Reflective Introduction

Here we are at the end of Writing 39C! As a first year student at UCI, I had no idea what to expect going into this class; months ago, the idea of “research and writing” seemed simple enough. Just a few Google searches here and a few paragraphs there, right? I quickly discovered that this class wasn’t going to be so simple.

I thought I was on top of my game until I began my time in Writing 39C. The class was challenging; it made me realize I didn’t have the slightest idea of what it was like to truly do in-depth research on a topic. Initially, I had no clue where to start. However, under the instruction of Professor Chang, I slowly began to hone my craft, developing strong argumentative skills in writing and integrating rhetorical strategies to strengthen my papers. Throughout my time in Writing 39C, I have become a sharpened writer with the ability to construct an analytical and persuasive argumentative paper.

Transferring What You Know

If I'm completely honest, looking back on my previous writing classes and their respective assigned essays, I wasn’t adequately prepared for research like this. I wasn't thoroughly taught how to use sites like CQResearcher to browse topics; I had no idea searches were done by specific key words and I was lost when I started the first prewriting assignment. The library tutorials helped me quite a bit in that field. With that in mind, I had no idea what "research" entailed prior to this class. Before 39C, I thought a text could only qualify as research if you were utilizing scholarly articles and peer-reviewed journals. I now understand that research utilizes both scholarly texts and popular ones. Unlearning this assumption has made the researching process easier for me; it makes sense that we should also use reliable popular sources since those are more tailored to laypeople and are more digestible than a scholarly journal. Further, I didn't realize multimodality should be integrated into our research; I thought research only took place within the realm of scholarly texts and I didn't know much outside of that.

In addition to that previous assumption, I also assumed that the tone of a "good" research paper should be solely didactic and serious. I'm evidently not well-versed in research papers or anything of the like, but I thought writing in any style outside of that might be considered inappropriate or take away from the credibility of the paper. Upon reading Race After Technology and analyzing the tone that Ruha Benjamin employs in her writing, I've found that this assumption isn't true in the slightest. We can observe this tone in excerpts such as this one, from Chapter 1 of her book:

Fig. 1. Excerpt from Ruha Benjamin's Race After Technology depicting the tone that she uses in her text. 

Benjamin does a masterful job of remaining concise while still using satirical remarks and criticisms. I love that about our text, especially because I've never enjoyed writing in a cut-and-dry manner (if that wasn't evident from my tone in these reflections!); knowing that I can be more free with the way I write definitely aided me in crafting my paper. 

Having said this, I was able to transfer my stylistic choices in writing (which my peer editor sang high praises for!) like my tone and diction, but past that, I feel many of my skills were built during this quarter. For example, my organizational skills tended to be all over the place until I learned how to restructure them more effectively and cohesively—in Professor Chang’s words, I made sections “ooze into each other.” I can say with certainty that my writing abilities were definitely tested and improved during this quarter.

Your Composing Process

Gathering scholarly and popular information was a feat in itself; I could do the latter much easier than the former, but when I first began research, I ended up with a slew of random sources that didn’t pertain to my topic as much I as hoped. My brain felt fried going through these different scholarly articles; it took multiple reads to realize that the abstract outlined whether or not this piece of text would be useful or not.

Fig. 2. Creating my Contexts Project paper in UCI's Science Library.

Above, I’ve attached an image of me at UCI’s Science Library. I spent hours there trying to hash out my abstract. Suddenly, every word felt even more intentional than before; I had to make it succinct while also making sure it accurately summed up what I was going to write about. But what was I going to write about? 

Fig. 3. Very rough outline of my Contexts Project paper that I used to guide me through its structure.

This next image I attached shows me attempting to figure that out. Without a clear outline, I had no idea what I was doing past the abstract. Hell, just developing an introduction to my paper was daunting. This is the first thing my audience would read; I had to make sure it was good. Hours later, I finished the first two or three pages of my paper. The next day, I sat down and finished the entirety of it. 

Later on, I expected the AP to be an of “inverse” of the CP’s structure, but didn’t quite turn out that way. The CP would detail all the different issues with my described topic, discussing their cause-and-effect, the nuances of those factors, and how they played a role in society. For my AP, I found that a lot of my structure involves discussing what solutions aren’t quite working more than what solutions are working. This arguably isn’t the best approach, but the way I went about writing it differs from the CP quite a bit. Additionally, my CP involved a lot more scholarly sources than this paper; while my AP involves scholarly sources, I utilized more information from popular and think tank sources. The CP primarily focused on contextualizing the issue (hence the name), so it was more didactic than the AP, which has a lot more critical thinking and attention to detail. Furthermore, the AP is more argumentative than the CP as I’m pitching my proposed solution to the problem rather than just discussing it. I’m trying to persuade my audience to see it from my perspective rather than just showing them the problem and why it’s a problem. Overall, the two papers have slightly different compositions.

Rhetoric, Argumentation, & Multimodal Communication

Multimodality was a foreign language to me when I began 39C. The idea of inserting images into my paper was a strange concept; I didn’t grasp its impact until I began reading the High-Passing CP and High-Passing AP samples. Now knowing how influential different types of media could be in my paper, I sought out to do the same.

Fig. 4. Screenshots of two instances of multimodality in my Contexts Project: the top image shows a screenshot of a STEM ad utilized in one of the scholarly articles I read, and the bottom image shows a screenshot of a Pinterest search that I described in the paper. Both are screenshotted directly from my final Contexts Project paper.

These two images helped give my audience a visualization of what I was describing; I believe that doing this made my argument more powerful, especially because these are images from social media platforms most people use on a daily basis. The audience can grasp what I’m demonstrating when it’s visually shown. Just like in this reflective introduction—I’m both showing and telling you what I’ve done through the help of multimodal communication!

As I conducted research for my rhetoric and argumentation, I slowly pieced together the organization of my paper. I incorporated the most hard-hitting evidence and intertwined my counterargument with my actual argument so that I was eliminating gaps in my thesis while emphasizing my point. 

Revision

The peer editing process helped me immensely during the drafting process. Below I show edits I made in my CP per my peer editor's suggestions:

Fig. 5. Excerpt from my Contexts Project in which I take multiple suggestions: 1) I explained who Gerrard and Thornham were rather than just citing their names in my paper, and 2) I added a footnote to explain something that my audience might not have known at first glance. 

In an initially weak area, I was able to mend it and enhance my argument thanks to these revision comments. Another example of this is through Professor Chang’s comments:

Fig. 6. Comments from Professor Ryan Chang on my Contexts Project draft.

He pointed out areas where my structure could be improved; using this information helped me improve the cohesiveness of my paragraphs. These edits helped me earn a 98% on the CP! I was thrilled to have gotten such a great grade on my first research paper. While the AP was more challenging for me, I utilized comments such as the following to revise it:

Fig. 7. Revision suggestions from my peer reviewer August Vu on my Advocacy Project.

There’s always a sense of pride that comes with writing, and for me, bearing my absolute best onto paper for criticism was a very vulnerable process. However, by taking their constructive criticisms and integrating them into my paper, I came out a better writer and my final products improved significantly. Shortcomings in writing can always be fixed—sometimes, you just need a different perspective to understand how.

Conclusion

My work in writing is far from over; this was just one of the many classes that would challenge me to go above and beyond in crafting my papers. I’m grateful to have taken these lessons from Writing 39C: learning how to use multimodality in papers, how to cohesively construct a paper, how to use research to make a hard-hitting argument, and how to thoroughly revise areas of weakness. I have become a better writer and can now construct an analytical and persuasive argumentative paper, and I hope that my reflective introduction reflects that!