- Can you perceive of rhetoric as an ongoing negotiation between people, texts, and issues — i.e., as a way of seeing and being in the world? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective? Recall: ethical appeals based on credibility and character; logical appeals based on data and deduction; emotional appeals based on emotions; and “identification” with readers. Are you getting to a place where you can identify those appeals when reading, the writer’s attitude toward the topic, toward you, and why all of this might matter?
- Are you a serendipitous reader and thinker, open to discovery and willing to follow where your thinking and learning take you, or are you a hierarchical, confirmation-biased reader and thinker? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- Did you arrive at college with “funds of knowledge” or a family literacy that informs your attitude about writing? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- What kind of critical thinker are you, and how does that shape your writing?
- Are you committed to social justice and to social change? Is it possible to theorize your writing from that perspective?
- Do you like to engage — or to flee from — perplexity and intellectually challenging projects? Can you theorize your writing from one of those perspectives?
- Can you use DePaul’s definition of literacy to reflect on and to theorize your work? “We are helping students become more literate. By literacy, we do not mean merely learning to read and write academic discourse, but also learning ways of reading, writing, thinking, speaking, listening, persuading, informing, acting, and knowing within the contexts of university discourse(s) and the multiple discourses in the world beyond the university.”
- Can you characterize your brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading process — both intellectually and mechanically? Is there such a thing as rhetorical editing? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- Do you like to play it safe and dislike being judged? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- Can you think back to writing you did in high school and look ahead to the rest of your college career? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- What is the role of solitude and unstructured time in your life? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- What is your sense of the world and what counts as “official” and “unofficial” knowledge? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- Are you a bullshitter? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- Do you write in order to learn? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- David Brooks’s analyses of “The Organization Kid” (April 2001), “The Empirical Kids” (March 2013), and “Started at the Bottom” (May 2013) — Can you theorize your writing from those perspectives?
Non-cognitive attributes — can you theorize your writing from these perspectives?
- Persistence
- Problem Solving
- Curiosity
- Motivation
- Time Management
- Organizational Skills
- Leadership
- Identifying and using resources
- Remember the story about the student who left her mother’s birthday party on a Sunday afternoon, took a bus and two trains — 90 minutes of travel time each way — to come in for a proofreading session. How would you characterize that attribute?