Nolan O'Connor's e-Portfolio
Samples from CAS 137H and CAS 138T
College is undoubtedly a time for growth and change, and much of my growth through my freshman year can be attributed to my full year Rhetoric and Civic Life classes—a demanding yet fruitful course that challenged and ultimately enhanced my communication skills. Upon entering the course, my public speaking skills were certainly less than adequate, and consequentially, my attitude towards it was overwhelmingly negative. However, through the course’s readings and public speaking projects, I learned to appreciate and understand the importance of oral communication as it is essential to mastering the art of rhetoric. Additionally, the weekly blog posts and occasional essays challenged and improved my writing skills and taught me the importance of effective communication through writing.
During the first semester, the class focused primarily on Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals—ethos, logos, and pathos. Through in-class presentations and out-of-class readings and assignments, we not only learned the values of these appeals, but also how to apply them. The understanding of these three appeals allowed us to comprehend the mechanisms behind effective rhetoric and eventually instilled in us the confidence to successfully use them ourselves. And they even allowed us for better engagement with those around us, as demonstrated in the spring semester, which focused largely on deliberation. Effective deliberation requires both a comprehensive understanding of rhetoric as well as its own skill set—one which we learned through both in-class and online deliberation activities.
Welcome to my e-Portfolio! Here you will find a sampling of my best works from my year in Rhetoric and Civil Life class at Penn State.
At the end of the spring semester, we were forced to gather all of the tools that we had learned throughout the year and apply them in the form of persuasion. Through the medium of an advocacy project, we used our rhetorical skills to not only express our own opinions, but to also make those opinions appealing enough to sway other’s—a tactful art that represented the culmination of all that we had learned through the year.
Standard high school English classes offer little more than a tedium of assignments, but Rhetoric and Civic Life offered something much more dynamic and applicable. This course instilled in me the values of a true rhetor—one that has mastered the art of communication and therefore wields it as a powerful tool. Although I am nowhere near mastering rhetoric, I now understand the importance of doing so and all that can be accomplished in life with proper communication skills.