Reflection Rough Draft

This portfolio is a collection of interesting writing experiences for me. As an English and Communication Arts major, I usually do two very specific types of writing. Writing for English classes is focused on close reading and analyzing thematic aspects of literature, and how the words on the page illuminate the greater concepts within the text, literary movement, or society. For Communications, the writing is centered around dissecting visual texts and looking at why decisions are made and how those decisions impact the rest of the text, and how they exemplify a certain style. Both “genres” are analytical rather than creative, and they both involve taking a closer look at someone else’s work and attempting to decipher their intentions. With this in mind, the writing I did for this portfolio was different than what I am used to.

Through the semester, I took some liberties with my writing because I am normally confined by certain expectations for my other work. Because we got to choose a topic that was interesting to us, it was often difficult for me to remove my own opinions from the work we were doing. Normally, I don’t get to choose to write about anything I want, so that was a new experience. It ended up being a little more difficult than I anticipated because I do not normally analyze baseball in the way that I had to for this class and project. I read articles about it, but I do not normally search for government and academic sources to back up the knowledge I pick up at espn.com. Also, when I am not specifically analyzing a text, and even sometimes when I am, it is very difficult for me to remove my personal voice from my writing. Even if I did not explicitly talk about my White Sox, or my thoughts on various players or issues that I discussed, my voice often comes out in any words I write on the page. I think this is most explicit in one of my early blog posts. Not only do I begin it with a nice little anecdote about my life, but you can just hear me throughout the entire post. It has everything that I bring to the table in my normal speech—sarcasm, humor, and a little bit of line crossing. I am still very proud of this blog post. I enjoyed writing it, and enjoy reading it back today, but I understand how this type of writing does not work for every assignment and every topic.

I think that my RP3 assignment shows a transition between that type of writing and a more genre focused type. It is on a topic that is extremely interesting to me, immigration in baseball, so the entire thesis of the paper is based on my personal opinion towards the subject. Since I watched a documentary film as one of the sources, I took the parts that pulled me in to use in my paper to draw in the audiences. In that way, some personal choice and voice impacted the reading of the paper. However, as the paper went on, it became more focused on the research and transformed into a more expository piece. I can see how having sources from ESPN and other sports websites doesn’t exactly make it strictly academic, though, but it was very difficult to find sources that fit this topic outside the sporting news world. For my revisions, I found a government-issued memo that amended the laws for athlete’s p-1 visas, but since my argument was more centered around h-2b visas for minor leaguers, I had to reframe part of my argument to explain what this memo means. After explaining it, I’m trying to show how this new law is another advantage for players who have already made the league, and there is still work to be done to share the wealth with minor league players.