Reflection 3 

My writing process from the genre analysis essay to the imitation project was very different because the genre analysis was more about connecting two themes into one essay while the imitation project is a more creative form of persuading the audience about what genre model is the best to represent the Suburban gothic genre. Also, in the imitation project we started the assignment with the annotated bibliography with proposal activity where we chose our sources before writing the first draft. This method was vastly different from everything I have done in the past, but it relieved some stress about having to find sources while writing the drafts.  

My experience with the IP workshops was the most helpful for me to fix my problems that were easy to fix. For example, explaining my citations was a big part of helping my essay have more concise evidence that supported my thesis about the music playlist was the most accurate genre model to show the characteristics in the Suburban Gothic genre.  

What I have learned from working on the music playlist model is that creativity is not my strength, but it made this assignment more enjoyable because I like listening to music. Being able to listen to music and connect the lyrics with the books and excerpts we read in class was a fun experience. I picked the music playlist genre model because I knew that I would have a tough time with the podcast or the other genre models. The review genre model was my second choice, but I ended up deciding on the music playlist because I was more passionate about listening to music and connecting it to the class than the other models.  

 At the start of this quarter, I had no idea what the Suburban Gothic genre was about. I had the knowledge of dreadful things happening in nice neighborhoods, but I did not know to what extent the genre was about. Ethos was a big part of my essays and concepts in this class because most of the “monsters” in the Suburban Gothic genre used trust to capture their victims. Multimodality was also a new concept for me in my writing journey because I have never had an assignment that included pictures, graphs, or videos within my essay. In my IP I included pictures of the album covers to give the readers insight about the various topics within the albums. Also, in my eportfolio I included memes in every page so that my readers don’t lose interest in writing and pictures help hook the audience. This is seen in magazines where articles with pictures get more attention than articles with all writing because the audience isn’t hooked.  

Dear Sara,  

Throughout the spring quarter I have learned that there is a lot of room for improvement in my writing. The overall flow of my writing can improve to keep my audience hooked. Connecting topics and creating a precise concept for my readers in my essays has always been my biggest challenge in writing. Also, finding the right key elements to include in my essays out of all the course material is challenging sometimes. In the future I want to achieve a level of being extremely well-spoken and use that skill to help get more job opportunities. In my career pathway in Psychology and the medical world I need to explain various terms to my patients. I would also like to be able to write an essay with advanced vocabulary about any given topic. For example, the way teachers explain the lectures or course material is the way I want to be able to express myself to others when I graduate. I am proud of all the obstacles I have overcome this quarter when being faced with thesis problems or lack of connection from one topic to another. Balancing 4 classes that range from science to literature is sometimes hard but once I got the hang of it, I was able to connect my classes.  I will continue to improve my writing in my next course of Writing 60. Hopefully everything I have learned in these last two writing classes in college has prepared me for research components of essays. Although college courses are much different from high school courses, some elements like finding sources before writing the first draft or writing about my own life experiences have been my favorite parts of my writing journey so far. Overall, I am proud of myself and excited for what college will continue to offer my career.  

                                                                                                                                  Sincerely,

                                                                                                                                            Sara