As I entered the 8a.m. Writing 39C class, I was tired. As a UCI commuter student, I have to wake up at 6a.m. and leave my house no later than 6:45a.m. in order to get to school on time. The fact that it was an 8a.m. class had me worried because I wasn’t going to be able to pay attention. I would be too tired to even participate and think about the topic, or that I would’ve put the work behind, but I thought that since I’ve been doing so well in my other writing classes, that I would be fine. I wouldn’t have to worried so much because I’ve been told that I was a great writer throughout my whole life. Yet when I was told all of these comments about my writing, I realized that I am more of a story teller writer. What I mean by this is that I like to tell a story in my writing either by using imagery, pathos, and getting the reader’s attention. I like qualitative over quantitative, and as I begin writing for this class, I soon realized that I can’t be the story teller writer that I am. I would actually have to better my writing.

In my previous class, Writing 37, I argued that men are really evil and that they infect women and children throughout the story of No Country for Old Men. For my project that I had to do at the end of the quarter, I actually created an interactive book where you choose two options. I created pictures and I really had fun making the book because I was able to be creative and make a story. Here is an example of my interactive book.

But coming into this writing class, one that was focused a lot on argument and research, I struggled in trying to show my creativity and story like feature. I struggled in the research part. I was not sure how to find suffiecient research for my topic.

My topic was about the DACA (Deffered Action for Childhood Arrival) students. The reason why I chose this project was because this topic affected me indirectly. Although I am not part of DACA, I have a lot of people who I love and care for that is part of this program. This gave me the motivation to actually do the research because I wanted to know more. Yet, I still struggle to get started. In my first proposal, I was told that my research wasn’t academic enough. I thought it was, but I realized that my teacher was right.

Here are a few examples of my teacher saying that I need to do more "academic" sources.

As you can see, I was told throughout the quarter that I needed to do more academic research. I realized that even though I said I would use Google Scholar in my proposal, I didn’t actually use it. I had to use it to advance in the next stages because Google can only get you so far before it ends up in something irrelevant. 

Fortunately in Week 2, the class took a field trip to Langson Library. There, our class was taught on how to access and maneuver the UCI’s library search catalog. That was a tremendous help for me. I gained a lot of knowledge that day on how to find valuable research and was peer reviewed and eligible to be in my project. I did struggle as sometimes I wasn’t allowed to access the article because I would have to physically go to the library to rent it out. This was a struggle for me because I had to access this in the library but as a commuter who works in my hometown in the afternoon, I couldn’t make time for it. So in order to combat this, I had to develop similar words that could get me different articles, such as using "undocumented", "illegal", "alien", "visitor", "visa", and so on. This helped me by thinking of new terms that could fit into my paper.

I didn't want to lose these articles because I was going in and out of using the "Connect for UCI" VPN system, so I would actually write down the title and the author on a piece of paper to make sure that I didn't lose these valuable research that I've done. Here is an example of the sheet I used to keep track of my sources.

I think one feature that really help me out a lot is that fact that I’m an education major. This helped me out because I found my topic more interesting and fortunately I was taking a class about multicultural education. For our class, we had to create a social justice poster board and my topic was on DACA. This is the outline that I had created for my poster.

I had created this for my team and they really like my idea so we ended up working on it. I was doing this project along with my HCP so I would keep going back and forth between classes. I asked my classmates what they thought about my thesis in my paper since it was similar to our project and they really liked it, so we tweaked it out so that it would fit better with our project. We all did a collaborate poster that highlighted the struggles on DACA. This poster really helped me out in my writing because it was a refresher on what I needed to focus on and it gave me other ideas to use in my poster. 

Here is our final product of the poster:

Another problem that I had in writing my HCP was trying to find something historical. I didn’t know what to choose because DACA is still relatively new, and the thesis I was fighting for was happening as of right now.

I went into a meeting with my teacher Chris Varela, and told him about my situation. He understood that DACA was happening at a real time and so it would be difficult to find something that was historical. He told me it was okay that if I were to use the East LA walkouts because they did show that Hispanics were fighting for their rights. One thing that really helped me out a lot was breaking up my writing into sections, and you can see that throughout my work as they are in bold within the writing.

The AP project was harder for me to write than the HCP. I didn’t know how to start. I didn’t know what my thesis was going to be. I was unsure because I wrote that DACA students are being treated unfairly in the school system, and I was poised with the question of trying to find a solution. How was I supposed to solve DACA? DACA is leeway for students to work and go to school, so by solving it, was I supposed to give citizenship to all students. Yet, that solution isn’t so simple as it sounds. It was to go through the government first. So I kept thinking and trying to poise solutions in my mind, but as you can see in my proposal, I was lost. Christopher asked where was I getting my research from? And to be honest, I didn’t do research, because I didn’t like doing it, and it resulted back to me figuring out where I should start.

Here is another example of Chris telling me to do more academic research.

It wasn’t until I ran into Chris while he was walking that I figured out my proposal. I told him my concerns and he again, understood, so he asked me to really try to focus on one thing. Did I want to focus on the students? If so, where -in a school system? In California, or throughout the United States? He told me to try to pinpoint my concern. And I told him that I think the best solution would be to try focusing on California and the school system since so many undocumented students were located in California and that California has sanctuary cities. We exchanged stories of how the school system could be better overall, and I had a light-bulb go off in my head. My idea was that since DACA is still so up in the air, I would need to focus on how to make students feel safe because there are so many stories about undocumented students succeeding.

My conversations with Chris really helped me out a lot in writing my papers because I liked the feedback that he would give me. We bounced back and forth and speaking my concerns and ideas out loud to someone helped me pinpoint what was right and wrong. I had totally changed my approach to writing where I would usually stare at a blank piece of paper and try to come up with something. I realized that I did better when I voiced my ideas to someone else because when I say it out loud, I feel  as if I'm catching the main points of what I'm trying to say.

I needed to get all my ideas together so I did something different that what I usually did when I would begin writing. I never used to organize my writing, but this time I knew it was necessary to proceed in my paper. So I organized and created this outline to help me out:

As an education major, I had a lot of information on how to make students feel comfortable, and my main concern was those student-teacher relationships. Just like Chris had given me so much support, I need to advocate support for undocumented students, and that’s basically how I got my topic to work.

My second half of my education class also helped in creating my AP project as we talked about how to become better educators. This is where my key terms came in clutch as I used them throughout my essay. I was very passionate and used them throughout the essay such as instituional agents, social contract, community based organizations, and social captial. This really helped because I had so much to say about these. One of my education teaching assistants told the class that if a lady at a bake sale were to throw up stereotypical remarks about Latinos and other undocumented students, would I be able to put her down? And I thought to myself that I would. I was so passionate about this topic that I understood and wanted to write everything that I learned in the class onto my AP project.

Overall, I did think that I became a better writer because I became a better researcher. I had a lot of trouble finding what was relevant and what to put in my essay. I had to push myself to actually sit down and do research because it was essential in order to get this project down. As someone who likes to focus more on common sense and story-like writing, it was a change to look into more academic sources in order to complete my project. You can really see the difference between my Writing 37 research and my Writing 39C research:

The difference is huge! And overall, I ended up doing better in this class than I did in my Writing 37 class because I was able to develop my skill as a writer through better organization and researching. I felt like when I came into the class, I was a good "story-teller" writer where I was able to create imagery and persuade the reader into liking my paper, yet my sources weren't as credible. As I leave this class, I feel like I'm a stronger writer with my ability to organize my thoughts better and finding suitable and eligible sources to back up the statements and arguments made in my paper.