new classes but I quickly found some sort of balance and caught most of my work up. I spent multiple days working on assigned chapters to make sure that they were complete with quality. I remember how you repeatedly say that you prefer quality to quantity. I kept that in mind as I worked. Compared to last semester there has been a definite increase in work assigned but that is to be expected. I try my best to stay on top of it all. I believe that my participation in class is deserving of a C. This semester there is more class participation than there was last semester and I do not see myself in the top participators

anymore. Even though I do participate, I do not believe the level of my participation is at an above average level. I find myself not speaking up sometimes because I have a hard time gathering my thoughts into a way that would be easy to convey to others. Aside from that, I hope to increase my participation in class to a level that would deserve an A or B. I just started my research a couple of days ago and I have some promising sources. I have listed all of the voices I feel are relevant to my argument and am currently trying to find articles to represent each voice. So far, I have found several possible sources and three definite sources. One of the three definite sources that I plan to use in my annotated bibliography provides insight to the medias influence on attitudes towards people with mental illnesses and gun control support. The next definite source is one that agrees with my side of the argument. It discusses the different regulations to gun control that does not involve withdrawing the second amendment right of persons with mental illnesses and how it is not fair to functional members of society who just so happen to have mental illnesses. The last definite source analyzes the access to guns. This article discusses how easy it would be for a person who cannot legally purchase a gun to still do so, questioning the effectiveness of the proposed solution. I hope to find more articles that support the argument in my line of inquiry. I think it might be difficult to find scholarly sources that represent the voice of the mentally ill first hand. Based on my performance so far in this semester I think that my efforts deserve a C. Anything that I have demonstrated thus far has certainly not been above average. I hope to enhance my performance so that I can make at least a B in you class by the end of this semester. I plan to do this by staying up to date with my daybook. I plan to keep my assignments in good quality. I also plan to increase my participation in class. It is not really a good class discussion if only eight out of twenty-five students are participating, but I have my own grade to worry about

and if I am one of those eight students so be it. However, I am nervous about our final paper. Probably like most of my classmates, this will be the first argumentative researched based paper I have ever had to write. No one else probably spends thirty minutes stressing over the first sentence of most of their writings. I plan to use the Writing Resource Center. It would be idiotic of me to say how intimidated I am when it comes to writing repeatedly and not utilize my resources. Honestly, I do not even have any pride to put aside in order to go to the WRC; I do not know why I did not go last semester. I enjoyed reading Dr. Kings Letters from Birmingham Jail because I found myself surprised while reading it. I did expect the letter to have as much power as it did but I found the way it was written very interesting. I chose the Letters from Birmingham Jail response questions because it made me dig deeper into a work I found interesting and utilize my critical thinking skills. I chose Exercise 5.12 because it helped me to understand different fallacies better by changing invalid statements into valid ones. In order to do this I had to understand what fallacies were demonstrated in each of the statements. Once I understood the fallacies, I used my critical thinking skills to restate the statements in a way that removed the fallacies. In the assignment on page 164, we were asked to read an essay and answer questions pertaining to the reading. I found the reading to be quite interesting because I can relate to the students. This assignment allowed me to analyze information from a court case and assess the argument within the case. Exercise 5.13 gave me the opportunity to better understand a deductive argument. I believe that using the prompt in this assignment made it more difficult to write a deductive

argument than it would have been if I were to write one freely, or without guides. The same thing goes for the prompted inductive argument on the next page (5.14). Sincerely, Chelsea A. Waddell