This is more or less the intro to my paper. I'm still kind of working on where to go from here so I'm open for suggestions or any useful criticism!
--Heather.



Before I can start reading Ramage, I have to transport myself into an alternative place in preparation for my journey. I first viewed entering this journey as a time for learning and relaxation. I wanted to immerse myself into an educational world of straight-forward rhetoric and the different ways it could be used, interpreted, and identified. I went into my journey an eager pupil prepared for what my teacher had to throw at me. Little did I know that what was being “thrown” at me was more than I had bargained for.
I entered the introduction (so misleadingly named, I may add) prepared with my mind open and consciousness wholly intact. I was prepared to tackle rhetoric with all of the might in me. I was prepared to prove to Ramage, my professor and leader in my journey, that I was, in fact, a student like no other he had seen before. A student filled with desire to engulf herself in the subject matter and a student who had grasped the concepts well enough to successfully exhibit the application of everything she had learned. I was a devoted soldier prepared for battle and ready to fight for my cause. If I only had known how gruesome the battle of Rhetoric: A User’s Guide by Ramage would be.
Upon entering my classroom, or stumbling across the first few lines of text, my wide eyes and excitement about my journey toward fully comprehending rhetoric were met by an unexpected change of scenery. This wasn’t the cozy classroom of students, such as myself, ready to begin an introductory lecture and discussion session by our well-respected and compassionate professor. This was quite the opposite. I had unknowingly just enrolled myself into the military. I was in boot camp.
I walked through the door and was handed my uniform and mission, but was never equipped with the weapons, or any means necessary for that matter, to complete my task. The other soldiers and myself were thrown onto the battlefield of rhetoric blind and unequipped, forced to dodge the never-ending bombardment of extensive vocabulary words, confusing tangents, and ridiculous comparisons. I was devastated. This isn’t what I had signed up for.
The introduction%