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John Barlow
Professor Haas
Writing 37
7 December 2014
Reflection Essay
Writing 37 has taught me an immense amount in such a short ten week period.
When I first started off in this class I was an absolutely abysmal writer. I actually
personally believed that I belonged in Writing 39A rather than 37. However, now that I
have taken Writing 37 I am extremely glad that I took this course because I have
developed my skills and intellect in many subjects. Writing 37 primarily focuses on
critical reading and writing, but weve learned other important skills such as public
speaking, group collaboration, and creating projects to present our work. Professor
Haass specific Writing 37 course focused on the detective genre and in specific, the
Sherlock Holmes series written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
At first I wasnt very ecstatic about our topic being the Sherlock Holmes series as
I had never really been interested in it. I thought the old stories such as The Hound of
the Baskervilles were a little dull and uneventful. Halfway through the quarter this
completely changed. We transitioned from learning about the classical era of the
detective genre and moved to the revisionist era where we studied modern day texts
such as BBCs Sherlock, CBSs Elementary, and the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes.
Learning about how the classical conventions transitioned and were modified or mirror
over the years piqued my curiosity. It was incredibly interesting seeing which texts
mirrored certains conventions and which texts modified other conventions.

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We read scholarly texts as a class about the detective genre and what allowed it
to flourish during the Victorian Era. These texts were written to analyze and explain
conventions of Sherlock Holmes and the detective genre as a whole. The scholars
provided great insight into the genre as they bring up many points and ideas that one
may have never thought of before. Reading the scholars required engagement. They
arent the most entertaining of reads and one is required to critically read and think
about the ideas that the scholars present to them or else one will not gather and retain
the information, as well as the fact that many of their ideas are too complicated to
gather on just one read through. Learning to read and gather information from a
scholarly text is a great skill to have because it trains you to critically read and think
about many texts.
Academic writing is something that requires a lot of work and persistence. If
someone is going to write towards a scholarly audience, there needs to be a lot of work
put into the paper. You read numerous scholarly articles which each give their own
rendition of an idea and synthesize them into your own paper which follows one main
cohesive idea. For my Literature Review essay I wrote about two conventions by Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle of the detective genre that allowed it to become so largely popular
during the Victorian Era. I chose to revise my my first body paragraph because there
were a couple of critical errors in it. During peer review I was told to introduce my
scholars more tactfully, and give background on what they wrote rather than just
immediately introducing their quote or paraphrase. I also needed to put the scholars
more into the conversation, and describe why they said this rather than just inputting
their quote. Another major issue is that I assumed the scholars thought of Holmes as a

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perfect crime-solving machine, when in reality they just believe the Conan Doyle simply
tried to present them this way. I also needed to provide context on a scene from A
Scandal in Bohemia in which I quoted Holmes without providing any background on the
scenario that the quote came from. There were also a couple of other minor grammar
errors and errors in citing the scholars that I had to fix. This essay was definitely not
nearly as strong as it could have been but I learned a lot from writing it. My ideas in this
essay were often too general and my ideas didnt flow together very well. There was
definitely great progress seen in between this essay and the Rhetorical Analysis essay
in my opinion.
My Rhetorical Analysis essay was focused on how the modern day text
Elementary was a mashup between the classical detective genre and the modern day
procedural drama. One of the revisions I made involved this section: Elementary is a
mashup of the detective genre created by Doyle, and another genre of television called
a procedural drama. The show updates the classical detective genre by making it into a
procedural drama because it allows for a more modern setting and atmosphere. I made
sure to add that one of the main reasons for a mashup is to mix one genre with another
that already has a great popularity, in this case it is the Procedural Drama which is the
most popular genre of television in the United States today. This is why the detective
genre is mashed up with it and why Elementary uses so many conventions of the
Procedural Drama. I moved this sentence Another contributing factor is that new
viewers will have ease in adopting a show because they will not have needed to watch
previous episodes (The Independent). to my introductory paragraph because it helps
explain why Elementary became so popular and why the Procedural Drama in general

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is so widely popular. In my opinion these couple of sentences were the most important
to revise because they set up the reader for what is to follow and give insight as to why
Elementary chose to be a mashup of the detective genre and a Procedural Drama.
Peer review helped me immensely on learning what I did wrong on my essays or
even just what I could have done better. Not only did I get great advice on my own
papers, I saw mistakes in others papers that were also in my paper but I hadnt noticed
before. Reading another person's essay helps you learn about mistakes or things you
could have done better in your own essay. When we first read the article It is Better to
Give Than to Receive I honestly didnt believe that you could possibly learn more from
reviewing others than having your paper reviewed. However, after reviewing several of
my classmates essays, forums, and wikis I learned that I was mistaken.
Working in groups with my fellow classmates was never really my favorite thing
to do in high school because I hated relying on others. Professor Haass class
collaboration projects really changed my outlook on group work though. There were
several group projects such as presentations, wikis, and the RIP seminar. Working with
my classmates on these taught me how to be responsible because not only was my
grade on the line, but so were my classmates. They relied on me to do my research and
write my portion of the wiki and be able to present my information in an effective way.
Normally I am a person who isnt very accepting of new ideas, but there were times
where my groupmates and I would have disagreements on how we wanted to do
something and it really took a lot of openness and flexibility in order to either come to
a compromise or work out some solution in which all of us would be happy with the
result. Several of the projects also took a lot of creativity in order to think of interesting

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ways to present the information that we as a group had researched to the rest of our
fellow classmates. For example, our presentation on the cinematic elements required us
to find an interesting way to display a scene and talk about how it displayed both
several cinematic elements and conventions of the detective genre.
Connect is a website that had several assignments for us to complete every
week to review or learn things such as grammar skills, punctuation, properly quoting,
etc. At first I thought it was going to be a joke and I would just breeze through the
modules. However, I quickly realized that I didnt know as much as I thought I did.
Connect really helped me with several aspects of my writing, especially quoting text and
integrating source material into text. Those were the two modules that I struggled the
most on and was told to Recharge. After going through the module twice I can tell you
that I am much more confident in my abilities.
Metacognition is important because you need to be able to reflect on your
progress and see what else you still need to improve on. As I reflect I realize that being
a good reader and writer is about critically reading and paying attention to information
and being able to transfer and synthesize that information into your own essay. Writing
37 has helped me become a better presenter, writer, reader, and group member.