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learning community therein. Because of this, in the end, it can
also affect whatever philosophical intentions you may have
originally had for the course and the students in it. This may
indeed be a very difficult thing to contend with because, while
you as an instructor may be very aware of almost every aspect of
your course, how you relate or simply seem to your students may
very well not be one of them. Simply put, self-reflectivity
about the self is not easy. This said, however, it is something
crucial you need to work towards nonetheless.
A third conclusion, more implicit throughout this work
than it is explicit, betrays my fascination with the various
historical taxonomies brought to the field of composition and
rhetoric throughout the years. They are very interesting to
read, in particular in terms of the differences among the
inventive nomenclature for the representative epistemological
schools as well as the differences of chronological borders
separating them. But I also believe they are potentially very
useful. However, that said, they are only as useful as the
dynamic nature of their author’s portraiture. By this I mean,
all too often, the authors of these taxonomies would seem to
want to crystallize the history of those schools of rhetoric,
like some prehistoric fly swallowed in amber. Furthermore, they
would also seem to want to compartmentalize and to standardize
the variations and peculiarities and vagaries of the
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