ERH 472:
Final Reflective Essay

 

ERH 472
Date Due: 03, May2019
Date Sub.: 03, May 2019
Help received: COL McDonald, peer reviews
Draft Two
Bryant Smilie

After transitioning from Mechanical Engineering to English, I honestly had no idea what I was supposed to do with a degree in this subject, and was terrified at the prospect of having to convince the Navy that the lowest priority major on their list deserved an officer’s contract. For my advisor and I, the most important goal became reflecting the valuable experiences of the English major in a way that offered the Navy the ability to see how this branch in the humanities cultivates effective communication in a way that allows for critical, quick analysis and decisive action. We thought the best way to achieve this goal was to focus on taking classes that required critical and thorough research into a highly narrow topic, and compiling that information in a way that produced meaningful data. That naturally led me towards working with my advisor, MAJ Iten, in all of the rhetorical classes she taught.
Throughout our time working together, we developed a strong mentoring relationship where every class I took with her turned into an intense study of the powerful role rhetoric plays in any democratic community. We became extremely interested in how classical rhetors viewed their roles in democratic societies’, and discovered that their teaching methodologies seemed to coalesce around a handful of fundamental concepts in rhetoric. One of these, kairos, became the focal point of my research for identifying new ways to teach civic education in the contemporary world. While I analyzed this concept in several classes with MAJ Iten, there were three courses in particular that meticulously built the foundation for my capstone at present. These were Rhetorical Traditions I, Language and Style, and Civic Discourse. In all of these classes, we covered everything from the broad theoretical concepts offered by the Sophist to examining single words and sentences to find the most ideal way to influence an audience. It was also these three classes in particular that played a crucial role in me wanting to use my English major in order to become a rhetorician.
Before becoming an English major, I had always had a talent for writing especially, but never saw it as entirely helpful and viewed it as a skill that would not surmount to much later on. It took several pain-staking years in high school and college to realize that I simply did not have the mind in math and that I would struggle greatly with trying to anything that came close to writing long winded equations or plucking away at a calculator. By the time I switched over to English, I was still extremely concerned with how I would come to love this subject and how a liberal arts degree was supposed to be useful as an officer in the navy. The only place I felt comfortable was in a class with my new advisor, so I simply decided to take her Rhetorical Traditions I class early on just to try to ease into the major. I would have never expected to become as obsessed with rhetoric as I did. Every minor assignment quickly turned into a crucial research essay for me. The Reading Journals we did for each lesson in particular, which only needed to answer a handful of questions with minor citations, turned into seven to eight paged reports filled to the brim with carefully researched evidence. I completely fell in love with deeply studying the origins and purpose of rhetoric, drawing every connection possible between ideas and concepts that most people would never associate with one another and spending countless hours pouring over complicated theories.
The one area I became most passionate about though, was the powerful role rhetoric played in the formation of western democracy. MAJ Iten naturally encouraged me to take a more in-depth look at Isocrates through our final research argument. The project quickly turned from a small essay into a major study of Isocrates’ views on rhetorical theory in Greek civilization, where I connected his ancient lessons on rhetoric to the pillars that helped form one the crucial foundations of democracy in all western civilizations. After completing the project, it quickly became clear that this would be the topic I would begin to build my future capstone around, so MAJ Iten and I slowly began to lay the groundwork to prepare for this through my class schedule as an English Major. We decided that we would use ERH 304, Language and Style, alongside ERH 302, Civic Discourse, to not only rapidly expand my understanding of rhetoric as a whole, but to also use the knowledge gained to find a center point for the capstone that would effectively utilize my research on Isocrates. Both classes were heavily involved in deeply exploring rhetoric at the sentence level and crafting every aspect of an argument until you became fully prepared to address your audience in a way that was decisive, powerful, and capable of adjusting to any changing circumstances. It quickly became obvious that timing was vital in every aspect of presenting an argument.
Taking these classes back to back proved vital in conveying the sense of how vital timing was for presenting an effective argument to any audience. In both classes we took an in-depth look at how the classical rhetors viewed crafting an argument at the smallest level to how the rhetor was meant to persuade their audience in the culminating event. Meticulous research through the Reading Journals and a major research essay for each class started to unveil a series of underlying themes that classical rhetors especially followed when discussing civic education. One of the core elements, kairos, was particularly emphasized by the works of Isocrates, Aristotle, and Cicero. It did not take long for me to begin connecting the works of each of the three rhetors together in order to try to find an underlying theme as to why they believe kairos was so crucial to any form of civic education in their respective times. Both classes revealed how serious each of these rhetors took their role’s as educators for the future leaders of their communities. They rightly assumed how crucial it would be for these leaders to be able to quickly understand a situation, then to act decisively by presenting a wholesome and effective argument to their audience.
All three of these classes formed the foundation of what I think it means to be an English Major. When I was first coming into this curriculum, I honestly expected to stay for a few months while I found something else to transfer into, but the very first experience I had as an in Rhetorical Traditions I and the mentoring relationship created with MAJ Iten took me completely by surprise. Every aspect of the class and the mentorship encouraged me to draw connections between every piece of research I could get my hands on. MAJ Iten especially saw that I was at my best when surrounded by the thought-provoking theoretical works of the classical rhetors, and insisted on me to heavily pursue the culminating connection of how these ancient lessons on rhetoric were meant to produce thriving democratic communities. My decision to study this line of thought simply would not have happened if I did not take these three classes with MAJ Iten. They encouraged me to cultivate a skill that I never thought would be useful to what I wanted to do in life and introduced me to the underlying role rhetoric plays in all forms of education and interactions within a community. As I gradually began to view myself as a rhetorician, any fears I had of this line of study preventing me from commissioning in the Navy simply disappeared as it became increasingly clear that a degree in English would instill in me those qualities of effective communication, taking decisive action, and producing meaningful results that the Navy is eager to see in all of its officers.