Cano 1

Isaiah Cano
Writing 37
Professor Haas
March 13, 2015
My Writing 37 Experience
At the start of the quarter, I was extremely nervous about my writing
37 class. Writing was never my strongpoint, and I knew that because it was
a small class I would have to actually participate. Although I didnt like the
idea at first, my participation in the class has helped me grow as a writer,
and has helped me learn much about rhetoric, collaboration, and academic
writing. Assignments, like the ones on Connect help with the small issues
that many writers encounter while writing, and by doing the assignments I
learned about what areas of my writing that I need to put time into.
One of our first major assignments in the class was the wiki research
project. For this assignment we had to create a website about a topic having
to do with animals, and mine was on dogs in the military. This project really
sparked my curiosity about the topic because it was so interesting to me. It
is a lot easier for me to do work on an assignment that I have an interest in,
so this topic was perfect for me.

This project helped me sustain persistence

because it was something that we worked on for many weeks. Normally I

would lose interest, but for this assignment, I kept learning more and more
information, and it helped me keep my interest in the topic for much longer

Cano 2

than usual. It was a group project, and I worked with two other people to get
the project done.

We split the work into three sections, and my job was to

gather information and present about the training of the military dogs.
Working with two other people made me feel like I had more responsibility to
get my work done because my group was relying on me. Collaborating with
others has always been a negative experience for me because I always end
up doing all the work, but this time it was different.

We all participated

equally and got our work done, which taught me one big lesson about
collaboration.

That lesson is that who you choose to work with is very

important. This really opened my eyes as to what kind of work collaboration

can yield, and that if the right group mates are chosen, it can even be fun.
The first couple of assignments in the class were presentations, but
after the research project, the first major essay we wrote was the literature
review essay. This assignment required me read a lot more critically. This
showed me that there is a lot more hidden meaning to what is written down
in the pages of a book than there appears to be. It requires an altered type
of reading. I was forced to be able to see the big picture of the text, and also
to the small details hidden within the text. As for the essay, I chose to revise
the third paragraph. This paragraph had issues with conciseness, and could
be cleaned up to make it a better paragraph. I did not introduce one of the
scholars OBrien, who is mentioned in this paragraph, so in the previous
paragraph I introduce him so that it is not just a random name with no
introduction to the scholar. The second sentence is too long, so I broke it up

Cano 3

into two different sentences to make it less awkward. Then, with the sixth
and seventh sentences, I joined them because the information from each
sentence was related, and the sentences alone seemed too short.
After the literature review, the focus of the class switched to analyzing
and using rhetoric appeal, with the first assignment using this focus being
the PSA. It was a group assignment, and we needed to make a public service
announcement and pose as an organization that would represent the issue
we wanted to represent, and appeal to ethos pathos and logos. My group
chose the issue of Orcas in captivity at sea world. We decided to do a print
poster campaign, and ended up with 2 posters and a banner for a website.
For our initial draft, I was in charge of gathering all the information that was
going to be put on the posters. I worked well with my group, but after review
from the professor, a second draft of our PSA was needed. For the second
PSA draft, I was in charge of redesigning the posters so that the blank white
space on the posters was filled up, and gathering new information to put o
the posters. This project taught me more about how effective rhetoric can
be than did the other assignments. This is due to the fact that the main
issue with our posters is that they did not effectively appeal to ethos, pathos,
and logos. This forced me and my group to use our creativity to think of
clever ways to appeal to ethos pathos and logos because it is a very difficult
task because with posters you are very limited to what you can do
rhetorically.

This assignment forced me to be more open to the ideas of

other in my group. If one person did not have any ideas to make the project

Cano 4

better, many times someone else in the group did so everyone else in the
group had to be open to the ideas of the individual, even if it may not be the
way that the others think, for the sake of the group. I had to take all their
ideas into consideration and be able to show that in my work, even if it was
something I had never thought about.
While the PSA was focused on using rhetorical appeal, the Rhetorical
analysis essay was focused on analyzing the use of rhetorical appeal.

chose to do my essay on the film Blackfish. The goal was to show that the
film appealed to pathos with the use of emotionally charged scenes and
stories, and analyze how the examples appealed to pathos.

This is the

essay that I chose to fully revise. I chose to do so because I had a better

understanding of how to do this essay compared to the literature review. I
focused on analyzing the examples more deeply because the analysis that I
initially had was shallow.

I paid a lot more attention to the introduction

paragraph as well. To catch the attention of the reader I added a fact about
the tank size that the whales were kept in in captivity. After that I better
introduced the film and the reaction that the people had when it was
released.

At this point I feel like my essay is effective in meeting the

requirements of the essay, but essays can always be improved.

With this

assignment, I felt a lot more engaged in the work. I was putting forth a lot
more effort, and did more per review than with the previous essay.

This

essay showed me that peer review is not only for the writer, but also for the
reviewer.

It made the reviewer think a lot more deeply about the

Cano 5

requirements of the essay, which would be reflected in their revisions on

their own writing due to their better understanding of the prompt after
reviewing a partners paper.
Apart from the work done in class, some online homework that we did
In the class was through a website called Connect that assesses where you
stand on certain aspects of writing. I enjoyed these assignments because I
feel like they actually helped with improving my writing. One of the areas
that I struggled in was writing an effective concluding paragraph. By putting
time into doing the connect assignment, I have a better understanding of
how to write a more effective conclusion. Most of my answers on connect fall
under the Unaware that you knew the answer category. This shows me
that many times I know the answer but am not confident enough to say I do.
This shows me that I need to be more confident in myself and my knowledge
of things. Many times I want to write in a different style or manner, but am
too afraid to do so, but with connect, I am able to see that I just need to have
confidence in my knowledge and write how I want to.

Connect is very

effective in helping teach simple writing strategies to writers with the use of
questions to assess where you are on a topic, and adjusting the assignment
as you do it to spend more time on areas that need work.
This has been a tough quarter so far. This class was a lot more work
than I expected it to be but in the end, I think it was worth it. I feel like ive
really grown as a writer by doing the assignments like the ones on connect,

Cano 6

the literature review and rhetorical analysis essay. I gained most experience
through the peer reviews which is surprising to me because I would have
never guessed that it was so effective and teaching how to better
understand prompts. This class has taught me lessons about collaboration
that I will take with me and use when I finally establish my career. It has
taught me lessons about conciseness that when I write in the future I will be
able to get my point across a lot more effectively, and about how to correctly
integrate sources, which is a lesson I will definitely be using next quarter in
writing 39B.