Ariana Hernandez

UWP 1

10/11/17

Cover Memo

A strength of my essay is the content. Its a clear story about a specific person and their

influence on my literary development. I am focused on my time spent writing on literature and

predominantly poetry. My essay is pretty straightforward. I am able to tie back to my current

literacy which I think is important (however if my peer responders do not I would like to know

how to change that). I think my weaknesses are that its kind of boring. I dont have very good

descriptive language and I am unsure if my voice and diction make it interesting. If I think it is

boring I can only imagine what it is like for someone else to read it. I am not exactly sure how to

make it more interesting but I am looking forward to some helpful criticism. I also worry that my

examples are not as relevant as I would like. I think I need some guidance there.

I would like my peer responders to help refine my points and tell me what I should

expand on. I want to know what is interesting in my paper so I can expand on that and what is

boring so that I can take it out or spice it up. I like a lot of writing on my paper with helpful

suggestions and guiding questions. I am concerned with some of my word choices and repeating

the same word over and over, so I appreciate synonyms and suggesting to rephrase certain

sentences or phrases.
Ariana Hernandez

UWP 1

10/11/17

The Man with the Batman Tattoo

Coming out of ninth grade English Honors I thought English as a subject was below par.

I had no interest of English coming into ninth grade and no interest coming out. I read the Iliad

and Romeo and Juliet passively and with no real care in this class. At fourteen years old I had

decided that English was not my subject and that I should stick with math (the subject I thought

was destined to be in my future). I had heard about Mr. Rivas, my tenth grade English teacher,

from many of his past students. Apparently he was handsome for a teacher and even had a tattoo

of the batman logo on his leg. I walked into class with close to no expectations of how much of

an impact Mr. Rivas would have on my literacy development.

Poetry was an abstract concept to me. Something only highly literary people were able to

understand and more importantly enjoy. Mr. Rivas introduced me to Sylvia Plath. Her work was

unlike anything I have ever read. I was enthralled by her ability to capture an emotion with a

single line. Most of the work I have studied, even now at a collegiate level, has been

predominantly written by a male author. Being able to read Sylvia Plath showed me the power of

the female voice. I felt passionate about reporting on her work. Her experiences made literature

something I could understand. While reading the Iliad I felt no connection to my life or the world

around me. Sylvia Plath was a real person to me. The way Mr. Rivas taught her made me feel

like I knew her on a personal level. I gladly wrote and reported on her work throughout high

school. She was my go to for any project having to do with poetry.

 Mr. Rivas continued to be my eleventh grade English teacher as well. Most of the

students in my class had already had him, like me, so it was a welcoming environment. He was

familiar with our work and even our personalities. He would joke around with us and then give

us guidance when needed. One of the books we studied was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain. I was anticipating greatness since it was being taught my Mr. Rivas. He showed

literary and social contexts of the literature. Not only were we reading a book written in the

Gilded Age, we were understanding how the book could still be relevant in modern day society.

This became relevant in my writing as I was able to get a deeper understanding of the literature.

High school held a variety of amazing teachers beside Mr. Rivas that taught me stunning

subjects. I had wonderful physics and math teachers, so without much thought I went into

engineering as my major. Needless to say engineering was very difficult. The classes in college

did not come naturally to me and would keep me up late at night trying to understand them. By

my third quarter I decided to take a Comparative Literature class because I needed the Arts and

Humanities credits and thought it would be a nice break from all the STEM heavy subjects. I

have always thought Comparative Literature is a cool subject but not something I could see

myself trying to pursue. This class has turned out to be my favorite class I have taken at UC

Davis. We studied poetry and novels from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. I remembered

how much I loved English and reading literature while in this class. It was the only class that I

was excited to go to and to complete the assignments.

Its one thing to enjoy something, but another thing to succeed at it. My assignments for

Comparative Literature were genuine and I could feel myself growing attached to what I was

assigned to read. I read the works of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and was

able to delve deep into my assignments. I remember talking to my friend on the phone about how
Coleridges The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was one of the most dynamic poems I have ever

read. I eventually used this poem for my final assignment in the class. We were allowed to

choose any piece that we had read throughout the quarter. I used skills I had learned in Mr.

Rivas class to annotate the passages we were given, to interpret the text into my own thoughts,

and then convey my findings in essays and in class discussions. I did excellent in this class. I got

all As and one B, however the B was on an essay about Karl Marxs Communist Manifesto so I

blame my high school government teacher on that and not Mr. Rivas. Being in this class taught

me that math and engineering were not going to be in my future. I felt much happier being in a

subject that required more spoken thought and your own interpretation of the material.

Mr. Rivas gave me the tools that enabled a joy of writing to come even after his classes.

He impacted my literary development by showing me a side of literature that would have

remained hidden without his class. I wrote essays and discussed literature in his class which

allowed me to go into my Comparative Literature confident in my abilities. Mr. Rivas showed

me the beauty of literature and how to transition that into my literary development. I blame him

for my current contemplation on adding Comparative Literature as a minor.