My name is Yahya Aala and I’m currently a first year student studying Architecture over at The City College of New York. This site is designed to introduce to you the writing that I had created at my English Composition class where I explored into subtopics within the food science industry. I decided to look into very a debatable topic that was discussed by people of nearly all ages which was the healthfulness of the country’s public school lunch system. But over the semester, that topic branched into the topic of Cultured Meat which has been a recent food innovation with claims that it can offer a more sustainable and healthier option compared to the meat that we normally consume. Please feel free to look into the work that I have created!
Theory Of Writing
Writing to me has always been centered around getting a point across without considering the other components of a piece of writing such as language and medium. Throughout middle school and high school, my theory of writing followed the same process which consisted of brainstorming nearly 90 percent of the time given then leaving the essay to be done within the last two days since I only focused on getting the assignment rather than making sure the quality of the work was good. Overall, this led me to dislike reading and writing because I never found enjoyment out of it and would want to be able to get it out of my way as soon as possible.
While starting the semester in English Composition, I found that the small tasks assigned to us such as the reflections and discussion posts to be pretty helpful because it allowed me to warm up on my writing. When we were then given our first major assignment which was the Source-Based Essay, I enjoyed the idea of having the freedom of writing on whatever topic we chose as long as we provided evidence. The reason I liked this assignment was because although the concept of the Source-Based Essay was pretty similar to the types of essays I had done back in high school, we instead didn’t have to all be working on the same topic for our essay which gave lots of variation. It became fun to engage in a group discussion with my peers on what they had decided to write about because it looked into what each person’s interests were. While being introduced to the nine terms which were rhetorical situation, audience, author, tone, purpose, genre, medium, stance, and language, I found that I had applied most of these terms to my writing unknowingly. Except for the term rhetorical situation which was something I struggled to apply to my writing throughout the semester. Nearly all the time that I mentioned the rhetorical situation in my writing, it ended up being incorrect. So, I sought help from my teacher while also trying to correct myself on what this term was because for a while I associated rhetorical situation as meaning a realistic possibility of something that could happen. Throughout my Source-Based Essay covering the topic of the nation’s school lunch system, I had said for my rhetorical situation “This peer-reviewed journal stemmed from the very debatable yet fully understood topic of our nation’s school lunch. It analyzes to the core the many aspects that get taken into consideration when perspectives towards school lunches…”, the feedback given to me was that I had not used all the terms and that my wording was also confusing. Towards the end, my grade for this assignment was a D. Unfortunately, I realized that the theory of writing that I had been following wasn’t going to work in college because I had to actually go back and check my work and also make sure all my information was aligned with the terms that the professor had laid out for us.
As I was introduced to our third major assignment which was the Composition in Two Genres, I was very interested in what the task was because I realized that the assignment didn’t really involve a lot of writing if we didn’t want but instead focused on our creative side which was something I felt stronger in compared to writing. As I thought of my previous grade for the past assignment, I factored in what I did wrong and decided to change it completely, which is what I felt led to me getting a B on that assignment. I first began with the topic I chose for my Research-Based Essay which I, unfortunately didn’t do but that meant that I had already covered the research process regarding Cultured Meat. So, I began drafting a cartoon drawing and ad that supported my stance that Cultured Meat was beneficial while also aiming to an audience of youth who most likely didn’t have much knowledge on this topic since it was something very new to society. After I completed both of the drawings, I started the reflection statement where I discussed the many reasons why I chose this topic and why I chose to interpret it in these two mediums. As said in my reflection “I found that many people were indecisive about the benefits of cultured meat as they associated it with ‘lab-grown meat’ which gave off a negative image in their head” then I had, later on, said, “While creating my cartoon, I decided to keep the drawings childish but also keep the language within the text bubbles in a not too formal and academic tone so that it could appeal towards younger people such as teenagers like me”. Personally, this showed a drastic change in my theory of writing where I originally just brainstormed, threw words on some paper and called it a day into a more useful theory of writing where I planned my writing out, created drafts and went through a series of edits. This allowed me to gain strength in completing different styles of writing instead of it just being poetic, which is one of the few writing styles I enjoyed doing since I felt strong at it.
In the future, I can use my theory of writing in many instances where it’s needed such as writing cover letters for a resume, creating large scale project descriptions and even writing Instagram captions. This class provided a big leap from the writing statements I did back in early high school such as “My reflections are that I shouldn’t quit my dreams just because I have doubts and worries that it won’t be successful because those are just small things that can end a dream, goal and hope” which always provided very little detail compared to the writing I began doing this semester where I analyzed my topic and went in-depth. To conclude everything, I feel that my theory of writing now is much better and it assists in guiding me to create an informative piece of writing which I can take with me to my future classes and in my lifetime.
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