Eureka!

Everybody has those moments. The “ah-ha” moments, the moments of exceptional clarity and understanding where everything makes sense; those moments where you understand something you have been struggling with for a long time. I’m not an exactly a gifted writer and, for me, those moments come through hard work and dedication to understanding. There have been a few moments in this class where I have had that clarity (thankfully) and now have a greater understanding of writing and rhetoric as a whole.

The first moment I had was while we were discussing the rhetorical situation. I had never encountered the concept before or had ever even heard the term. It was, and is, an extremely difficult concept to grasp, especially after only reading Bitzer’s paper. After we had discussed it for a while however and I had done a few assignments and had time to grapple with the concept in my paper I found an understanding that was lacking in my earlier assessment of the term.

In fact it was more than just the rhetorical situation that I had that moment for, it was with the whole idea of rhetoric. For me, I had always heard and thought of rhetoric as Crowley and Hawhee had described most people knowing it in the first page of their article. It was usually slanderous and used for politicians who were avoiding real discourse. Now, I understand the misuse of the word and it’s legitimate meaning and value to the world of writing and discourse as a whole. This was probably one of my more significant “ah-ha” moments simply because I had heard the term outside of class and it was such a reversal of understanding.

My understanding of audience has changed drastically. Everything about the concept of different people reading your paper and making them understand was made clearer to me during our class time. The moment of clarity I had for audience came during the reading of the Wysocki and Lynch paper. Learning about all the different ways to persuade an audience and me reflecting and thinking about which ways would be most effective on which types of audiences was a huge part in coming to grips with the reality that audience is an extremely important piece to my, and everyone’s writing.

Another big eureka moment was with the three key concepts of logos, pathos, and ethos. I had talked about them a little in high school, to a lesser extent than what most people seem to have apparently. But I had a very vague understanding and through all of our readings and activities I’ve definitely come to use them as devices in my own writing, but more importantly, I’ve been able to actively use them in an analytical way that helps me understand opinion pieces in a way that I hadn’t thought of before.

Though I have to actively struggle to understand certain things, what I like to call the “eureka moment” is most certainly worth it. I believe these moments are reached by the gradual buildup of information, and then the single moment where all of the information makes sense and everything rushes to fill your understanding. Although I find these moments to be a concrete addition to one’s knowledge base sometimes this does happen: http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1138&bih=535&tbm=isch&tbnid=0KahQOlbmgsDtM:&imgrefurl=http://abstrusegoose.com/93&docid=MBrtf9UAacxgqM&imgurl=http://abstrusegoose.com/strips/moment_of_clarity.JPG&w=744&h=567&ei=7YwxT7HzAqjisQLO-72HBw&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=390&sig=104965238903601482198&page=2&tbnh=166&tbnw=218&start=10&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:10&tx=202&ty=131