I am Fray Martinez and I am currently a sophomore that attends City College of New York and took this Writing for political sciences class for the spring semester of 2021.

    During this whole course I have developed a new love for writing that I never thought I would have and taking this class taught me so many things in writing that I lacked in that I never looked at. 

    During this semester we had to develop a sense of writing which turned out to be very beneficial for the readers because we learned to incorporate different writing styles into our writing pieces which I learned can tell a lot more than just words on a page. 

    While doing projects in this class, the group project for public awareness in which we had to target a specific audience, we made a science feature about a topic we found interesting and gave it purpose, as well as an op-ed in which we incorporated diction, rhetoric appeals and much more. All in all, while doing all of these projects everything I was taught I put in my writing and I believe made my writing more significant and more powerful than any english class I took prior.

    For starters in my group project I did with a couple of other classmates. It was a public awareness campaign we all did and we did it on the mental health of college youth in this time of pandemic. For this project our audience was specific and our targeted audience was the older people because of social stigma associated with mental health. In this project the writing portion I wrote about the social stigmas associated with mental health and our targeted audience which I feel strengthened our writing. I stated there, “They went through their own set of growing pains, so they try to make the student feel bad for struggling because they are convinced that things are easier just because they are more accessible. That compounded by the high expectations society has for us, the ones our parents have for us, and most importantly, the expectations we set for ourselves, makes our lives so much more difficult and strenuous than people really notice.” (Martinez, 2021). In this small writing portion of this project I present the social stigmas associated with mental health and the older way of thinking which made that statement significant. I believe it was important to introduce the audience because with that blatantly stated it gave the readers an idea who was being spoken to and even if it wasn’t directly them they still can be spoken about indirectly. I introduced the audience and I used older and formal diction to appeal to the older audience and show them that their way of thinking is outdated and the mental health of a youth going to college during a pandemic is important and shouldnt be brushed off like it can go away easily. I wrote in a more formal way of writing because the older audience would be more inclined to read and listen. I say this because in more modern day informality would be used to appeal to the younger audience because it would like having a conversation with them. I feel this writing technique appealing using formal diction, and addressing my targeted audience really made this public awareness campaign that much more stronger because it had purpose and those reading that are of the older generation can listen and actually change their way of thinking after reading this which is what this class had taught me.

    Moreover, this can be seen in more of my writing I did in this class for example, my science feature I added a more personal aspect to the writing piece which I feel added more significance to the paper because it added more of a relatable part to the writing which again I believe made my paper stronger because a connection to the audience brings more of a realistic feeling like “i’m not alone”, and draws the reader in.  I stated, “After I broke down I called a really close friend of mine and just let out how I felt and that took a lot of weight from my shoulders and now I am trying to balance school and work but now I can vent to my friend and just having that one person there for me to listen to my problems and give me advice is what I needed to help my mental health.” (Martinez, 2021). This vulnerability I showed really set a tone for the paper and in my opinion really showed the significance of mental health in one’s life using my own self as an example. I would’ve never thought to use my struggles and personal anecdotes to connect to the audience and show them I am human as well. Setting a tone for that paper, and using my own personal struggles I realized with the way the professor was grading and commenting, and the way I would read over my pieces, my writing was gradually increasing. 

    Overall, doing drafts and taking criticism from my professor and classmates really opened my eyes on what writing really is. Writing really is a form of art and can be used for so many different reasons. I wrote about a lot of things I believe in and support and thought I would shine light on because the world doesn’t shine enough on those topics. Writing is made up of so many components and the best thing about it is that you are free to write your heart out. I learned these different techniques, appealing to a specific audience, using rhetorics, setting tone, using proper diction and whilst writing it came to me naturally because I was just writing what was on my mind. Now i’m not saying writing is easy and I have a gift, but if you really believe in something and give it purpose and you write about it, get criticism and apply different writing techniques as I did your writing will elevate. When you write with a specific purpose and an audience in mind, and evidence analysis and persuasion your writing piece will always be on the right track. Never perfect but getting better each time. My theory of writing consists of purpose, significance and passion for what you are writing. This class taught me just that, everything I wrote had purpose and I gave significance as to why it is important to me not the real world sometimes. We speak to others our belief in our writing, as long as our point gets across and people understand what is being written, your work is already speaking to others and spreading a message. Writing is way more powerful than just words, it says way more things and with all of those techniques and how I used them (as explained before) I feel I spoke to my classmates and spread my words to them as they did to me. 

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