Throughout the course of Writing 39B this quarter, I developed a much greater understanding of what rhetoric is and gained a deeper understanding of what constitutes a genre. While our class focused on the genre of Science Fiction, learning about the conventions of the genre allowed me to better understand what a genre is. As stated by Devit in the Anteater Guide to Reading and Rhetoric, "no writing class could possibly teach students all the genres they will need to succeed even in school, much less in the workplace or in their civic lives. Hence the value of teaching genre awareness rather than acquisition of particular genres". This newfound genre awareness allows me to approach unfamiliar genres of works with a new understanding of what elements constitute a genre. The process work, along with the genre analysis essay and imitation project this quarter, allowed me to better understand rhetorical choices made by an author, and how those choices affect all aspects of a writing piece. I gained a new ability to critically read, recognize, and analyze these rhetorical choices and gain a deeper understanding of what message an author is trying to convey in their work. Using this new rhetorical awareness, I am now able to take these strategies and employ them in my own writing, which helps me create more compelling arguments, convey main ideas more clearly, and target a specific audience in my work.

New Approach to Writing

Not only did writing 39B provide me with a newfound knowledge of rhetoric and genre, but the assigned process work helped me change the way I approach writing as a whole. Prior to this course, I would never write multiple drafts of a work, and peer review was not something I participated in. However, despite being assigned work, I learned that the drafting process allows me to write better quality works, and helps me convey and connect my ideas more easily. I found that revisiting my works multiple times allowed me to better organize my ideas and create a more cohesive essay or project. This is exemplified in the drafting process of my genre analysis essay. While most of the ideas that I wrote about in my first and final draft were the same, the organization of those ideas changed in a way that made them organized more logically. The development of my introduction and thesis for my genre analysis essay is an example of this reorganization of ideas. Here is the original introduction and working thesis I wrote for my GA essay, along with feedback from peers in class regarding what I can change:

This thesis, as explained by my peers in their feedback, is very messy. There is a lot of information in it that is either poorly organized or unnecessary. Moving from this initial thesis to my final thesis for the GA, I took all of the examples of my thesis claims and either moved them earlier in the introduction or expanded upon them in my body paragraphs. This allowed me to create a more clear thesis, that focused only on the main ideas that I was going to cover in my essay, rather than have those ideas be made less clear by the inclusion of examples in a place where they are not necessary. Here is the final introduction and thesis I ended up using in my GA:

This revision process is something that I learned to incorporate into my writing through Writing 39B. Even though the peer review was assigned in class, hearing second opinions regarding my writing was extremely helpful because what made sense to me does not always make sense to other people. Taking others' suggestions and using them to help better your writing allows you to make a work that is better organized. Additionally, a new strategy that I learned to use in my writing process in 39B is using text-to-speech programs to read your writing out loud back to you. Often times when writing you don't realize that what you're writing feels awkward. Reading over it in your head, it usually makes sense to you as the person who wrote it, but using text-to-speech is a really good way to catch wording that is just off, and to make your sentences clearer and better convey your ideas.

The other main change in my writing process through the quarter was that I became better at spacing my work out. At the beginning of the quarter, I would often finish all assignments in one block period, but towards the end of the quarter, I was starting work earlier and doing a better job at revisiting assignments. I found that taking breaks and coming back to assignments oftentimes allowed me to come up with new ideas that would then contribute to making better work. I mentioned this plan to revisit work more often in my Reflection #4 in the middle of the quarter when we were asked "What is one goal you'd like to set for the rest of the quarter related to the learning objectives for the GA and IP listed above? What is one concrete thing you can do to work toward this goal?" and I wrote "Through the rest of the quarter I hope to be more proactive when it comes to starting my work, and spending multiple sessions writing and revising essays as I have learned that doing so makes the quality of my writing much better. In order to enact this goal, I will begin working on an assignment the day it is assigned and revisit it, rather than completing the assignment in one long block session." This was my main goal to meet by the end of the quarter, and I was able to do so!

Using Multimodality and Secondary Sources

The imitation project helped me better incorporate multimodality into my work. Using multiple modalities in a piece better engages the reader, and allows you to appeal to the audience in a way that you wouldn't be able to using a single modality. We learned about the affordances of different modalities of work, and how certain types of works come with both limitations and opportunities unique to that type of work. I created a think piece for my IP, which provided me with a lot of freedom when it comes to the topic of my writing, but as it was mainly a linguistic (just words) mode of work it did lack in terms of aural and visual media. To combat this, I included hyperlinks and images to try to make the text seem less intimidating to the reader.

An image I used in my IP to bring multimodality into my work - showed the direct comparison between the empire in Star Wars and Nazi Germany to help substantiate the claim I wrote about

Writing 39B also allowed me to be much better at integrating secondary sources into my writing. Using guidance from the Anteaters Guide to Reading and Rhetoric I was able to better employ signal phrases and use them to introduce information from secondary sources into my own work. While I don't think I was necessarily bad at integrating outside sources into my writing prior to writing 39B, the process of going through drafts and having to write a lot in turn allowed me to practice and in turn made the whole process easier and less awkward. Here are some examples of source integrations that I liked from my work throughout the quarter:

For example, he uses this alien world to conduct a thought experiment, what Science Fiction Encyclopedia defines as any story which uses sf [science fiction] devices to expound or illuminate a scientific principle” (Langford). The story also employs the common science convention of impending doom or “the end”. - From my GA essay

The only thing that is guaranteed in life is death, so why spend so much time worrying about it?  One should instead appreciate what is not guaranteed, which Chiang describes as "The buildings we have erected, the art and music and verse we have composed, the very lives we’ve led" (Chiang 20) - From my GA essay

Star Wars creator George Lucas drew much of the inspiration for Star Wars from history. In the 2013 book Star Wars and History by Nancy Reagin and Janice Liedel, they write that the film’s imperial leaders Darth Vader and the Emperor “recall real-life totalitarian analogs such as Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler (the head of the notorious SS, or Schutzstaffel) in Nazi Germany or Josef Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria (the head of the NKVD, or secret police) in the Soviet Union.” - From my IP

Overall Takeaways from Writing 39B

Writing 39B allowed me to develop as a writer in a number of ways. Not only did I gain awareness regarding genre and rhetoric, but the course allowed me to create a better approach to writing. The nature of the class and the fact that I had to write a lot helped my writing improve. I started to use drafts more often in my writing, and the incorporation of peer review into my assignments allowed me to improve the overall flow of my pieces. I learned how writers employ specific tactics in order to reach specific audiences and convey certain messages, and in turn used those strategies in my own writing. Additionally, this course gave me a new appreciation for the Science Fiction genre as a whole. As I wrote about in my imitation project, I learned that Science Fiction and by extrapolation, a lot of fiction writing is a way for writers to write about our world.