The Work of Dominic Garrett

Reflection

During this academic period, I tackled the last English class that I will have to in my scholastic career. Going into this class, I was fully expecting, as in my English classes since early in high school, to not learn anything truly path-altering and formulating, and just continue to write the same sort of research papers and repeated the classic views on writing that numb every student who is not a Liberal Arts major, yet Ms. B showed me otherwise. Through this class, I have been introduced to a new outlook on writing and learned to covet the skill and revere its importance not only in academia but in life at large.
As a STEM student joining the Chemical Engineering discourse community, I never considered myself to be a writer. I viewed the composition of written works as the opposite of what my major focused on...mathematics. Writing was something that I saw was a side task on my main goal of succeeding through my scholastic career, but as I continued through ENC2135 with Ms. B and my classmates, I considered writing to be more of a form of self-expression, a way to show growth, a way to share knowledge or expertise, or to create new works that have yet to be considered by anyone but yourself. It is necessary for every person, English major or not, to communicate ideas and to progress forward in all aspects of life. I now know that writing is synergistic with all other forms of study, and helps every person show their full potential as an intellectual.
Through my first semester at FSU progressing through ENC2135 with Ms. B, I have noticed a large change in my attitude towards writing, that cascades into nearly all aspects of my performance as a composer of rhetorical artifacts. As I read through my earlier works, I noticed that I have learned much when it comes to utilizing sources in my work, properly citing and explaining their context in my artifacts to further my use of ethos and logos. My writing has evolved to better incorporate facts to further my goals in writing works, whether it may be to argue, persuade, or inform audiences on different topics within my area of expertise. Along with all of this, I learned how to analyze and compose artifacts from different genres, and to understand their context, rhetorical situation, and audiences, both intended and not, going into the specifics in every circumstance.
The most surprising of things that I have learned throughout this class would be my investigative skills on any particular topic, which I have already put to use in my research project on an organic solar cell called Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells. Throughout this semester, I have been scouring through my field of study, learning more about different aspects of Chemical Engineering, the potential careers in the field, and most importantly, how these people go on to affect the world as a community of scholars. All of this helped me dive deep into the existing discourse community of Chemical Engineering to learn from other established professionals in the field, learning genre conventions of articles posted in the field, as well as the general information that is shown. ENC2135 and the writing, research, and analysis skills I learned from Ms B's instruction will aid my efforts into joining this discourse community as I continue to use my newfound skills and knowledge to draft and publish a research paper.