The following essay is a biography designed to connect one rhetor to another.  As the final assignment for Introduction to Rhetoric and Composition, a course taught by Dr. Lopez in the fall semester of 2014, it was designed to attach our individual interests to our semester-long study of rhetoric.  Our target audience was Dr. Lopez, but it was also supposed to be written for someone who had never studied rhetoric.  As such, we had to explain the individual scholars and the terms that we had explored in ENGL 3050 as if we were explaining them to someone for the first time.  I selected this particular essay as the first artifact for my portfolio because this is where my intentional study of rhetoric began.  Until this class, I was an English major without a specified concentration.  Dr. Lopez’s introductory course made me so intrigued by the subject that I decided to identify myself as a student of Rhetoric and Composition.  This essay also symbolizes the first time that I connected with ancient texts on the subject of rhetoric, understood their significance, and applied it to my other scholarly interests.

What I enjoy about the essay is that it is clearly organized, it demonstrates critical thinking, it expounds well upon each in-text citation, and it shows an intense focus on detail.  Because of these qualities, it is an interesting read, but looking at it now, I can identify places where I could have diversified my sentence structures and been clearer with my word choice.