In fall of 2017, I took a class titled Rhetorical Criticism for my major. Throughout the course of this class, we learned about the role of persuasion and how it can be analyzed in different contexts. The pinnacle of the class was to research our own topic, speaker, and speech, analyzing his or her rhetoric. As someone fascinated by history, I chose Walter Cronkite's "We are Mired in Stalemate" speech, which he delivered to his television audience during the Vietnam War in the tumultuous year of 1968.

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A few months later, I submitted my work into the Undergraduate Communications Research Conference and was selected to participate in the conference. That day, I presented to a room of communications scholars similar to myself and answered their curious questions afterwards.

 

Through my communications research and the conference, I grew in my understanding and appreciation for fruitful discussion, engaging perspectives, and thoughtful questions.