What I have learned the most that has helped my writing process is making an outline. Before, I only did an outline for a large essay if it was a graded requirement. I used to find myself being able to do just fine without an outline. But with the Historiography essay, I found that having at outline was better since I could know when the discussion about one time period ends and when the next begins. Plus, I’ll also have the general arguments already noted so that I don’t have to make one up on the spot. I felt like it was more of a necessity than a pleasure for these types of longer and drawn-out essays that span literally hundreds of years. For larger essays in the future, I’ll be sure now to use an outline instead of winging it half the time.

For my MMT, I have decided to make a Minecraft video that walks through the builds/models of my site over time while speaking about its history. The relationship between this and my research essay is that both share the same facts and arguments about the change of my site’s community over time through discrimination and politics. The difference between both rhetorical situations is that the MMT is a video medium while the research essay is written. The audience also differs as the video is meant to attract people who are unlikely to read an eight-page essay about the history of Chinatown but may be more inclined to watch a video with visuals or listen to a video with the contents of my essay in it. But generally, both serve the same purpose of showing Chinatown’s historical changes in community through discrimination and politics of the time.

As I did more research and formatted my essay draft, my argument evolved that discrimination has impacted Chinatown’s development and community over time. This is because legal acts based on racism like the Chinese Exclusion Act changed Chinatown’s trajectory by banning Chinese immigration and forcing the community to look for ways to survive when the law wasn’t friendly to them. Discrimination in ethnicity is also a motivator as the Cantonese did not like the Fujianese coming into Chinatown in the late 1900s which caused a small enclave to form on the outskirts of eastern Chinatown for the Fujianese. Discrimination also influenced the founding of Chinatown since many Chinese fled states like California to flee anti-Chinese sentiment and violence on the west coast.

Before, my argument was vague, stating only that problems influenced Chinatown over time. As I researched more, I narrowed down my argument to be more specific since my previous argument could be applied to literally anything.

Through writing my research essay so far, I have an intended rhetorical situation in mind. My audience will be pretty much everyone that wants to read it, whether they are a student or professors. The exigence of my essay beyond it being for as assignment is that I like the area of Chinatown for its cheap food so that is my primary motivation for choosing Chinatown as my site. My purpose is to show the history of Chinatown through a community lens, arguing that the growth and development of Chinatown was influenced most by its community and how that community evolved over time. It’s genre/format is easily explainable as its a written essay.

What I need to do to make my rhetorical situation a reality is to format my essay in a way that doesn’t use many complicated ideas and is not all over the place in its focus on the community to make sure that I properly show how the growth and development of Chinatown was influenced mostly by the community. Also, limiting myself to not overcomplicate my essay will help me establish my audience since if students read this, they’d be more likely to understand if I didn’t use overly complicated concepts or terms.

I’ve been doing a lot of research for my project. Most of the media I’m using for my project is articles. But I have some images that show the history of my site which I’m also looking at. The articles support my ideas as many have interviews or testimonials from locals who grew up or have a connection to the area such as business owners who have seen firsthand the late 1900s to the site as it is in the modern day. These articles also show the history starting from the late 1800s to around 2022. Since these articles are mostly hyper-specific about the period they talk about, it helps me grasp what the site and area was like during the time period the articles discuss. Besides the articles, the photos also help support my idea of Chinatown developing from mostly male laborers trying to do business through restaurants and stores. Both of these media types support my writing work as they both paint a picture of what it was like to be in Chinatown during the 1900s, the late 1800s, and a glimpse at the modern-day. It’ll also help for the speculative parts of my writing of the future since I can analyze the articles and history for any trends that may give a hint of what may come in the future.

One theory that relates to my proposal is that the main influencers of the immigrant experience in America have been stress and financial difficulties. My current research is related to the history of Chinatown and this theory perfectly relates to its history and development. When the Chinese came to the United States, like other immigrant groups, faced heavy stress from having to leave their families and coming across oceans to a new and far-off place. Additionally, many came for work and had little money, meaning they faced financial difficulties. These factors made immigrants more likely to be exploited as they were desperate for jobs and many faced discrimination for not being Western European-like. This discrimination led immigrant groups to band together for protection and familiarity as shown in ethnic enclaves such as Chinatown which I’m researching. Stress and financial difficulties also affected the development of Chinatown as bans on Chinese immigration and anti-Chinese sentiment essentially forced Chinatown to fend for itself; creating its own political structure and underground economy to protect its interests in the face of outside stress and financial difficulties imposed on it.

In short, the theory of stress and financial difficulties being the main driving force behind the immigrant experience in America is relevant to my research on Chinatown’s development over time. Anti-Chinese sentiment, immigration laws, and situational circumstances have induced stress and financial difficulties of Chinese immigrants in America and forced them to develop enclaves such as Chinatown both physically and politically to protect their own interests.

One learning objective that I’ve personally succeeded in learning is to explore and analyze a variety of genres and rhetorical situations. Before this class, I have never heard of the term rhetorical situation but I did already know bits and pieces of it from my prior courses in High School. I learned how to explore and analyze a wide variety of genres and rhetorical situations through exposure. I’ve had to read a lot for this class, some of which were hard such as the Heidegger reading which honestly had me rereading multiple times. I’ve also had to read various articles about my future research project about a specific New York landmark/site which has me reading testimonials and news articles from various times and tones. I’ve had to go from reading a PBS article to a whole development plan proposed by a government official just to get an idea of the past and possible future of Penn Station. I can definitely say this exposure has helped me achieve this learning objective as I’ve been able to understand and analyze the main points of various forms of written media.

I’ve developed in the area of being able to analyze different forms of written media as part of the learning objective as I’ve mentioned before the exposure forced me to learn how to approach different genres for analysis. Before, I used to just read and extract the main points but now I read through the text, pick out the main points, think about why the author makes those points, and keep the rhetorical situation in mind so that I can truly understand what I am reading. As I continue reading different genres and written media for this class, I predict that I’ll only continue to develop more in my ability since I’ll be constantly thrown more and more to read and analyze.

For a bit of context in this reflection, I had to begin researching a historical site or landmark in New York. In doing so, while I haven’t decided on what site in specific I should write about, one of my main candidates is Penn. Station in Manhatten. During my research, I found an article by PBS.org that I found really interesting.

Reading the article, I annotated useful tidbits that would help me with my project. For example, the original Penn. The station was designed in the Beaux-Arts architectural style and was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, one of the then-largest corporations in the world. It wasn’t designed just for vanity as it was designed with the next 100 years in mind with the structure being designed to handle 200,000 passengers per day. Despite its beauty, the rise of automobiles and air travel led to its demolition due to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company not finding it feasible to maintain the terminal amidst the decline of railroad travel. Despite its demolition, parts of Penn. Station are still used today and have different uses such as a post office, and a variety of train terminals such as Amtrak and the LIRR. I also made a few connections between the history of the station to the circumstances of the times such as the aforementioned decline of the railroad leading to the station’s demolition and the construction of the station made possible by financing by a large corporation wanting to get trains into Manhattan easier.

Honestly, annotating does not help me at all. I always heavily hated annotating and being forced to do it doesn’t make me love it anymore. If it is for short articles, I see no need for annotating as I’m able to read and retain information easily. I’ll seldom annotate if it’s for a longer read but for the most part, I find it easy to see past all the fancy wordplay and summarize the main points in my head. For this article, due to its simplicity, needs nothing else but reading in my eyes to fully understand it.

I’ve recently written a Learning Analysis Essay and in it, the rhetorical situation is present, like in most other works of literature. The genre of my essay is a mix of analytical and narrative essays. It has elements of both genres as I mention several stories from my personal life, but in it, I also analyze the stories and how I learned from them and their impacts on my life. The purpose of my essay was to explore and analyze the ways I learn as well as identify important lessons that influence my life to this day. The intended audience of my essay, beyond the simple answer of my professor and colleagues, would be anybody really who wants to learn how different people learn or how others react to different situations. I’m sure a psychology student could get a kick out of it. The context of the essay was that I had to write it for an assignment that called for me to reflect on how I learn and look back on my memories.

Starting this assignment, I set a few goals including trying to find stories that are both unique yet relatable to keep an audience interested in my experience and also being able to understand where I am coming from. I also set a goal for myself to limit the amount of the essay I spend talking about the narratives to focus on the bigger picture. In other words, I wanted to condense my stories so that they are both meaningful, yet not the main point since the essay isn’t an autobiography. I believe I did achieve these goals in that I found three stories that fit well with my essay and aligned with my goal of being unique yet relatable. I also accomplished my goal to limit the amount of time I spent talking about the narratives by omitting smaller details and getting to the main payoff sooner rather than later.

I also achieved the goals set by this assignment: writing a formal essay about my experiences in life. I maintained a consistent and professional tone throughout the whole essay that stayed on track the entire time. Overall, I really did achieve the goals both put upon me and the goals I set for myself when tackling the Learning Analysis Essay assignment

So far, the most useful thing we have done in class that has been helpful to my writing process has been learning and using the rhetorical situation. I only knew some bits of it, but I was never familiar with the term or all the parts that make up the rhetorical situation. Learning the rhetorical situation as a whole was useful beyond it being a new way to analyze articles, text, or any form of communication. The rhetorical situation helped me improve my writing process by adding another layer of thinking to my thought process. Now, when I write, for example, the draft for the Learning Inquiry Essay, I have to consider the exigence/motivation, why I am writing/what is my main point, who is reading it, and in what format the text is presented in the context of tone or vocabulary use.

As I mentioned before, I can now apply the rhetorical situation consciously to my writing to amplify it. When writing in the future, I shall keep the rhetorical situation in mind to make sure my writing maintains its focus on the purpose of the writing, reminding myself why I am writing in the first place, adjusting my vocabulary depending on the intended audience of the writing, and the format/genre of the writing (Is it a scientific paper, literary analysis, or personal story?). Beforehand, I used to go through my writing process headfirst, which usually led to situations where I was over-enthusiastic about the content and rambled on and forgot the main point. But now that I plan on keeping the rhetorical situation in mind, I can prevent myself from getting into such situations again.

So far, nothing has been confusing, nor does anything that I feel needs to have more time spent on comes to mind. Perhaps that’ll change as the class goes on.