Before 39C

      Through years of writing courses and assignments, I believed that I had proven myself to be a strong writer. Courses in the English language, literature, and most recently reading and rhetoric (Writing 39B), had solidified that belief. I could read an author's work and pick it apart piece by piece, and then construct an analytical argument regarding that work. I could pick out key pieces of a work and bend it to my will in accordance to the message I wanted to send. However the majority of what I worked with was either fiction and/or non-academic. I mainly analyzed literary works, and I've even written a few fictional short stories, but I was never really exposed to any sort of academic work that had been peer reviewed by other scholars, nor had I ever used any in formulating my own works, so Writing 39C was my first true exposure to the world of academic and scholarly writing. 

     And it was a rough exposure, but as they say, "a smooth sea never made a skillful sailor." I had already heard by word of mouth that 39C would be very time consuming, not only due to the writing assignments but also due to the time needed for searching for sources and doing research. Although my prior skills in writing were useful in actually writing the two main essays, a majority of my time spent on them were not in the actual writing of them, but in the research for them. Prior to 39C, I had occasionally done "research" on random things that had piqued my interest, but this was almost always done on Wikipedia, and I soon learned that using Wikipedia for research is only done during amateur hour. Personally, doing the research for my papers was the most difficult part, as I not only had to find articles relating to my topic, but I also had to make sure that they were academically credible. And so I begin with the first topic of my reflection, the composition.

My Composing Process

     As I have said before, I not only consider writing a strength of mine, but also an enjoyment, so writing both papers was very straightforward, but gathering the resources necessary to write them was originally an issue, especially with the HCP. But before I could look for sources, I had to create some sort of basic outline that I could guide myself with, such as the one below which was for the HCP. I prefer starting with an outline because I use it as a foundation which I keep adding to until the final product is finished.

     It was after I created an outline that I would then search for sources which could help me prove my points. However this is where I experienced some difficulties. In my hunt for "credible" sources, I often took figures and numbers from sources such as news outlets, or other online sources, which to my belief were credible, but what I really should have been looking for were academically reviewed articles published by scholars, for scholars. These were only a few of the many comments made on my lack of good sources. 

     However after a conference with my writing Professor and a presentation by a librarian on scholarly search engines, my misunderstanding regarding academic sources was clarified. I learned that academic sources would usually be cited in other papers, and that they would almost always be published in a journal with other academic articles. I then looked away from news articles and online blogs, and turned towards Google Scholar and peer-reviewed academic journals, mainly Science Magazine. This newly found skill of being able to discern if a source is academic or not would transfer over to the writing of my AP. I would have no trouble with gathering sources for my AP which has roughly twenty sources, with over half of them being academic sources. Compared to the maybe half dozen or so academic sources in my HCP, my AP has much more strength in its credibility. 

Rhetoric, Argumentation, & Multi-modal Communication

     Building off on credibility, prior to 39C, while I had done my fair share of presentations using images picked off of google, I had never created a multi-modal paper like the HCP or AP, so I had never taken into account the credibility of the multi-modal items I chose to incorporate, and I learned that their credibility, meaning their source, is almost as essential as the credibility of my academic sources. This meant that I couldn't just take any random graph I wanted off of the internet anymore; I had to get to the source of the multi-modal item and make sure that the information presented in it was made by an academic source, such as the United Nations which is the source of the data in multiple graphs throughout my HCP and AP.

     Not only did I learn how to chose multi-modal items, I also learned how to, and that I needed to, caption them, something else I had never done before. Depicted above is an image, captioned by myself. Instead of describing the image in my AP, I provided a caption underneath the picture, and then used it as evidence for one of my claims: the moon has resources. I also just found the image to be very intriguing. It is a scan of the moon, revealing deposits of ilmenite, an iron-titanium compound found quite abundantly on the moon. 

     Multi-modality, however, was honestly a frustrating yet beneficial aspect of the two main papers. Having been told from my Professor that adding multi-modality with captions would alter the format of my writing, I typically held off from adding anything until after I was sure that I had a large portion of my writing done. Then came formatting the multi-modality with the text, and I usually placed images either in the center or to the very right, and had text wrap around it, but sometimes if placed in a certain spot, an image would push paragraphs onto a new page, creating a very large and awkward gap. But this was all after I learned that images couldn't be captioned in Google Docs, so I had to transfer everything to Microsoft Word documents, which was an annoyance, especially considering I had to reformat everything, including the Works Cited page, which has its own awkward formatting rules. 

     If there are at least two things that I have taken away from Writing 39C, it's how to caption an image and to write everything in Microsoft Word. 

 Revisions

     One of the less bothersome aspects of the two writing projects was the revision phase of the two papers, mainly because I actually did very little revising. Although this may sound counterintuitive in a writing class, I prefer doing as few revisions as possible. When writing, I prefer to write everything in one sitting so that my thoughts flow continuously, whereas if I were to write in seperate segments, it could potentially sound disconnected. I try to avoid making any drastic revisions just for the sake of the flow of the essay but that isn't to say that I did not make any revisions at all. 

Above is an example of when I actually did revise my essay, at the behest of my Professor, but in all seriousness the section highlighted on the left did need to be revised. The original is on the left while the revised edition is on the right. The original honestly makes very little sense due to my phrasing, but after reading my Professor's comments, I made it a point to clarify my meaning. 

     Another aspect of my revision process was the addition of better sources, although this was more prevalent in the HCP than the AP. The first few drafts of my HCP had maybe a few academic sources at most, which, for an academic paper, is disgusting. I mentioned this previously but after getting a better understanding of what an academic source was, I revised my HCP to include them. In my AP, I actually did very little revising besides altering sentences and paragraphs to create more a coherent essay. This was also due to my own fault in not submitting a full draft before the final draft, so I did not actually receive a lot of immediate feedback on it, but through what I learned from revising the HCP, I was a much stronger writer during the AP than during the HCP. 

The Takeaway

     I had always been a good writer, but coming out of Writing 39C, I am now a good academic writer. I have learned the essential skills in writing not only an academic paper, but an academic paper in which I actually have an interest in, and by knowing what is required to create an academic paper, I now have a newfound respect for those who write them.

     One of the most vital skills I learned to be necessary in writing an academic paper, was time management, but even throughout the course I still failed at managing my time. Often times I would find myself watching the sun rise as I uploaded a draft, but that bad habit, got much, much better as the quarter progressed. Compared to my old procrastination habitats of waiting until literally the very last day to start an essay, with the AP, I wrote the bulk of it within two days of the due date, and I still had over a day to spare, which I believe to be a very proud moment in my student life. Slowly but surely, my bad habits are being reformed, and I am becoming better at managing my time. 

     But in all seriousness, a major key that I will take away from Writing 39C is that there will always be more to improve. There is always something that could be revised, and even if I think something is perfect, someone else might not. Sentence structure, paragraph structure, credibility. Everything I've written, even though they are to my satisfaction, can be improved upon. Like in life, there will always be more that I can improve on, and 39C has hammered that into me.