In this project, the whole class read through a mock trial-- a packet of resources designed to simulate a court case, with made up information. This trial was called "Billings vs. Pearson" and the main idea of the whole thing was that Alex Billings was suing C.J. Pearson $20,800 for intentional infliction of emotional distress upon him. After reading this mock trial, half of the class was assigned the roll of a plaintiff attorney, prosecuting C.J. Pearson-- while the other half of the class was assigned the roll of a defense attorney, defending C.J. Pearson. We then each had to write an argumentative essay as a closing argument to be used in determining the verdict of the case. We started by writing outlines for all the paragraphs in the essay and then writing them out in paragraph form. I went through several drafts of editing and revising before finishing the essay. The purpose of writing this essay was to teach us how to write an argumentative essay, so that in the future, we know the proper way to write the essay.

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Evidence of my struggle can be seen in my three evidence paragraph outlines. These are the outlines I wrote for each evidence paragraph before I began drafting them. It is also evident in the final draft essay. My final essay shows major differences and organizational improvements from the outlines, supporting an initial struggle. My biggest struggle was making sure I used the right evidence at the right time to make a compelling case and prove my claim. I overcame that struggle by working harder to sort out the evidence to be used in each paragraph individually and making sure everything was sorted in the right way to make sure my essay was compelling. In this project I feel that I used persistence the most. I found myself wanting to give up quite a few times, but I kept working at my essay and used persistence to finish the assignment.