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Carolina Rojas Professor Lynda Haas Writing 37 11 March 2014 Coming into Writing 37, I did not have high expectations. Writing has never been my favorite subject so I was expecting it to be just another requirement to get over with, but it turned out to be a fun and helpful experience. The theme for our class was Sherlock Holmes and more broadly detective fiction. Through the exploration of this subject and various assignments, we learned about genre, context, and rhetorical analysis. I feel that I have learned so much in these past few months, which I am grateful for. I also gained many skills such as teamwork, better grammar, presentation skills, and most importantly analysis skills. The whole process was intense, and demanded a lot of work, but I think that it was worth it because now I am more confident in my writing abilities. Our first couple of assignments consisted heavily of reading and researching. We had to read two of Sir Arthur Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes novels and a short story. At the same time we had to do research on the context of the novels. I did not mind the reading because I had always enjoyed reading and I found the novels to be very interesting. The researching on the other hand was a different story. We split up into groups early on and we had to put together our first presentation in these groups. This presentation required us to research aspects of Victorian London, my group was assigned the Victorian Empire. My job was to find information on the military involvements during the Victorian times and more specifically those that were important to the Sherlock Holmes novelsthe Indian Rebellion and the Afghan War. I had a hard time with

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the research because I did not find the subject interesting. However, I knew that my group was counting on me so I persisted and invested my time to read through various internet websites until I believed I knew the information well enough. Despite my efforts and my group mates efforts, I did not think the presentation turned out as good as it could have. We went over our time and we got comments that we had too much irrelevant information and that the presentation as a whole did not flow well. Personally, I was too nervous when I presented, I forgot some of the things I needed to say and I spent too much time on unimportant information. I believe our problem as a group was lack of communication and not being able to pick out what information was important and my own problem was not practicing my part before giving the presentation. The next assignment focused on the mystery genre conventions. It was another presentation for which we had to choose a genre convention and explain it to the class. We also had to incorporate an activity for the audience to interact and limit the time we spent lecturing. My group chose disguise as the convention we would explain. This time we improved our communication and met up outside of class to propose ideas for the presentation. We decided to create scenarios for which the other groups would have to put together the perfect disguise. My job during the presentation was to introduce the second scenario. In my opinion, this presentation went much smoother that the first. I think we did a good job of explaining the convention and making it enjoyable for the other groups as well. This assignment taught me how to work better in a team by being flexible and working together to get things done efficiently and correctly. It also taught me that a good presentation is not only a recounting of information, but also an interactive experience; it should include all of the important information but not bore the audience.

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The first essay introduced rhetorical analysis. This essay required us to analyze a passage from one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyles novels which demonstrated the use of a genre convention and how it affected the overall experience of reading the novel. This essay was extremely difficult for me because it was the first essay I had written in a long time and I still was not sure what analysis meant. I began by choosing the convention of the detectives eccentricity. I then looked for a specific passage that included the convention so I could analyze it. I chose to use a scene from A Study in Scarlet where Conan Doyle first introduces Sherlock Holmes. I took me far too long trying to pick good quotes and I did not have time to really analyze the quotes. My first draft turned out very rough and needed a lot of revisions. For the second draft, I really put in more effort. I cut out a lot of quotes from the book and looked for outside sources to help me develop my ideas. I also tried to analyze the quotes and figure out why the convention was important to the story. I ended up writing a summary instead of an analysis so I had failed once again. For this reason, I chose not to fully revise this essay because I did not think it was a good enough foundation for me to write a proper final draft. I chose to revise the first paragraph because it would show what direction I could take the essay if I revised it completely. I think the final revision of my introductory paragraph is much better, it provides more details of the specifics of the convention and has a clearer thesis. Writing this essay taught me responsibility because I was not responsible enough with the first draft so I ended up having to do more work with the revision. The second essay we did put together context, genre conventions, and rhetorical analysis. For this essay, we had to analyze a genre convention in the modern-day texts as well as in the original Conan Doyle stories and compare them to show how and why they are different. By this time I was much better prepared. I had a good understanding of the genre conventions and, after

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seeing many examples and working on an analysis together in class, I had a much better idea of what analysis meant. a better understanding of what it meant to analyze. I was really engaged when writing this essay. I tried to show my understanding of the conventions and to properly analyze by breaking the text into parts and then coming up with an insightful conclusion. I think my first draft for this essay was much better than the first essay and I was satisfied with how it turned out. I did not really get many comments about things I needed to change from the peer reviews so when it came time for revision, I just made small changes to follow the requirements if I missed any and to make the essay sound more formal. I chose to revise this essay fully because I thought it was a much better essay than the first and it had a decent base for me to write a better final draft. When revising, I added information about the stages of genre development, I also added more detail about the scenes I was analyzing and more comparison between the Conan Doyle and modern day texts. Two major revision I made were I changed one of the elements of the convention that I talked about and I changed my conclusion. The element I decided to talk about was how the importance of the genre convention changed because I felt this was a stronger point to make that showed how the convention was updated. I think the greatest strength of my final draft is that it actually includes analysis and insight. The greatest weakness is that it does not have a lot of credible sources. If I had more time I would look up more sources to add to my credibility. Another part of the class was the modules on connect. I did not enjoy all of the modules but I found most of them very helpful. Some of the modules reinforced what I already knew. For example, they helped me be more certain of the correct way to use quotation marks, commas, and the difference between coordination and subordination. Some taught me things that I didnt understand before. For example, I did not know the differences between paraphrasing and

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summarizing but now I know that paraphrasing is restating something in your own words but keeping all of the details and summarizing is shortening something and keeping only the important points. Other modules also revealed areas I still need to work on. For example, I found that I didnt know when and how to use gender neutral pronouns to avoid gender bias and I still have to work on my use of punctuation like dashes, colons, and semicolons. Overall, I found the connect modules very helpful. I think I was already pretty good at grammar, but these modules taught me understand the more difficult stuff and helped refresh my memory of what I had already learned in middle and high school. The final assignment of the class was creating a presentation for the Rhetoric-In-Practice Seminar, in which we would teach another class what we had learned and perform a skit for them. This part of the class was the most fun and involved some metacognition reflecting on everything we had done the whole quarter. It also allowed us to work together and get creative with a murder mystery. My contribution was mostly preparation work like giving ideas and writing the script. In the introduction, I wrote the part about the basic plot and the summary of the modern-day text House M.D. For the murder mystery script, I volunteered to write the script for the final scene. I went back to the Sherlock Holmes books that weve read to get an idea of what the characters should say and I used that to write a dialogue that would fit the plot suggested in class. I did not have any responsibilities for the actual performance, but I was very happy watching how the presentation turned out. I think it reflected the work we put into it. A few things I think we did really well are making our performance fun, engaging, and informative. We had a lot of visuals and the performers did a good job of making it funny. Also, I thought that having the other class vote for who they thought was the murderer was a good idea because it let them have some interaction and let us know if we did well with giving them clues. I also think

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we chose the important information to illustrate what we learned. There were also a few things we could have improved. For example, some of the presenters were a bit nervous and I think they could have talked a bit louder and with more confidence. Also, I dont think the actors in the murder mystery had enough time to learn their lines. We should have finalized the script sooner in order to give them time to memorize their lines and also give them an opportunity to run through the whole performance a few more times before the actual seminar. There are also some changes we could have made to the script to make it flow better, but overall I think it turned out well. The other groups presentation was also done well. It was very informative and most of the presenters spoke eloquently and did not read off of the PowerPoint; also, I really liked the videos they included. However, I found that they had too many words on their slides and they did not really explain the handouts. All in all, this class was a challenge, but thanks to it, I am more curious about the world and open to learning new things. During these past few months, I learned about context, genre, and rhetorical analysis. I also gained skills in presenting, teamwork, and writing. I believe what I learned here will help me with my writing in the future, here at UCI and beyond. However, I still have a lot to learn, as my writing is far from perfect. I would still like to develop my ability to synthesize new content. This is the part I found most difficult in analyzing a text, coming up with a unique conclusion based on my findings. I will work hard and try to develop my skills further and be curious, open, engaged, creative, persistent, responsible, and flexible.