Manriquez 1 !

Jessica Manriquez Dr Lynda Haas Writing 37 8 December 2013 My Reflection of Writing 37 When I received the results of my performance on the Analytical Writing Placement test before coming to UCI I did not fully understand what it meant being placed in the Writing 37 course. It was not until Dr. Lynda Haas explained that this class was an Intensive Writing class, that I understood that this class was going to help me in all my weaknesses in order to become a better writer and build the necessary skills in order to communicate with an audience more effectively. I remember the first day of class when Dr. Haas informed everyone that this class theme would be zombies. I felt uneasy because although zombies is a theme very common in much of todays media I myself was not very familiar with anything in relation to zombies. After hearing all the assignments we would be responsible for completing this quarter I became overwhelmed and did not see myself capable of writing so much. But now that the quarter has come to an end, I am thankful for all the tedious assignments this quarter because although at the moment when I was late at night writing an essay or working with my group on perfecting a presentation, I can honestly say that all the hard work has made me a better communicator, whether itd be through writing or presenting. This class has forced me to put into practice many important skills that can be applied in any class, job, and career choice. These skills can be considered habits of mind because the more you practice them the more they should become habits that you perform in anything you do which includes being; curious,open, engaged,

Manriquez 2 ! creative, persistent, responsible, flexible, and metacognitive. The three major tasks in this class were to construct an essay defining the genre of a film, a rhetorical analysis essay on World War Z, and a seminar in which the whole class presented to another class everything we have learned in the quarter. Every assignment required a process which started with a first draft, continued with getting the draft reviewed by multiple peers and discovering your weaknesses and strengths, and then forming a final draft to present to an audience. The first major assignment was to analyze the genre of a film that was categorized in the zombie genre. My group and I analyzed Ruben Fleischers film, Zombieland, that was released in 2009. Before writing the actual essay, we had to form a ten minute presentation for the rest of the class, who was also divided into groups and analyzing other films. This was the first presentation in class and so I put in a lot of effort because talking in front of others has always been my weakness, but with all the preparation and time my group members and I put into it, we definitely felt more confident by the second presentation. As a group we tried to split the work evenly in order to complete the task and so each person had to practice the habit of mind of being responsible with their part because we were a team and if one person didn't do their part then all of us would have suffered the consequences. It was a bit difficult to meet each other in order to form the presentation since we all had very different schedules, so we formed a powerpoint on Google which allowed all of us to work on the presentation in our own time and at the comfort of being at home. This allowed all of us to see each others progress and we would communicate with each other through a group message on Facebook. Communicating with all my group members through Facebook turned out to be very effective because any question or suggestion we had for each other would be shared on the group message and a response would

Manriquez 3 ! shortly follow. We also met physically before the actual presentation and rehearsed going through the whole presentation in order to practice staying in the right time frame allowed for each presentation. After each group presented in the class the other groups graded the presentation in different areas and when I saw all the negative grades our presentation received I felt really annoyed because despite all the hard work my group and I put into forming the presentation we did not do well. After this presentation Dr Haas announced that a shorter version of this presentation had to be made and presented the following week. Only two of us would present out of our group of four, and another group member and myself were chosen to present this second version of the presentation. I felt uneasy because I was fearful of what my other class peers would think of our presentation, but in the end when I got up to present in front of the class, I definitely felt more confident than the first time and personally felt as if I did better than the last time. These presentations definitely helped when it came time to form my genre easy on Zombieland. In my first draft of the genre essay of Zombieland I thought I had answered all points to the prompt correctly, but to my surprise I did not. After submitting my first draft and then having it peer reviewed by multiple people including Dr Haas, I realized many of my weaknesses. Some of my weaknesses were lack of analysis, to many scenes being analyzed, and I didn't analyze any in-depth conventions. Realizing my weaknesses and then trying to find my strengths is putting into practice metacognition which is an important habit of mind. In the final draft of this essay I realized my strength was organizing my paper in a form that is not confusing for the reader which was something I had to practice in the first draft. My greatest weakness in the final draft was analyzing a scene in depth from the film including cinematography terms in order to give

Manriquez 4 ! my paper a scholarly form. If I had more time to work on writing this paper, I would have contacted Dr Haas and asked for help on analyzing scene using cinematography terminology. Analyzing the genre in Zombieland was a task that was easier than analyzing the rhetorical situation in Max Brooks novel, World War Z. I chose to analyze the novel form genre that World War Z falls into by analyzing the way Brooks uses transitions to move from one section to the other. In my first draft of this essay I decided to include one of the forums I had made about transitions. In my first draft I slightly modified the forum and added an introduction and a conclusion, but that proved to be an ineffective decision. After receiving multiple peer reviews again, I realized that my weakness was once again analysis. The biggest problem with writing this paper was that I was becoming bored of the subject, zombies. I had to be persistent which is a habit of mind that I have had to practice throughout this class, and go through and make sure to analyze everything that the prompt required me to analyze. Once I applied all the suggestions I received on my first draft to form my final draft, I thought I would do better. Dr Haas reviewed my final draft and greatly helped in pointing out the weaknesses of my paper and the strengths. One of the greatest weaknesses in my rhetorical analysis paper was one again the lack of analysis and too much summary and organization of the whole paper. My strength in my final draft is y introduction paragraph because I made it clear to the reader what my paper would be about and what the main concept would be. All the analysis the class did on different aspects of the rhetorical situation of World War Z would be included in the seminar that our class would present to the other writing class.

Manriquez 5 ! The seminar, which is the assignment I was most fearful of since the beginning of the quarter turned out to be the most entertaining and rewarding assignments I have ever completed. Preparing for my individual contribution was easier than the other presentations because i was simply modifying what I had said in the previous presentations. My groups responsibility was to get the presentation ready for the seminar which was a hard task, but every group made it easier by posting their presentations to the writing studio. I did not take much part in bringing the presentation together because I was not very familiar with the program we were using to bring the presentations together, but luckily one of my group members was and he was able to form the presentation which ended up exceptional. One of my weaknesses in the seminar was becoming nervous while presenting and asa result forgetting some of the things I had to talk about. An example of this would be when I was talking about a military character of World War Z, Maria Zhuganova. I forgot to mention that she continued serving her country even after she left the military. This was an important fact that had to be included, but my stage fright prevented it from happening. My greatest strength in the seminar was improvising and having things to say when I forgot to mention something instead of stopping and not saying anything. If I could participate in the seminar again I would make sure to rehearse more times before the final presentation so that I dont forget anything important I have to mention. This class has provided me with many abilities I thought I completely lacked such as learning to be flexible with other peoples opinions, being creative while presenting something to group of people, being curious and researching anything that I did not fully understand, and being open to recommendations from my fellow peers. As a result of this class I have learned to be comfortable while presenting to an audience, which is something I have struggled with my

Manriquez 6 ! entire life. Another thing I have learned as a result of being in this class is teamwork, working with the same group for the whole quarter has taught me to learn to trust others. I have always preferred working alone because I tend to trust no one one, but myself, but this class has changed my way of thinking and has taught me that is better if more people contribute to a project because you have multiple opinions and ideas coming together. I am now thankful for all the tedious work required from this class and for the many hours I spent working on assignments because I can now say I am not only an expert with zombies, but being an effective writer and communicator as well.