From Confusion to Clarity: How Rhetoric Reshaped My Thinking by Sonia

From Confusion to Clarity: How Rhetoric Reshaped My Thinking by Sonia - July 2026 Scholarship Essay

Before 12th grade, I thought writing was just about getting words on a page. If it sounded smart and didn’t have typos, it was good. But when we started focusing on the topic of composition and rhetoric in English, I realized I had no idea what good writing actually meant. It was frustrating at first, but it ended up making me a way better critical thinker.

The challenging part was learning that writing isn’t just what you say — it’s how you say it. We had to study rhetoric, which is basically how people use language to persuade. I had to learn about ethos, pathos, and logos, and honestly, I kept mixing them up. Ethos is about credibility, pathos is emotion, and logos is logic. But when we had to analyze real articles, I couldn’t tell which one was which. I’d say something used pathos just because it felt sad, but my teacher would ask, “But why does that make the argument stronger?” I didn’t know. I thought if I could name the device, I was done.

Composition was just as hard. I used to think a good essay was one big paragraph with a bunch of quotes in it. Then I learned that composition is about structure — how you build an argument piece by piece. My first drafts were all over the place. I’d start with a quote, jump to my opinion, then throw in a random fact. My teacher said I had no “line of reasoning.” I didn’t even know what that meant. It felt like every time I wrote, I was doing it wrong.

The thing that helped me was breaking down real examples. We looked at rhetorical devices like repetition, parallelism, and rhetorical questions. Repetition seemed pointless at first. Why say the same thing twice? But then we read speeches where phrases were repeated to make the point stick. Like when writers repeat “We cannot” to show urgency. That’s not just style — that’s strategy. Parallelism was another one. When sentences have the same structure, it makes the argument sound balanced and fair. I started noticing it in commercials, in YouTube videos, even in arguments with my friends.

Once I got that, my own writing changed. I stopped writing to fill space and started writing to prove a point. I’d plan out my essay: claim, evidence, reasoning. I’d ask myself, “Who am I trying to convince and what would matter to them?” That’s audience, which is a huge part of rhetoric. If I’m writing about school lunches, I can’t use the same tone for the principal as I would for other students.

Now I see composition and rhetoric everywhere. When I read something online, I don’t just ask if I agree — I ask how the writer is trying to make me agree. Are they using fear? Are they leaving out facts? That’s critical thinking. This topic was hard because it forced me to slow down and question everything. But because of that, I’m way more confident in my writing and in how I look at information.

I want to go into nutrition and wellness, and I know there’s a lot of bad info out there. Understanding composition and rhetoric helps me spot what’s real and explain my own ideas clearly. So even though this topic challenged me at first, it’s the reason I can think for myself now.