Welcome Back To My Golden Portfolio!

As this quarter comes to an end, I have realized that everyone who said “winter quarter is the most stressful quarter” is correct. Though I have only been at UCI for two quarters, this quarter has been far more challenging than my fall quarter of 2018. Coming into college, I thought I was going to struggle with my writing classes because in high school my writing was not as advanced as majority of my peers. However, when I attended this class on the first Thursday of winter quarter, I knew I was in for a ride--a ride that only goes uphill.

Continuing with the mindset that I’m not the best writer made me anxious to be present in class, physically and mentally. But as each class period went by, I realized it’s not as bad as I thought it would be and as others made it seem. I eventually discovered that I knew how to write a rhetorical analysis essay because that’s all we focused on in high school. In one of our class periods after reading Bloodchild, we were told to write a thesis consisting of all five components: who, where, what, how, and why. My peers and I ended up constructing a well-written thesis because I knew a format that could help. As this activity was during the beginning of the quarter, it slightly boosted my confidence and changed my mentality of the class because I realized that I knew what I was doing and I wasn’t going to be completely lost. From this day on, I did hold my head high and it only led me to think positive of the class, the texts we read, and my peers that are in it. As time was coming close for the RA deadline, I was feeling very anxious because all I wanted was a good grade and I did get that. I was satisfied with my grade because I know it was the best I could do and I asked for all of the help I could. Each one of my drafts have significant changes to them thanks to my peers and professor.

Furthermore, when it was time to do our Rhetoric-In-Practice Project, I didn’t have a good feeling about it because it required me to be creative. And being creative is something I have a very difficult time doing. I am the type of person who likes being told what to do because it’s the easiest way to go about an activity. Even Professor Dowd and some of my friends said that “if you enjoyed doing the RA, then you won’t like the RIP Project as much or vice versa.” With that being said, I went into the project with the mentality of I won’t like the RIP Project because I enjoyed writing the RA even though it was stressful at times. However, the activities we performed in class helped me come up with everything I chose to do for my project. One of the activities that really helped me was the Rhetorical Roulette because it gave me an idea for what the project is suppose to look like and the components it needs to contain. That day was also the day I found out what message I wanted my project to convey. The only problem then was I didn’t know how I was going to convey it. I shuffled around between many different genres; I went from a how-to guide published on WikiHow, to a listicle published on BuzzFeed, to an article published on some makeup website, to finally a blog published on Cosmopolitan. The reason why I chose that specific website is because it targets the audience I needed my project to target and it also appears on many social media platforms. So my RIP Project was written in the perspective of a talking rabbit named Peter directed toward everyone in the cosmetic community. It delivered the message that animals have feelings too in order to bring awareness to the animal cruelty that occurs in the makeup community. Some people know of this situation because it has become very controversial over the course of the past couple of years. The reason why I chose to write in the perspective of a talking rabbit is for two reasons. One because the talking rabbit is my unnatural creature so it can relate to the theme of the course and two because rabbits are the animals that are most tested on in laboratories with cosmetic brands. I became passionate about this because I have heard many people and I know many people who say they oppose animal cruelty, but continue to use products from companies who support cruelty and refuse to go cruelty-free when they have to option too.

Since I could find something that I was passionate about and was willing to put all of my time and effort into it, the RIP Project easily became my favorite assignment throughout WR39B.

This class made me go from being anxious and nervous to being confident about my work. I was surprised a writing class could alter my thoughts of the subject especially since I have never been fond of it. That is thank you to Professor Dowd and my peers. I learned more than I thought I would. I learned how to do proper research, analyze the evidence I included, write a well-written RA. I also ended up learning some skills that I can use outside of this class-- not to procrastinate any more, find the joy in doing the assignment because it makes it that much more fun to do, the final product isn’t going to write it itself, and most importantly always ask for help. Without the help of my peers, I know my papers wouldn’t have turned out the way they did. If I didn’t go to office hours or show up for the conference, then my RA Essay would not have gotten the grade it did. They are the ones that advised me to add more analysis and make my topic sentences more connected to thesis. I am leaving this class with more knowledge (educationally and personally) and more friendships. This class has helped me grow mentally and come out of my comfort zone to interact with others which wouldn’t have occurred without WR39B and my professor.