The Workview/Lifeview Essay Assignment required us to employ any of the six possible rhetorical situations to relate our views regarding work and life to an audience. Following a thorough review, I feel that I adequately employed at least three of the given rhetorical situations in my writing.

Keeping audience in mind, I wrote my piece to adults aged twenty to forty years. I rationalized that most adults in this age group have had some time to explore their career aspirations, to experience disappointment, to sample success and failure, to define their heroes, and to feel the weight of relationship struggles. These people would have the strongest feelings about life purpose and still have time to meaningfully act on their contemplations.

Without the presumption of prior life experience on the part of my reader, my approach would have simply fallen flat. I understood therefore that the piece would benefit greatly from the use of anecdotal evidence. I opened by awkwardly proclaiming my eccentric childhood dreams of being a hero or a king for a living. I also discussed the sensitive personal failings of my father with whom I share a similar disposition. These displays of vulnerability anchored the dissection of lofty ideals into everyday life and helped me to establish ethos. Herein lies the purpose of my piece: to encourage my reader to explore his or her own beliefs about work and life by offering a subtle cross-examination of my own.

I felt my lack of experience writing about an inevitably broad philosophical topic left some room for improvement in terms of cohesion and clarity. I might have better unified my essay thematically by offering additional commentary on the king/hero aspirations, and how those youthful fancies have influenced the decisions I have made throughout my life. Tying my citations of motivational speakers to all other themes in the conclusion would have provided a much-needed sense of closure.

My tone was crafted to be speculative at times and declarative at others. By making bold assertions at some points, and posing questions at others, I hoped to write a piece where my reader feels internal conflict as tangibly as possible. I wanted to symbolize the swings between arrogance and uncertainty which most of us cycle between as we attempt to define our own personal sense of purpose. Excessively language would have damaged my credibility here. After all, I am merely a twenty-four-year-old student, and the idea that I am in any way qualified to be an authority on existentialist philosophy requires a certain suspension of disbelief.

Here is where I felt the exigence of writing the paper emerge. Through the exhaustive process of organizing thoughts, articulating my opinions, and clarifying them enough for a stranger to understand, I was forced to transform my nebulous convictions into concrete arguments. I was prompted to do so by the nagging desire to define who I am. I knew that if I succeeded in doing so, then I may be able to learn more about myself—and I did.

Our goal in this course to master a specific set of writing skills which we refer to as the Course Learning Outcomes. The Workview/Lifeview Assignment is our first interactive foray into the university-level writing process. We learned to pay closer attention our own writing habits and to use them to design a writing process for ourselves. We were asked to juxtapose our beliefs against two contrasting sources. We engaged in peer-editing and group planning, which I did not quite find helpful, and watched thought-provoking TED Lectures to stimulate the flow of ideas, which I did. I wholeheartedly intend to apply these reflections to my future writing, whether it be in or out of class.