I first began my degree paper (very similar to a thesis) in my Rhetorics for the 21st Century class during my master's program. I had always been interested in the connection between rhetoric and technical communication, which sparked my fascination for my topic. I wrote my paper about the prevalence of anti-fat bias and weight stigma in data visualizations, particularly in infographics about obesity and weight. Fat people are frequently overlooked in technical communication, which was important for me to explore because research about this is lacking in our field. I analyzed examples of infographics that discussed fat bodies, using both qualitative and quantitative data to support my arguments. Central to my paper was the acknowledgement that data visualization, often perceived as objective, neutral, and unbiased, carries risks of prioritizing expediency. In “The Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust,” Stephen Katz (1992) notes that in technical writing, “the focus is on expediency”, which can lead to ethical problems because “technical writing, perhaps even more than other kinds of rhetorical discourse, always leads to action, and thus always impacts on human life” (p.257, 249). My research helped me understand the danger of prioritizing expediency in technical communication. When expediency becomes the only goal that matters, any means—no matter how unethical—can be justified to achieve it. In data visualizations, this can translate to a neglect of humanistic considerations. In “Cruel Pies: The Inhumanity of Technical Illustrations,” Sam Dragga and Dan Voss (2001) highlight the widespread use of data displays in technical communication and argue that “conventional illustrations offer inhumanity as though it were objectivity” (p. 265). In infographics about fat bodies, data visualization often depicts fat people in dehumanizing ways, using data to justify these portrayals. At the heart of my paper was the argument that technical communicators must recognize the rhetorical strategies used in creating visualizations, which frequently perpetuate stigmatizing narratives about fat people. I am incredibly proud of this paper, and there is little I would change about it. If anything, I’d like to write more in the future. My paper is already quite long, and I had to be mindful in deciding what to incorporate and what to cut. The more I read about my topic, the more I wanted to add, but I made deliberate choices about what was essential to include in my paper versus what I simply wanted to include. I was extremely precise and diligent with writing my paper; I really wanted it to be perfect, and I believe it’s probably the most accomplished piece I’ve created during my graduate program. References Dragga, S., & Voss, D. (2001). Cruel pies: The inhumanity of technical illustrations. Technical Communication, 48(3), 265-274. Katz, S. B. (1992). The ethic of expediency: Classical rhetoric, technology, and the Holocaust. College English, 54(3), pp. 255–275. https://doi.org/10.2307/378062