Looking Back.. and Stuff

As I look back upon the body of work I have created this semester, I am somewhat surprised at how much of myself is revealed in what I had to say about a variety of unrelated topics. For the most part, I represented myself in a fairly accurate fashion, or, I should clarify, I represented the feelings and beliefs I had at the time in a fairly accurate fashion. Even though I would argue that I have not gone through some drastic change in the last few months, the “little” changes have been numerous. Altogether, they have compelled me to become a more mature, knowledgeable person. And it would be my hope that from this time onward, what I write and what I have to say would reflect this. I believe our writing can help us recognize who we are and re-reading our own texts written in an earlier time can also reveal to us who we were. Every time we create a text, we create it as a different person. We establish our ethos, or credibility, by revealing this to others.
For instance, in my first assignment I chronicled how I reacted to a certain advertisement by AXE Body Wash. I analyzed how the ad was supposed to make me feel and looked closely at how I actually responded. I came to the conclusion that the AXE ads would more than likely “appeal to a younger man who has not had the good sense yet to think the whole thing out.” Before I wrote the “Am I This Man?” essay, I was that younger man, but the assignment itself compelled me to study the appeal of the advertisement closely. But after re-reading my work, I wondered if I had really felt driven to come to the conclusions that I had and if the mood I had presented to the audience was a real one. At the time, I appeared to be upset and offended by the AXE campaign, but today the whole concept of a body wash ad rousts very little emotion in me and lots of apathy. I am obviously not the same person who wrote that first essay. In our next assignment, I was even more enthusiastic in my arguments. When I wrote “The Video Game Revolution: Why Americans Need the Scary, the Criminal, the Confrontational and the Violent,” I felt great attachment to my thesis and I believe my great love and general excitement for recreational gaming was obvious. I still feel that way, but, nevertheless, if I had to write another essay on that very topic today, my reasons for supporting the art of gaming would be radically different.
Oftentimes, authors establish their ethos, their trustworthiness as a writer, without even noticing it. I found this to be true in my own writing. I consider myself a loving, energetic individual, but when I write, especially for an assignment that will be graded, I often struggle to subdue some of my energy, all of my prejudices, and the knee-jerk reactions that we all are guilty of making. I want to appear clear-headed, intelligent, all-knowing, full of good humor, loving of all , blessed with all the right answers and, if at all possible, good-looking. Did I establish such an ethos in my writing this semester? I doubt it. Sometimes my elusive ethos was so subtle I had a hard time noticing it. But every now and then, when I had just the right thing to say and the exact turn of phrase, I found that my writing allowed me to share what I consider the best of myself with others. I actually found that my ethos was most appealing, seemingly the most true and good and right, when I wrote what I really thought and tried to impress my audience the least.
I suppose, in conclusion, I have to say that our writings should almost always be an expression of our true, inner selves. This is what establishes ethos and what helps us connect to our audience. Unfortunately, our true self today will often not be our same true self of tomorrow. Every day our life changes us in some small way. Before we know it, we are a completely different person and what we write will reflect that. But this only means that we can never write the same thing twice and that what we create when we do write can only be described as a one-of-a-kind, all-out original.