Jaffe / Columnist Project / Portfolio Bank Form Title of Assignment ‘The Columnist Project Class/Teacher AP Lang & Comp - Horne Learning Objective ‘To develop a sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the style, persona, and audience of a certain columnist by analyzing a total of five pieces of their work. Assignment Summary For this assignment, I was assigned a columnist; Gail Collins of The New York ‘Times, and required to thoroughly annotate five of her columns, thetorically evaluate two of them, and construct a synthesis essay that mimicked her style while providing, conclusive report on who she is as a writer. I produced a final piece that detailed my observations on Collins’ humor, audience, and political reports. Imitating the style of the witty liberal, I was able to intersperse my piece with sarcastic bits of my own while illustrating her main agenda; a connection to her communii ‘Competency Critical Thinking: This assignment forced me to deeply analyze Collins’ work as ‘well as her background in order to develop a complex understanding of her profile as a writer and her interactions with a widespread audience. While reading her work, Thad to unpack how word choice, well-placed statements, and witty lines were masterfully crafted for an intended impact. I brought together my work done in mulple stages to support my observations of Collins’ and back my claims about her purpose. Furthermore, I took critiques to improve my own work over the duration of the project. Skills Used. Writing, Research, Critical Thinking, Creative Details to Remember I was not a huge fan of this project right when it was assigned: I was disappointed to discover that we couldn't choose our own columnist, the instructions were specific in some aspects but vague enough to leave me confused in others, and it seemed like a whole lot of steps to accomplish one final paper. For all my previous English classes, I preferred to bang out the product the night before it was due, making up content and analyses with no proof-reading, to ultimately get an easy A. This project, however, forced me to do real prep work resulting in deep analysis and conclusions; something that I didn’t fully realize I would have to do until receiving my disappointing grades on the first two products. Motivated my my lack of success, and my teacher’s urges to dig deeper (right along with him picking apart my writing), I put real work into the final product-and actually edited it for once~so that Thad something I was legitimately proud of at the end of the project. While the grades wore a significant motivator, the self awareness that I was a better student and ‘writer than what my work was demonstrating fueled my work ethic and led me to produce a piece that hopefully even Collins would approve of. Links to Rubric, Product, and other Ariifacts hutps://www.scribd.com/documenv573129212/Gail-Collins-Columnist-Profile hutps//www-scribd,com/documen/573129211/Columnist-Project-Rhetorical-Analyses hutps:/iwww.scribd.com/documenv573129210/Columnist-Project-Annotated-Articles