My name is Cindy Camacho and I am a freshman at UCI. I live in the Los Angeles County and have all my life. I am a Political Science major with a goal to be a Social Worker, or work in a non-profit organization that helps immigrants ease their way into life here in the states. I consider that having my goals present is a constant reminder that I need to work hard at everything I do so I can achieve all my objective. I consider myself a hardworking and persistent person, even when I don't understand a subject I will work on it day in and day out to improve in any areas I can. I am a firm believer that trying makes all the difference. 

I consider language to be my favorite subject, I would prefer reading for hours than doing math problems any day. Despite my liking of the subject I have struggled with my English classes throughout my academic career because of the essays, readings and analysis we constantly needed to do. I had trouble understanding how to analyse a text, by this I mean I struggled with recognizing the importance of the details authors add to their stories. I always took the words to a literal meaning, so all the comparing and dissecting of a paragraph seemed pointless to me. 

I thought high school English was difficult, little did I know what was waiting for me in college. In high school they drilled into our head that a good essay was made up of five paragraphs. Also we were taught that in order to have a good essay it should contain more quotes than personal commentary, to prove we knew how to find quotes and that we recognized their importance. I didn't know I'd be in a class where those "rules" would be questioned, modified and frowned upon.  

As I registered to take Writing 37 I was nervous because it was more units than usual classes. I assumed the work load was going to be heavy, and I was prepared for it. To my surprise it was a reasonable amount but there were readings and prompts to answer every other day. I caught myself feeling lost for a couple of the readings and prompts. For example, for Hinterlands I was not sure the plot of the story. I had to reread the story and revise my response a couple of times for me to be content with what I would reply to the thread. The challenging part was keeping up to date with the readings and understanding them enough to write a coherent response, then be prepared to get involved in class. I would read and reread the stories every night just so I could understand it more every time, which despite the time I put into reading I still wouldn't fully understand the message of the stories. After being in class and listening in to everyone's perspectives I was able to form a stronger opinion on the readings. At first when we would get into groups I hesitated to speak because I was not sure if how I understood the readings was "right". As the quarter progressed I was pushing myself to be more outspoken so during our group discussions I would add on to someone else's argument. I kept doing this until I was able to say my own personal interpretation of the stories. I was able to form my own opinion during the time we were reading "Walking Awake". I saw my growth in being able to speak up and share my thoughts about the readings, which at first I couldn't do. This ties back to me constantly trying to improve my skills. The reason I kept rereading the stories was to grasp something new every time. 

In this course I was challenged to think outside the box with my responses. I saw that the prompts although vague, were helpful to get me out of my mindset that all prompts would be specific. The fact that the prompts were general helped me to gather my thoughts and create my own approach in tackling them. Although I didn't like having such broad prompts because it made it quite difficult to find a starting point, I managed to work through it. I would look over classmates responses and would find myself agreeing with some of their thoughts. I would then tweak my paragraphs for them to be college worthy. 

My writing portfolio will show how I have improved my writing and my analytical skills after having taken Writing 37 my Winter quarter. I have organized my portfolio into different sections. Each section has different writing assignments I did throughout the quarter. It will reflect my growth in writing and in my analysis compared to previous years. 

The discussion questions were helpful exercises because it prepared us for the expanded responses. I personally see the improvement in how I set up my sentences for a quote and for the analysis that follows. I also considered them beneficiary because the responses were usually the base of my essays, since I would mention the important points in my discussion questions. I believe that if we would have read the articles about the short stories before we read the actual story it would have helped our initial response and would have given us a different perspective. Yet, I think it was Professor Eason's strategy to have us form a thought about the stories and then be introduced to the authors thoughts to see if we changed our opinions or if we used the articles to only fortify our initial thoughts. 

I would say the time spent in class talking about a short story was of good use because it allowed me to hear other people's perspectives on the writers technique. Other details were brought to my attention that I had not noticed before. For example, I didn't make the connection that Hinterland was a subtle way of describing WWII. In this course the analysis went in depth even connecting the story to real life events, which taught me to keep an eye out for details in stories that are similar to past events. All the readings had a purpose which was excellent because I felt that with the articles we were assigned I learned more about the writer and the back ground of the story. Which gave me something to consider for my essays.

The first work heavy assignment in my opinion was the Expanded Critical Reading Response. In this essay we had to read "The Cold Equation" by Godwin and "Hinterland" by Gibson. This assignment was difficult for me because it required structure. Structure is something I've always had difficulty with because I don't ever find a adequate way for formatting essays. I believe my overall idea was good but I needed to organize my thoughts rather than mentioning previously stated points in another paragraph. For instance, I would speak about morals and how it was a shared theme between the two stories and then still keep summarizing the story, which only made my message confusing for my audience.When I turned in my rough draft I noticed it was very rough, but I wanted to get the main points across first. I was later able to revise my draft and rearrange my sentences to the point where my thoughts flowed nicely rather than it being patchy and inconsistent. This essay helped me with learning how to talk about one idea at a time, I had my ideas scattered throughout the paper so it took some time to shape it into a well thought out essay. 

The other essay I worked on this quarter was the Rhetorical Analysis essay. This assignment was more challenging than the first. I had already done rhetorical analysis essays in high school but not with stories this complex. I used "Walking Awake" by N.K Jemisin. I explained the rhetorical devices she used in order to make a well structured story. For example, I mentioned the power of her diction, tone and punctuation and how it all ties in to create a strong argument. My essay focused on the strategies Jemisin used to paint a vivid picture for the reader and to get her message across. I was able to recognize some of the devices she used, I believe this is a step up for me because considering that I didn't understand the analyzing part of a story I read the articles and her short story and was able to pin point the importance of certain words for her message. This time around I was able to connect her story to real life, she was trying to address the issue of racism. As this quarter progressed I was developing a keen eye for connections between readings and the real world. This is one good quality because while doing research it's important to make connections between articles I'm reading and topics I have already learned about. 

Lastly, the most exciting and difficult project of the quarter the Rhetoric in Practice project. For this assignment we had to pick a topic that we wanted to talk about relating to science fiction. After much thought I decided to base it on the Politics in science fiction films, one film in particular, The Hunger Games. My creative part for the project was making a website that was a blog to discuss the similarities between the government in The Hunger Games compared to the government in the U.S. This project required research, rhetorical device knowledge and creativity. I enjoyed this project because it was very broad and open to make into anything I wanted. I enjoyed that the professor was just there to guide and help us to decide on what we should do but he didn't put any limitations on us. Considering I am passionate about Politics I had a good time putting my final project together. I prove my growth through this project, I am confident when I say that it's one of my best projects thus far. I put together rhetorical devices, structure, analysis and personal opinion all in one. I exercised the parts of writing that I have had most trouble with. In my creative project I incorporated tone, diction and punctuation to prove my point that the current government is headed to a dystopian future. I personally see my improvement from how I wrote during the discussion questions to how I wrote for my companion essay and my blog. 

Overall, I feel like I have already started improving as a writer. I have improved my analysis and have become better at introducing and explaining the quotes I use as evidence. I can create a strong thesis now, as opposed to in high school and the beginning of the quarter I followed the three part thesis and would just find enough evidence for my paragraphs to just mention each part of the thesis. I'm confident when I say I have improved with my ability to see the messages authors send their readers and the reasons they have to add any extra details throughout their stories. I am leaving Writing 37 content with the amount of progress I have done and the new knowledge I have acquired through the readings and the constant writing. I didn't think I would learn so much about myself as a writer or about how to improve my writing this much. A great part of my development was to the comments and guidance I received from Professor Eason. I'm not positive that in future classes I will keep working on habitually working toward being a critical/ analytical thinker and organized writer.