The visual essay is the most important because it allows individual expression. Because it is visual, it is important that my writing and artwork reach the proper and intended specific audience to deliver the message. As my essay #1, and essay #2 have both focused on the topics of mental health in youth, and then specifically with high school and college students, it will be important that my visual essay addresses two audiences. The first is these high school and college students, and the second is people surrounded by youth who ignore the issue. The primary characteristics of this audience for the first group are people between the age range of 13- 22. Those who are more inclined to be using social media, in sports and aware of the mental health crisis among their peers. The second group will be people in the age range of 30-65, this being people in the work field surrounded by these kids such as teachers, parents, professors, and doctors. For both of these groups, wealth, and gender are not large influencing factors to limit who the audience is, as it should be able to reach all demographics.

 I want my audience to feel strong emotions about my visual essay, such as sadness, shock, questioning, and drive to resolve the issue. I want this to be the feeling and the response so that way there can be recognized and drive to aid these younger people who suffer from mental health in the US. I want my audience to after this visual essay presentation, to be able to feel that the mental health crisis is real, but that it is okay and can be accepted. 

I feel that genres such as poetry, graphics of drawings/ paintings, and political cartoons will best reach my audience because this negative stigma around mental health can be really well demonstrated through imagery. I also believe it will be more accessible to my audience because reading long papers can be daunting and boring, so visuals are more entertaining and easy to understand. I will use rhetorical strategies of pathos to appeal to the emotions of my audience, such as personal connection or just general empathetic connection. This will allow me to engage my audience with my essay because it makes a personal connection between my art, myself, and my audience. Overall, I believe that this visual essay will allow me to solidify the importance of my social issue, and why it is so important that it is recognized.

For essay #2 inquiry-based research essay, I have decided to focus on teenage and young adult mental health in the United States. What has inspired me to find further information on this topic is the idea of what signs and symptoms are being missed by people surrounded around youth and young adults such as parents, teachers, administrators, and doctors that are allowing the growing rates of mental illnesses to continue. So, my thesis statement is that everyday activities such as school and social media activity create an environment for the stigma around mental health to exist. How can these route issues be prevented or curbed to allow growth for young adults in the US? The timeline of this project is as follows: by 10/19 I will have organized my research proposal, making sure my research question is clear and complex while having a thesis that supports the purpose of my writing. By 10/22 I will have some sources from both scholarly articles and regular magazine or newspaper articles to support my research question with data and elements of the rhetorical situation. By having a model essay, which I hope to find an article that can be of a similar or same social issue to follow I will be able to organize my ideas of my research to fit my question and thesis in a professional manner. By 10/25 I am planning on having a detailed outline of my draft in terms of following a model essay of my choice to allow me to develop my research question answers in the text, and lastly by 10/27-29 having a rough draft written and revised following the outline I wrote that will have purposeful evidence in support of my thesis. A description of my audience for this research paper will be parents, adults, and people who work and are surrounded by teenagers and young adults because as many youth peers can see the signs and stigma around mental health, the issue with this recognition lies within the older generations. This will help me focus on my research purpose and propose a good and complex research question. I have two ideas for my model essay right now, both of the links are attached below. One publication is from Regis University, and the second is from UK essays in 2015.  I have not found any good newspaper or magazine articles (tier 2), but I have found 5 complex and detailed scholarly articles. One source is “The Sitmga in Adolescence Mental Health” by Craig Heflinger (2010), the second is “Socioeconomic Status and Mental Health” By Stephen Foster from the APA (2021). The third source is also from the APA, “Young Adult Mental Health: Intervention, Services and Systems” (2015), my fourth source is from Springerlink Sportsmed “An Action Plan to Address Youth Mental Health Impacts of COVID-19” by Neelofer Tayyib in 2019 and lastly the APA article on “The Mental Health of Eleite Athletes” in 2016 by Simon Rice. Overall, these sources and more tier two sources will help me write and research my research question of why are the signs of poor mental health being missed by adults surrounded by youth. 

Something I feel passionate about is the issue of youth mental health awareness in the US and talking about/ normalizing youth mental health awareness. Mental health awareness is an issue that affects everyone and is very difficult for youth to address and properly manage. Mental health disorders can also be commonly rooted in other daily social issues that people face and struggle with. Youth are more likely to be long term impacted by mental health because it affects developmental aspects of life such as social life, academic life and proper  In today’s society, mental health is frequently overlooked and has a large negative stigma around, especially for youth in this country with an environment of “boys don’t cry” and “when I was a kid we didn’t care about this stuff” as just some toxic examples of stigma around mental health. Along with the daily pressure of school, athletics, extracurriculars, social time, and the presence of social media, standards of living can be hard to achieve and live up to, mental health becomes increasingly difficult to take care of. This issue interests me because I know lots of people who are affected by mental health and suicide, and I believe very strongly with the idea that it is vital to end the stigma around mental health. The issue of youth mental health in this country is not something that will be solved in a day, but that is why working to end the stigma is vital to this social issue. 

Rhetorical Analysis of Text : “Texas’ abortion ban are the most restricive in the developed world” By: Robert Picheta of CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/03/world/how-texas-abortion-law-compares-to-world-intl-cmd/index.html

For many countries in the world, health care and anatomical rights are viewed as controversial subjects. Many countries putting up strict restrictions to access to certain health care, and many leaving it up to the citizens to decide. In the United States, the 1973 Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade allowed complete anatomical right and protection of women’s reproductive health. Meanwhile in that state of Texas, in 2021 a state bill needing Supreme Court and House of Representatives approval could mean the loss and infringement of female reproductive health rights due to a proposed 6-week abortion ban.

The author of the text I read is Rob Picheta, I believe the author of this article to be credible as he is a certified writer for CNN. The article titled “Texas’ abortion ban is one of the most restrictive in the developed world” was written in September 2021. The issue that the author of the article is responding to is the news of the new abortion ban proposal in Texas, USA. The author is writing about how from many perspectives of citizens, the possible abortion ban is an infringement on human rights and health care rights. Picheta did a lot of comparison to the current issue in Texas to other current or modern abortion bans in countries all over the world such as Mexico and Poland. The author also compared to states that don’t have strict abortion laws such as Canada. 

The target audience for this text is women in the United States, Texas, and other countries struggling with proper reproductive rights. This is the intended audience because the issue is occurring in the United and other countries to women, with the intended purpose to inform of the issue, the assumptions this author made about the audience is that most people would agree with the more progressive side of the argument. The central point or purpose of this text that the author is trying to make is to reveal that governments control conflicts with citizen’s health care rights frequently and that it is difficult for many citizens to receive fair and safe treatment based on small representative group’s opinion. This point was not made explicitly but was made by comparing issues around the world on the same topic of controversial abortion bans to inform to achieve the goal of the audience participating in political policies, protests and be informed of current issues involving women’s rights. The genre is social and political issues and rights. The author shows features of this genre by talking about politics and government decisions in many countries. I can’t tell the author’s stance on the subject, this is because it was not clearly stated (which helps make the piece unbiased).

The author uses all rhetorical strategies of persuasive appeals to appeal to the audience. He first used logos by representing data of the US states and their restrictions on abortion to compare and contrast different state restrictions, such as the states of NM, NH, and CO having no limit/ restrictions on abortion dates, but PA and FL have a third-trimester restriction and TX with a 6-week restriction (Gutmaccher, 2021). The pathos method was used by showing protests in different countries such as Poland of people supporting their peers and other women, protesting for better representation from the government. While pathos was used by showing the damage of lack of proper health care and representation to women, in terms of illegal and unsafe abortions. Overall, this article was an informative piece talking about current health care access and issues in the United States and other countries in the world, the data in the article shows how truly important this topic is and how not having proper safety access, many women are at risk. 

• Picheta, Rob. “Texas’ Abortion Law Is One of the Most Restrictive in the Developed World.” CNN, Cable News Network, 3 Sept. 2021, www.cnn.com/2021/09/03/world/how-texas-abortion-law-compares-to-world-intl-cmd/index.html. 

Hi everyone, my name is Anna Plotnick, my preferred pronouns are she/her/hers and my intended major is political science.

After reading the syllabus, one thing that I am unsure about is adjusting to the lack of instruction with prompts for the essays this semester. I think that it will be a big change to have to create my own ideas and purpose to my writing rather than following what is given, but I am willing and eager to try. One thing that I am very excited for is to be able to do my own research which contradicts my last point. I believe that it is purposeful for my skills in writing and any career path I want that I am sufficient in skills to do my own work and research and I am excited to grow those skills.

In my opinion, qualities of good writing would be to have a meaningful message or purpose to the writing. This means that the writing develops as the story continues and goes along. In order for one to be a good writer, I think that it is important to practice, to take critiques and write using methods of syntax, fluency, and other literary devices to engage the reader. It is important to write well because it grows the writers skills in persuasion and communication, along with allowing the writer to connect to a topic that is important to themselves and others in a important form of expression.

I feel for myself that the easiest part of writing is to revise and edit. When I write, I usually write down all my thoughts for the prompt or topic because it is easier to narrow down the writing than to create something new with little basis. I do well when writing about something I am passionate about or that I can connect to. Something that I don’t do well when writing is keep my opinion out of all of my text. Even when a paper is supposed to be completely unbiased or neutral, I can still find a way to share my perspective. So I need to work on, writing from other perspectives to be able to grow my skills as a good writer.

In my intended major, I know that I will be doing a lot of global and domestic communication work. So I will be expected to write detailed papers overall about politics, but in my opinions of past, current and future policy works. I will be writing possible resolutions and proposals related to politics. Being an effective writer in this field is very important because I need to be able to demonstrate to people my opinion even if they don’t agree with the idea, and I need my writing to be effective with my own research and ideas.