Hello. I am Irvin Le, and this is my first year here at UCI. I have found writing assignments in Writing 39B to be much more difficult than what I have done during my time in high school. Most of my high school teachers allow two weeks or more for students to write and turn in short essays and around a month to turn in major essays. However, in Writing 39B, there are two essays to be turned in almost every week, and around two weeks to work on a major essay. As you can see, the transition from high school level writing to college level writing had been very difficult for me. Also, the DMV driving test that was coming up for me made me spend a lot of time practicing driving and caused stress for me, making it more difficult for me to write. However, I got used to the rigorous demands of Writing 39B. For the writing assignments, instead of doing the entire essay in one day, I decided to space out the time used to write essays to two or three days. This allowed me time to reflect on how my essay is answering the prompt and to think of anything that I might have missed.

When I first entered the class of Writing 39B, I had struggled to understand the definition of rhetorical analysis. I initially thought that the concept sounded just the same as literary analysis. It wasn't until the second week of my time in the class that I learned a major difference in the two forms of analysis: literary analysis attempts to evaluation a piece of writing and convey what it means, while rhetorical analysis attempts to connect the text, author, and audience. I learned the when I had to write the Rhetoric-In-Practice Exercise 2. In this exercise, I was to write an article about an uncommon lifestyle in the same style as the author of an article we read that week. Initially, I had a problem starting on the assignment because I had trouble determining the author's style. I slowly realized that by identifying the purpose of the article, target audience, and how the content was presented, I could determine how the author wrote the article and then mimic how she wrote. At that moment, I felt like I grasped the basics of writing a rhetorical analysis paper.

Another time I felt my writing skills improved was when the class had to identify the position, rationale, and qualifier of a thesis statement. I sometimes mixed up the rationale and qualifier during the in-class activity. But by the end of class, I could identify the position, rationale, and qualifier from a given thesis statement. This made me more confident in my ability to form introductory paragraphs.

Three other writing assignments helped me start my rhetorical analysis essay. Writing the Rhetorical-In-Practice Exercise 3 formed the backbone for my arguments in the rhetorical analysis essay. On the other hand, Critical Reading Exercise 2 helped me see McCarthy's point of view and how he tries to convey his messages to the reader. Finally, Critical Reading Exercise 3 helped me come up with a strong thesis statement for my essay.

Rhetorical Analysis Essay

When it was time to write the Rhetorical Analysis Essay, I took the skills I have learned from the many writing assignments that I have done this quarter so far and knowledge of the post-apocalyptic genre from this class and outside to write my first major essay for Writing 39B. I decided to write about what McCarthy argues about the relationship between morality and survival because I found the man's decision regarding survival and morality to be intriguing. After I had written my first draft, many suggestions were made during peer editing to expand and improve my essay. I addressed those suggestions and revised my essay for my final draft.

Revision 1

In the first draft, this statement did not make any impact on my introductory paragraph because the claim was vague and it did not connect to the essay. After the suggestion was pointed out, I connected the claim to my essay by specifying what part of human nature does McCarthy help the reader understand and relating it to survival and morality.

Revision 2

In the paragraph before the highlighted sentence, the last sentence did not transition well to the highlighted sentence. In the final draft, I added more details to the paragraph before and made a smooth transition to the highlighted sentence.

Revision 3

One of my classmates suggested that I continue the essay by including how the boy balances the man's will to survive with his morality. I soon created a paragraph that reflects the the relationship of the man and his son when it comes to survivability and morality.

After writing this essay, I felt like my writing had improved quite a bit compared to when the first day of class. My introductory paragraph had a complex thesis, and the supporting paragraphs supported it. However, I felt the final paragraph needed more details. I wish I had given myself more time to complete my final draft; I dedicated the first half of the week to writing a movie review for another class and practicing for my driver's test, and dedicated the second half to the rhetorical analysis essay. If I had given myself another day, I could have written an essay that I could really be proud of.

Rhetoric-In-Practice Project

When I first heard about the Rhetoric-In-Practice Project, I knew that I wanted to base my project on a hobby of mine. In the end, I decided to settle on writing a game manual because I really enjoy playing video games. Before I started on my project, I read several game manuals from recent games to have an idea on how game manuals were written. I also watched the entire walkthrough for the popular survival horror video game The Last of Us so that I have an idea on how survival video games are played, since I have not played one before. After I had written my first draft, some suggestions were made during peer editing to expand and improve my project. I addressed those suggestions and revised my project for my final draft.

Revision 1

At first, I did not add any pictures to my game manual because most game manuals do not have pictures in them, unless they are directly related to gameplay. However, after the suggestion, I decided that adding some pictures to the manual do make it more appealing to read.

Revision 2

In the first draft of the RIP, I did not explain the purpose of recruiting outsiders, which may lessen a person's willingness to help an outsider if they play this game. In the final draft, I added the benefits of adding them to the player's journey.

Conclusion

Over the course of this writing class, I learned many things regarding writing and college life in general. As I had said earlier, I learned how to write a rhetorical analysis essay and looked beyond the text to prove my arguments, like the purpose, audience, and context. Doing that helped me think outside the box more as I see the text through multiple perspectives. I improved on making an introductory paragraph with a complex thesis statement and with paragraphs that really support it. The peer review session helped me see problems in my own writing by detecting them in my peers' papers. Finally, I improved on my ability to manage time, as multiple papers were due each week I could not start on them the day before the due date anymore. While the journey through Writing 39B is a very difficult one, it is one that is not in vain, as I learned many things at my time in this class.