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Jorge Castro

Professor Greg McClure

Writing 39B

19 March 2018

Cover Letter: Final Reflection Essay

Overall Impression:

Since the beginning of this course of Writing 39B, I have grown immensely as a

sophisticated rhetoric writer for the academic audience and as an individual, learning and

broadening my perception about how to approach a reading and evaluate it. But from the start of

the quarter I was under the impression of being a greenhorn, my writing skills and

comprehension was mediocre at most. There were struggles in how I should overcome my

weaknesses that continuously refracted my progression. One of those weaknesses was my

constant and consistent fear of not writing out an effective essay or to be more precise, strong

and firm assertions. Any giving time I am writing, the thought of producing flimsy and

inadequate statements that bore no sense of confidence or affirmative behind it made myself feel

awkward and uneasy. Another weakness in my writing was decrementing throughout the course

of the class was conforming to what was expected giving to me. That is, as the instructor put

forth any writing assignment with a set of expectations, my general result would usually be

below of what was supposed to be. This created a blend of self-doubt and pressure on my

shoulders weighing down on my mind and informing my mind with the reminder “I need to be

better”. The last anything any “sane” person would want is to fail a writing course or a class in

general. That fear of failure was a lot more potent and frightening than the actual feeling of

unable to improve. Thus, through the several learning opportunities of the class, exposure to
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difficult yet progressive works helped shape and exude better outcomes in my own writing. Two

main assumptions and ideas taken from the 10 weeks of this class were planning, writing outlines

or taking notes to brainstorm concepts and writing, the notion of inputting those concepts from

outlines to an eligible and effective essay that will reflect my skills and understanding of

rhetorical analysis.

One of the first ideas that I procure from this class that was relevant to my strength and

progress as writer was planning and creating outlines that would alleviate any intangible burden

of doing the tangible assignment. Initially, this skill was deeply surpassed and hardly any use to

me during the first two weeks of class because I still had the mentality of only doing the work on

a spur with little considerate though to it. In the image below, this was from one of the first

assignments giving in this class, which I did an adequate job in creating a lengthy and passing

response for this topic of the Cash Reznor Comparison Response. The problem here was that,

this was an inevitable foreshadow of my impending doom. In other words, this created a false

pretense that is simply enough for the class- this amount of effort should be the limit needed to

be set for the class. Throughout the rest of the quarter, the assignments became more

progressively harder and demanding that it wasn’t plausible to put a cap on the things I can do

since that involves preventing myself for growing as a writer. In response to those increasingly

difficult assignments, it became apparent that I orchestrate and ensure new practical skills that

would enable myself to do preparation in completing these tasks. Thus, for the sake of my own

writing and obviously to maintain a good grade in the course, I took up arms in outlining. As

common of a skill as it sounds, it’s a definite underwhelming concept that most people don’t take

seriously. Including myself who believed that it isn’t useful or efficient. Administering outlines

fostered a new insight on how to approach and readily conduct an assignment since the ideas are
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organized more properly. Examples of the outlines I have done would be the No Way Out

assignment when creating topic sentences and RIP Project Proposal, when detailing the specifics

of what the plot and message was going to be about in my story.

The next and essential too that I acquired to strengthen my habits in the class was the

appeal of simply direct writing. What I mean by this is that, it’s sometimes best to jot down ideas

in a document without having second thoughts about how to organize it or even having any prior

knowledge about what ideas to input. Creatively splashing and inserting words on a document

and continue to writer without a moment of hesitation in grammar structure or syntax can put one

in a mode of continuous writing. This understating notion of writing came to in effect or light

during the time of putting together the Midterm Portfolio. One of the assignments was to write

an Rhetorical Analysis paper arguing about a message in any of the reading for the class and

using sources for credibility and reinforcement. In this part of the quarter, I was somewhat still

having trouble being able to formulate a good argument; so, forming a 4-6-page essay felt out of

my reach. My ideas weren’t coming into mind and reading the book for possible messages and

such was just as equally useless as well. To overcome this staggering slump of mine, I took it

upon myself to do take two steps: firstly, search useful rhetorical devices and theater concepts

that can be utilized for the essay and secondly, open a Word document and just start typing

disregarding the format, incorrect grammar and the amount of time you’re using. The second

step was an important pivot throughput the course of being in this class since it involved me

getting to the actual work and creating my argument. The act and notion of writing was

something underwhelming to me seeing how I prefer to follow a template or guideline to

structure my paper. Nevertheless, having literacy blocking moments such as these provided a

new mentality that I should be familiar with that will help excel not only of the class alone but in
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future ones as well. Throughout this course, along with the two skills sets I obtained from

adapting the speed of the class, there were several other processes that was designed to help

refine my writing in the major assignments: Midterm Portfolio and Final Portfolio essays. Those

processes being both Drafting, comments and suggestions from other peers and the Revision step

of correcting those changes. Fundamentally, from this class I need to be able to synergize with

the habits accumulated and connect it with anything in the future that are applicable and

pertaining to those necessary skills.

Drafting:

For the rhetorical analysis of both the Midterm and Final essay required a degree of

understanding about the prompt or expectations being asked set for those assignment and the

texts and sources that can contribute in developing and rebooting these papers. Thinking about

the rhetoric relationship between yourself as the writer and the audience being targeted by your

writing was a significant means of constituting a grasp of what to do for the analysis papers and

how to sharply and effective execute your ideas. The reason for that is because how you project

the writing in terms of the context you’re producing will be interpret greatly by those who

receives it which is the intended audience. Fundamentally, the way you convey your writing will

be determine how others will interpret it for the purposes of this class, the intended audience was

that of the scholarly academic community either for the art-horror Literature or general writers.

Along with those aspects of audience reception and your own critical argumentative writing,

another important aspect of initiating the writing itself, knowing and understanding the sources

for the essays are crucial. When making an argument, it’s imperative and reliable to extend

outside sources to backup any claim made in the paper. By using sources, arguments in my essay

became more reinforced and asserted since a level of authority was added. The sources that were
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relevant in the course were Noel Carrol’s The Nature of Horror, Tony Magistrale and Michael

A. Morrison Introduction to Dark Night’s Dreaming: Contemporary American Horror Fiction

and Mathias Clasen’s, Vampire Apocalypse: A Biocultural Critique of Richard’s Matheson’s I

Am Legend. Each of these sources offered a distinct and different perspective regarding the

horror genre and resources on how to the interpret the genre. For instance, Carroll’s implies that

“a monster or monstrous entity is a necessary condition for horror” (53) and he considered

something a monster if it’s impure and threatening (55). Another interpretation was from

Magistrale and Morrison’s Dark Night’s Dreaming asserting that, “The art of terror is concerned

with detailing the tragic consequences of social and personal disintegration” (3). Lastly for

Clasen’s Vampire Apocalypse delved on author’s writing such as Richard Matheson that

“isolating fears that haunt him personally, and locate his personal individual fears in the larger

context of the Cold War USA” (313) These interpretations were then used for my RA papers of

both the Midterm and Rip essays when making the argumentative claim about what the message

is being embedded in the story.

In An exploration of I Am Legend by Richard Matheson: A Dark Change into Society

Rhetorical essay for the Midterm Portfolio, I made the argument that “Matheson implicitly talks

about the message of societal changes through subjecting power and discrimination towards

groups that can’t be understood or are feared”. Here the thesis, the main point of my essay, was

supplemented using any one of the sources and further exemplified using emphasizes on the

explanatory part of the argument- explaining these evidence works connect to my thesis. For

example, “Carroll states that “an object or being is impure if it is categorically interstitial,

categorically contradictory, categorically incomplete, or formless” (55) which provides a

framework on how Matheson conveys the protagonist as being the impure creature”. From here,
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I make the connection between Carroll’s implication of associating something in horror with

impurity and Matheson own work and presentation of the main protagonist in the story being the

monster. This was the prominent feature of the drafting process where I had to make several

claims with evident and concise relevance with the source being implemented. At first glance, it

was somewhat of a challenge towards doing so seeing how writing isn’t exactly what I call a

forte skill of mine; however, it is worth noting that because it was a challenge and struggle, it

made the feeling of accomplishing these essay with more euphoric and satisfying. For the RIP

project reflection essay, I had to also develop and institute an argument of what my story

message is while again using sources as back up. I asserted that “Magistrate and Morrison stated

that, “a distinguishing trait of horror art is the existence of being that emerges to disrupt the

personal and social relationships of the status quo” (4). This simply means, that within the art-

horror genre, a common and consistent stature for the text to include ideas that go against and

change the infrastructure of typical expectations and concepts”. From here I introduced an

outside and again explain its significance and infer how it works with the message of my essay.

Essentially the backbone of the drafting process was utilizing the sources effectively and making

sure there is a coherent and clear line to follow the interpretation and the thesis incorporated in

the essay.

Revision:

The revision processes for both the Rhetorical Analysis Paper for the Midterm Portfolio

and the Rhetoric in Practice project essay for the Final Portfolio both had an equal amount of

helpful and useful feedbacks and comments that enabled for insights on how to make my

responses stronger and effective. Essentially, the revision itself was a necessary and ideal tool

that provided room for improvements through constructive criticism and comments about what I
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did or didn’t do right. A few praises here and there about my papers are always welcome

however they don’t really engage with the poor qualities of my work that needed to be

addressed. With that in mind, it was imperative that during the peer reviews made by both the

Professor and other students create tips and suggestions about the faults of my papers. Luckily

for my draft, there were a good amount of valuable reviews that I received by my partners that

indicated what areas of the paper were to be attended to. A consistent problem that was seen in

my papers in term of the revision is the obvious misuse of word choice or excessive run off

sentences. Granted I myself can sometimes notice the awkward use of syntax structure and

improper language in word tenses. But, given that it is my own writing and I admit having some

form of bias towards it, I have the inclination to overlook those mistakes. Due to the poor diction

usage, it made my texts and arguments unnecessary long or difficult to read hindering both the

message being projected and causing confusion in the audience. Therefore, to maximize the

potential of my text and fully extending them, it was a priority to fix the problems of my essays

and better deliver the point I am trying to het across.

An example would be in the RIP reflection essay, I asserted that “The message that is

being delivered and embedded in the story is a critique and evaluation of parental expectation

and relationship commitment, the influences and effects these factors have on someone and the

extent to which these things adverse to someone”. This sentence isn’t grammatically concrete for

the most part but the issues of features in this case is the over-barring length of the claim. In

addition, most of the time I insert certain words in a sentence that may sound like verb but are

adjectives once I realize the mistake. As you read through it, there is a point in the sentence

where I need to break it up into two separate ideas as follows: “The message that is being

delivered and embedded in the story is a critique and evaluation of parental expectation and
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relationship commitment-the influences and effects these factors have on someone and the extent

to which these things are adverse to someone” . I added a hyphen to add continuity yet separation

between the sentences to make it more appealing and structure to read. This enables the thought

to be more accessible to understand and comprehend a boy what it is saying and going on about.

Other aspects of my reflection that could be changed to enhance the experience of reading it is

the word choice. Now, in some cases the words I used made sense however there were others

that were adequate to use but better one that can be replaced. Examples included from the

reflection essay such as “the attacks that is reflected” with reflected replaced with “are

committed”; “to let the audience” switch with “to grant”; “Carroll is inferring” with the word

“implied” inserted instead of inferred. Thus, besides lengthy and complex sentences I needed to

watch out for in the revision process but also the changing improper use of diction that can

render the reading as difficult and hard to depict the message or ideas being argued.

Transfer:

With the course being a writing class in nature and practice of the workload incorporated

by the Professor, it is a lateral benefit and embedding ability to be able to handle writing

substantially and efficiently in the future years of any one education or career choices. From the

start to end, it was a struggle and overwhelming challenge to shape a new set of writing habits

and adapting to the increasing pace of outputting several works while remaining consistent and

fluid in the grammar and context of any paper or argument being made. Nevertheless, the sheer

willpower over the work itself and remaining optimistic along the steady oath, the skills obtained

and procured from the class will be an inevitable and permanent quality that will hardly cease

from either memory or practice. Among the integration of newly formed writing conduct,

reading assessment of scholarly works and critical and argumentation of what might be the most
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possible message can be and whom it might be for- are other acquired sets of skills that were the

results of the class effects in learning about writing. Among these skills, they each have a

balances stance in maintaining revealed for future classes of my undergraduate years and trailing

down further to even career points of my life. Given the fact that I want to go into research in the

future regarding an attempt to change the prison faculty system and such, it’s quite necessary that

I am well-equipped and strapped with the skills to handle the scores of reading and writing it

entails. This class gave me the opportunity to sharpen my habit as a writer and increase my drive

for further improvement and desire to learn new techniques and ideas of the scholarly writing. I

never considered myself much an adequate writer, mediocre at best, however taking this course

did shed light on how I ought to more precise in my papers and how to produce stronger potent

topic sentences. In a nutshell, I’ve learned a great deal from this class that as I transition to the

next part of series: Writing 39C will I be able to adjust to the argumentative style of the class and

procure the expectation in the course through my writing.

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Work Cited

Carroll, Noël. “The Nature of Horror.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 46, no.

1, 1987, pp. 51–59. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/431308.

Clasen, Mathias. Vampire Apocalypse: A Biocultural Critique of Richard’s Matheson’s I Am

Legend. Philosophy and Literature, Vol 34, No.2. 2010, pp.313-328, Johns Hopkins

University Press, 2010.

Magistrale Tony and Morrison, Michael A. Introduction A Dark Night’s Dreaming:

Contemporary American Horror Fiction. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia,

S.C, 1996