Katia Lopez Dr.

Haas Writing 37 09 March 2014 The Final Reflection Essay When I first saw the results of my writing test, I was confused. I was unaware of what Writing 37 was because all I had heard from other friends is that they were taking either Writing 39A or Writing 39B. I began to get worried when some people told me Writing 37 was below Writing 39A because I knew Writing 39A was the introduction to writing and so if I got below that, truly how terrible were my writing skills. I began to feel at ease when my counselor told me Writing 37 was a combination of Writing 39A and 39B. Even though I knew what Writing 37 was a combination of, the definition of Writing 37 was still a mystery to me because no one told me why I was put into that class. During week seven, my professor finally told my class and I why we were in Writing 37. She said most of us lacked the ability to analyze text; when asked to analyze a piece of text, we simply summarized it in our essays. This quarter I realized how much time has passed since I had written a decent paper and it was difficult for me to get back into writing academic essays. The type of writing I had the most trouble with this quarter was analyzing. In high school, my teachers rarely asked me to analyze texts therefore I never gained the skills needed to write a textual analysis. I learned that in order to analyze a text you must break it down to its core; start general but little by little get down to more specifics. Our focus on analyzing genre has taught me that there is much more to what the author writes. When

authors write a simple paragraph, there is actually more behind it. As a reader it is my duty to read a passage and try to understand what the author is really saying. It can be easy to understand what certain authors are saying but on the other hand, you have some authors that are more complex and it is difficult to understand what they are trying to convey. Having to try to analyze these different texts opened me to a form of writing I had never done before. To this day, I strongly feel I need to continue to work on my analyzing skills because they are not the best they can be. The skills I did develop this quarter-better communication, analysis, and creativity skills will help me in future projects and classes because I will have learned how to express my ideas more effectively to those I am working with. My lack of skills when it comes to analyzing texts became more apparent to me when I did not do a decent job on my Conan Doyle essay. Throughout that essay I felt somewhat lost because I still did not understand the concept of analyzing therefore the essay I want to fully revise is my Modern Text essay. After the trouble I had with the Conan Doyle essay, I tried my best to improve my analyzing skills with my Modern Day Text essay. When I was writing my essay for the Modern Day Text, I made sure I read the instructions very carefully because on my Conan Doyle essay I had failed to do so. My final draft for the Modern Day Text essay is stronger than my last essay because this time around I used all of my resources to learn how to analyze scenes for television shows better. Dr. Haas has created a class Links page that has many valuable resources that helped me learn the techniques directors use to film. My weakness this time around was not including enough details. When I begin writing essay, I have various details in mind that I want to include in my essay but sometimes I forget to put them in my essay. If

I had more time to revise my essay, I would try to break down the episode I analyzed into bits and pieces and try to enhance my analysis. I did not choose to revise my Conan Doyle essay because I feel it was a lost cause. The first draft of my Conan Doyle essay was not what it should have been, my second draft was somewhat better but it was still not at the standard it should have been; therefore, I revised the very first paragraph of my Conan Doyle essay. My first paragraph should have introduced what I was planning to write about in the rest of my essay but even in the first paragraph I do not think I did a decent job. The strength in my revision is my thesis because my thesis is now more clear and concise. When I learned that in Writing 37 we were going to work in groups, I was scared. I was afraid of the fact that I would have to rely on others to do their part of our assignments, but I was wrong to be afraid. Working in groups has turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it has helped by making me more responsible and showing me that college students are more reliable than high school students. The projects I have worked on with my group always are due two days after they are assigned and in all honestly, I did not think it was possible to complete them. The time limit tested my flexibility skills but communicating with my group and having everyone contribute showed me it could be done. The peer reviews taught me how be open to constructive criticism as well as forced me to get to know more of my classmates better. The Connect Grammar and Language Assignments tested my persistence this quarter. Since the modules were due every week, I made it my mission to try to complete all the modules in one sitting no matter how tired or uninterested I was. It was that type of persistence that allowed me to never miss a module deadline. The first few modules I

did on Connect were fairly easy but after reviewing my scores on Connect, I realized that I was having more trouble with more modules than I thought I was going to. The modules I had the most trouble with were Generating Ideas and the Critical Reading: Paraphrasing and Summarizing to Understand a Text. On these modules I received 55 percent (generating ideas) and 57 percent (paraphrasing and summarizing). I did not think I did as bad as I did, but looking back, I should have known I was not going to do well on those modules. I have always had trouble beginning an essay and trying to come up with things to write about. I knew I was good at understanding grammar and all of the things that relate to grammar but I have always been terrible at critical reading. I believe part of the problem is that when I see long reading passages, I either get bored or I start to jumble up the words. For the RIP Presentation I believe I engaged and contributed a fair amount to the presentation. The day of the presentation, I played the role of Mrs. Hudson, Sherlock and Watsons landlord. I had a minor role but I believe I did a decent job. Before the day of the presentation, I did a number of things to help prepare our class for the RIP Presentation. One thing I was a part of was the script team. As part of the script group it was my duty to gather with my fellow script group members and make sure we came up with the 15-minute introduction and the script for the presentation. For the 15-minute introduction, Jennifer, my fellow classmate and I, wrote the script that was about the late Victorian Era. The next thing I did was set up the Google document for the 15-minute presentation because no one had taken the initiative to start a document. I then was assigned to write scene four of the play and I did so. Having to write a scene tested my

creativity levels because I had never done something like that before and I believe I did a good job for it being my first time writing a scene (but I cannot take all the credit for Jennifer helped me once again). After I finished writing my scene, I then made another Google Document for the script; I made sure to e-mail the scriptwriters and tell them I had made a Google Doc for our part of the play. For our modern text groups, we were assigned to make a presentation that was a minute and a half that had both a script and visuals; Roland and myself wrote the script Amber was going to be reading for the presentation. Our classs presentation went overall well in my opinion. I believe we had a good storyline to our play; it was original (daughter kills adopted brother). We also had some very good actors and actresses as well. Sandra and Julien were able to captivate Tiffany Stapleton and Peter the Anteater extremely well. Sandra was able to portray a realistic interpretation of a mourning mother and Julien was able to exude the peppiness of Peter the Anteater amazingly. I believe the presenters also did a magnificent job explaining to the other class the details of what we learned in class. Ambers introduction was clear and precise and straight to the point. Things we could have worked on more are rehearsing the lines of the actors. Some of the actors would forget their lines and would have to refer back to their script. We could have also developed the storyline more, even though I believe it was a good storyline, it could have been more complex. Lastly, I think there could have been better ways to transition from scene to scene. For example, we did not do it in a very smooth manner. I strongly feel the other Writing class did an excellent job in covering all aspects of the horror genre. For example, I do not think any of their presentations were repetitive

at all. Things I would have them improve would be their slides; some of their slides were too long and caused the class to lose interest. All though I liked the handout sheets, I do not think they were necessary in some presentations because the presenters already had the same information on the handouts on the slides. All the assignment I worked on this quarter taught me one thing; you get what you give. By that I mean, if you put in minimal work to the assignments you are doing, you will have a mediocre result. This is important to keep in mind because when I go off to the real world, I will need to give my employers my 100 percent otherwise they will get upset with me or worse, fire me. This class has been a great trainer for future writing classes I will have because it has taught me to be curious and ask questions when I do not know the answer to something. I still believe I need to work on my analyzing skills but I know with practice I can master them.