I have never liked writing. And I still don't. To me it seemed like such a chore and such a bore. I have always felt like I was never good at writing so I never paid much attention. Even when the topics were fascinating and engaging, I could never really get into it. Plus, I never really felt like I understood what I was writing, I just wrote and wrote with no clear thoughts or cohesiveness. It was for these reasons that I never saw writing as a big part of my future. Even coming here to UCI I knew that I would despise writing, which is why I tried to get it done as soon as possible.

However, even though I still don't like writing, I have learned that I can be better at it. These past 10 weeks have made me grow into a much better writer than I previously was. The activities throughout the quarter really forced me to become better. 

For instance, in the following activity I had to write a sample thesis and provide my goals for the essay that would follow. 

Here I had to know where I wanted to go with the essay. There was no more making it up as I went. Instead I had a general idea that could be refined and supported. While this may seem like a very simple thing to do, I had never done it before. I always just created something and hoped for the best. But college is definitely not the place to be doing that so I had to make a change. Thankfully I was assisted by the activities.

Another example of my learning how to create a good structure for my essay was an activity where I created an outline for my body paragraphs of an essay.

Not only did I have to find quotes and evidence to use in the paragraph but I also had to explain why the inclusion of this paragraph was significant. This activity truly helped because I had to create a guideline that I would later on follow when writing my essay. It provided me with some structure so that I wouldn't get lost in the writing later on, I always had reference to look back on. Plus I needed to prove that what I was writing about had some value. I couldn't get away with mediocre writing that had no real purpose, now I had to show that I knew what I was writing was important. And ultimately I was pretty proud of the essay I ended up writing, especially this specific paragraph because writing it I actually knew where I wanted to go with it and I ended up achieving that.

Also, I have always had trouble researching sources and finding ways to fit them into my writing. One activity that really helped develop my research skills was the exercise where everyone had to find two secondary sources for their essay, summarize the sources, describe how they would help their essay, and then post it for everyone to see. 

This assignment helped me with my research skills because it made me break everything down, making me analyze my sources and how they would fit into my essay before I started writing it. The part of the assignment that required me to brainstorm where the article would go in my essay also really aided my source integration skills. For example, here is the part of the assignment I did on my first source:

Highlighted in yellow is my summary of the article. As you can see I had to research and really know the article I wanted to use. This portion really helped because it had me actually read the article beforehand so I could give an adequate summary, not just skim through it like I have done in the past. Additionally, I had to know beforehand how I wanted to use it in my essay or at least create an idea of where to use the source. That part, highlighted in green, shows how I was required to think ahead and make sort of a plan for how my essay would go. Then I could think about the ways I could integrate my chosen source into it. Finally, the red highlighted section connects the article back to the class and to the genre of science fiction in general. In its totality, this activity provided a good structure to research future sources.

Plus, this exercise also gave me a good basis to start my source integration. In the highlighted green section, I wrote how the article would "help explain the ideas of free will and fate" in my essay. I was then able to use the article exactly where I needed it. 

Another example of my growth would be my quote integration. Before this class, I would sort of just introduce the quote out of nowhere, with no context or anything to guide the reader. I did that because the only thing I ever knew about evidence was that it should be followed by analysis, not preceded by anything. But once I was introduced to the quote sandwich, I really understood what I needed to change

The following underlined parts are examples of what I believe are some good quote integrations on my part where I had good lead-ins and continued with explanations. I really believe that this writing course truly helped me properly integrate quotes and analyze them better.

Overall, this quarter I feel as though I have improved quite a bit in my writing. The aspect of writing I think I improved on the most would be my structure and analysis of evidence as well as my quote integration. My analysis of the evidence in the past has always been subpar. I think it was just because I always wrote essays in one sitting, coming up with ideas as I went. That was a really bad process for me because I was always thinking too far ahead, creating new thoughts without having written down the ones I was supposed to. But, here I was allowed to write the essay in chunks, focusing on different pieces at different times instead of coming up with a whole cohesive essay on the fly. By focusing on individual parts I could better analyze the evidence because I had nothing else to worry about. There was no need to think ahead because I knew I had to focus on that specific portion of the essay. Additionally, in the past it was more important to me that I had my commentary for my analysis than if my essay had any real cohesiveness. With the activities involving quote integration and the quote sandwich I expanded my knowledge on that skill and really understood why it was necessary to any essay. I saw how my evidence needed context in order to properly fit in my essay.

And while this course has taught me a lot, there is still room for improvement. The aspect of writing that I hope to improve on would be creating a good flow while still being able to elaborate. Elaboration has always been hard because I feel like I cannot come up with something new to write that actually expands on my argument, which usually leads to me repeating myself in one way or another. This can seriously disrupt the flow of the essay, something that I am really wary of doing. However, I think that writing the essay in sections can help with improving this skill. Instead of saving the elaboration for the end of the writing process and feeling like I am messing up how the essay naturally flows like usual, I can focus on elaborating just one part and making that section flow nicely. Also, I could probably do some more prep work before I start writing, such as coming up with various ideas and examples so I always have something new to write about. If I put in the work beforehand I do think that I will benefit in the long run. Overall, I really think that I can improve on this skill with time and also learning how to be confident in my writing. If I can learn to trust myself and that what I write is good, I will not second guess myself or worry about minor details.

Even though I don't think I will ever love writing, I'm glad I took this class because it helped me learn how to make the writing process significantly easier. Maybe Writing 39C will help me like it. But thank you to Chenglin Lee for getting me one step closer.