Writing 39B has been a great experience that has demonstrated my strengths as well as my weaknesses as a writer. Writing 39B improved my critical and analytical skills throughout the quarter to efficiently analyze and persuade an audience, as well as to understand how different authors use rhetoric to convey certain claims. Before coming to Writing 39C, my last writing class was last year in high school. I was unable to take writing during the fall quarter. Even though there was some writing required for my other courses, it did not compare to the amount work which I did this quarter. Having writing this quarter was a revelation for me because I believed I was a prepared for a college writing course. Before attending my first class, I knew I would not be as easy as high school writing because I had not written a multi-paragraph essay for some time and knew that college writing was going to be more demanding.

My journey began before even attending my first class meeting. The class was assigned to complete three multi-paragraph essays. One essay was a self-assessment analyzing the type of writer that I was, my strengths and weaknesses, and future goals. The second essay was my RIP #1 which required me in making a short story about an unnatural creature which needed to be an original idea and a minimum of 500 words. The third and last essay was Critical Reading #1, which was analyzing the rhetorical features that the author, in this case, Butler used to convey her main idea. The first two assignments mentioned were not a problem, but the Critical reading made me struggle. Instead of analyzing the conventions that Butler used to convey her message throughout her story, I just focused on her Aftermath, which is technically describing how she got the idea to write the story and for what purpose. That mistake made the writing process much more challenging because I had a smaller text to analyze and get my information. Also, my instructor commented that I was supposed to analyze the whole text not just the aftermath by stating “your analysis was supposed to be the story, not of the “afterword.” Even though I analyzed a specific and well-chosen excerpt from the text to make an insightful and coherent argument regarding the “Afterword,” it was not assigned work. 

By analyzing the “afterward” my critical and analytical skills improved because I was viewing the different conventions that Butler used to address and pursue her audience. It also taught me a valuable lesson, to make sure to read and understand what the question is asking me to do because if I do not, I am not answering the question leading to a poor grade. Also, these first three assignments demonstrated the amount of time and work I will need to incorporate to improve as a writer.

The second process which I felt had a tremendous impact on developing as a writer was the Rhetorical Analysis (RA). Before deciding the piece of work I was going to analyze, the class was assigned to read several numbers of stories to have a variety to choose from. By reading all the stories assigned, it gave me more experience in analyzing a text by defining the purpose, message, context, audience, medium, and conventions for each story. I decided to analyze the first story that we read for the class, “Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler because I liked the reason which she wrote the short story, which was to overcome her fear of botflies. Secondly, I decided to come back to the story to analyze appropriately and bounce back from the mistake which I made at the start of the quarter.

The second part of the rhetorical analysis was choosing the rhetorical features that Butler used to convey her message. The first things that stood out of Butler’s paper were pathos, ethos, and imagery. Deciding the rhetorical features which I wanted to analyze was the easiest part of the process. The rest was an uphill battle. When I was assigned to write my first draft, I did not have any worries because I already knew what I wanted to talk about. When it came time to put my thoughts on paper supported by outside sources, that when the real problem began. While writing my essay, I realized that I wrote everything I had on my mind, but I was 500 words below the requested word count. I tried thinking about different ways in which I could support my thesis, but nothing came to mind. I decided to turn my essay short rather than putting nonsense. When peer reviewing was assigned, I received various amount of comments like “how do she use ethos and pathos?”, “you need to identify the audience and type of text”, and “does not reach the required 1500 words”.

The different comments allowed me to go more in depth about the problems my essay had without me noticing. Then I realized that I was struggling because my thesis was not portraying what I wanted to argue. I decided to go to office hours to discuss the problem and try to find a solution. The instructor recommended different ways in which I could write the thesis without needing to starch again from scratch.

While writing the second draft, I was still facing a similar problem. I decided to go again to office hours to see if the problem was that I did not understand the text, or there was something wrong in my essay which was limiting my ideas to argue the claim. It turned out that the word which was limiting my writing was “psychology.” Since I was discussing the "psychology of love" without having prior knowledge of the subject, it made the explanation difficult to defend the claim because I was not technically supporting the thesis. After making that simple correction, I had a broader spectrum to argue, but unfortunately, the change came a little late because I had less than 24 hours to add information and proofread my RA. This process taught me that if you do not have an appropriate thesis that is giving the liberty to argue what you want, your essay will not flow as smoothly and will not be coherent.

Another process which helped me reflect on my strengths, as well as my weaknesses as a writer, was the midterm portfolio. The midterm portfolio helped me to analyze the different aspects in which I was succeeding in the class and pointed out the ways in which I need improve on. Even though the midterm portfolio was a clear and straightforward prompt, it was a lengthy process. I needed to go back to my older work and decide if I wanted to reflect on it in my portfolio. I went through every single work that I wrote and analyze if I had improved as a writer, or thing in which I was still struggling. I am not saying it is the most exciting thing I did for the portfolio, but it was a good way meditate about my journey throughout the class. The aspect which I enjoyed was adding pictures throughout the portfolio because it made it aesthetically pleasing and unique. I decided to incorporate memes to demonstrate my personality. Even though the midterm portfolio is about reflection on your past works, it still resembles a rhetorical analysis essay because you are arguing how you have improved as a writer. You need to have enough evidence to convince your audience that what you are trying to convey to them is real. The midterm portfolio also allowed me to shed light on the improvements that I decided to incorporate for the rest of the quarter.  An improvement that I choose to include was to finish at least one day before my assigned work was due because based on the multiple comments of my peers, as well as by the instructor, I had many grammar mistakes throughout my work. By finishing my assignment at least a day early, it will allow me to peer review my essay for errors as well as asking other people to read my work.  

The midterm portfolio helped me set different goals that I wanted to achieve for the rest of the quarter. I decided to incorporate those goals on my next assignment ,which was the RIP project and companion essay. Out of all the assignments that I did throughout the quarter, the RIP project was the one which I enjoyed the most. The most important thing that I learned from the RIP project, was that the audience which you want to convince or inform determines how you portray your message and in what ways are you going to attract their attention.

The RIP gender analysis was an assignment that allowed me to demonstrate effective organization and style, for a purpose, within a particular genre, to a particular audience. The assignment was a short presentation overview to my classroom peers about what I was going to do in my project like genre, purpose, message, and rhetorical features. The assignment improved my organization and style by needing to research my audience and intended purpose before choosing the type of genre I wanted to do. The instructor emphasized that in order to make a useful RIP project, researching your intended audience was an important factor. In my case, since my audience was teenagers between the ages of 13-21, based on the research gathered, I noticed that in order for my message to have an impact on the reader, I needed to do a TMZ blog. TMZ blog was the best choice because teenage spend multiple hours on celebrity news websites. After having my audience, purpose, message, and genre, I decided to use pathos, ethos, and visual images as my rhetorical choices. By choosing these rhetorical choices, I was able to develop a focused and convincing argument by implementing outside sources like articles from different doctors. This project allowed me to improve as a writer because in order attain the attention and convince my classmates about my message, I needed to use rhetorical choices that were supported by credible sources. The RIP genre analysis helped me interact and act on productive feedback to work on my progress given by my classmates because if there was an aspect in which my presentation was unclear or a rhetorical choice was not explain appropriately, they will ask questions. An example was when a student asked “how are you planning to attain credibility?” I answered by describing how I got an autopsy report from a doctor who attended Harvard Medical School. It allowed me to get a better understanding of my selection of rhetorical devices while explaining it to my peers.             

Doing the RIP gender analysis was a steppingstone for the RIP project by helping me get all the components necessary to write my internet blog. RIP project allowed me to improve my analytical and persuasive skills by using a different style, tone, and sentence structure according to genre and audience expectations. Since my audience were teenagers, and my genre was an internet blog, I needed to write short and concise sentences because having a long amount of text will deteriorate the interest of my audience. The project allowed me to explore a different type of medium which I was not accustomed. An aspect that helped me improve my project and introduced new ideas was peer reviewing. Hearing different comments that my peers made on my paper allowed me to improve as a writer because they had a different perspective in my work. Most comments were about making “my thesis clear, grammatically errors, and providing supportive evidence.” Before their comments, I thought that my thesis was clear, but since they did not have background on what I had researched, it required me to be more specific and clear. Reading other people’s project allowed me to compare my project with theirs and attain different ideas to incorporate into their essay. I commented things like “I found your introduction clear and with a good amount of background information” or “your essay needs more evidence from credible sources in order to portray your credibility.” Peer reviewing allowed me to integrate different ideas to my essay which I found useful as well as highlighted some mistake which I needed to try to avoid.   

The RIP companion essay was different for me as a writer because I needed to analyze the rhetorical features I used on my own RIP project. The companion essay helped me to summarize the text effectively and accurately in order to provide context about what I was planning to analyze, by using phrases like “I am talking about” or “I decided to choose this type of genre.” It was difficult writing in first person because in high school I was always told not to write in first person. Even with those struggles, I was able to develop a clear and coherent analysis by citing my RIP project and the sources that used. The companion essay strengthened what I have learned throughout the quarter in persuading the audience and analyzing rhetorical strategies. I learned how to incorporate different techniques which I got from the different texts I read and analyzed.

Writing 39b has improved my writing skills in many aspects. It though me that in order to try to portray a message and purpose, you need to know the preference of your audience. It also though me in how to make a convincing argument based on evidence provided by different articles. Writing 39b helped me prepare for the rigor in Writing 39C, my others course, as well as my future endeavors. It helps me prepare for 39c by knowing the expectation that a college writing course has and how to integrate better the outside sources, which I am going to be using because writing 39c since it is a research based writing class.