Coming into Writing 39B at the beginning of this quarter, I was prepared for the heavy workload. Since I recently took 39A in the previous quarter, I thought it should not be too difficult for me. I knew that I was familiar with the expectations of a college writing course. However, it was still more difficult than I expected. Although I was able to apply some strategies/techniques I acquired in Writing 39A to this course, it has definitely been a challenging journey. Many things surprised me in this course. The very first one was the theme. I did not know what it was when I enrolled because writing gets full quickly. I was shocked when I received the email from Professor Greg. To be honest, I felt anxious and was scared because horror was never my cup of tea. I did not know what to expect and literally thought I was going to have to come up with my own horror stories. However, I was wrong: the course objectives were not as simple as I imagined. But interestingly enough, I began to gain interests to the horror genre as the quarter progressed.

 

RIP: My Own Monstrosity was one of the first assignments I did in Writing 39B. This exercise asked me to consider my inner monster that represented my greatest strengths and weaknesses and describe it in detail without calling out all the symbolic references explicitly.

 

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The highlighted sentences above is a small description of my inner monster: greed. It is something that we all have and deal with in our daily lives. This assignment officially introduced me to what this course is really about. It helped me understand the process of rhetoric in a piece of writing. Using the Nature of Horror by Noël Carroll that one of the essential traits for an art-horror monster is “an extraordinary character in an ordinary world”; my monster is invisible and appears whenever it desires. Something I did differently than my classmates in this assignment was that I wrote it in a third person narrative voice, whereas most people wrote in the monster’s perspective, or first person narrative voice. I believe that by doing so it seems more eerie because the audience does not know who the narrator is. This exercise helped me to realize the importance of rhetorical choices made from the author by being the writer myself.

 

Throughout this course, there were two major projects/essays: the Rhetorical Analysis paper (RA) and the RIP Project. Both of them were challenging for me in some ways. We focused on the RA paper during the first half of the course. The RA paper was a thesis-driven essay which focused on close reading of a text with specific attention to elements of the rhetoric that impact the reader. Rhetoric is how a text communicates to its audience, not what it means. Hence, just simply summarizing the storyline/plot was not enough and did not meet the requirements of the prompt. I had to read more carefully and think deeply about the rhetorical situation of the text I chose: Snow Glass Apples. For instance, what the message that the author wants to send to his/her audience, the cultural/historical context of the text, and how to apply it to the real world when fiction does not exist. After attending the first office hour and discussing the message from Snow, Glass, Apples, I began to write my RA first draft without the intention of focusing on the organizations and grammar. Since it was a rough draft, I did not care too much about it and just added my ideas piece by piece along the way. As a result, my first draft was disorganized and sloppy. Therefore, I decided to go to office hours again and get some feedback/comments in order to edit my essay. After receiving the feedback/comments from Professor Greg, I realized that I needed to revise my thesis.

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In order for my thesis statement to work/do its job, I need to (1) render a message; (2) include all the outside sources in order; and lastly (3), provide a logical plan for proving the assertion of my paper. Using the Rhetorical Analysis Thesis Statement Checklist and the Sample Thesis Statement exercise we were assigned as a group, I revised my thesis statement in my second draft.

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As you can see, I not only revised my thesis statement, but also deleted the part before it and rewrote the introductory paragraph. I decided to do this because what I wrote in the first draft was not relevant to my paper and created unnecessary fluff.

 

During the final revision of my RA paper, I restructured my topic sentences using the feedback from the peer review we did in class.

 

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Before the deadline of the RA final draft, we did a really unique exercise in class. Here are the specific details below according to Professor Greg’s email.

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As the email instructed, we were asked to bring the chopped-up draft without any headings, page numbers, and any identifying information. We paired up with a classmate and were asked to put his/her essay in order by reading his/hers topic sentences. The purpose of this task was to see if the topic sentences suggest the main idea of the paragraphs. If they did, it should be easy to figure out the order of the paragraphs. It was definitely an interesting exercise and it helped me understand the importance of the topic sentences in an essay. They play a crucial role.

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Based on the comments I got from the Midterm Profolio, I would change one thing about the RA final draft if I was given the chance to write it again. I would include more textual analysis in my essay instead of summarizing the story.

 

The second half/following weeks were mainly focused on the RIP Project. My group and I decided to create a short slasher film. This idea was inspired by the horror genre presentation we did earlier this quarter. Even though we quickly came up with the storyline of our movie, the actual filming was extremely hard. We had to overcome many obstacles throughout the process including the visual (costume, fake blood, etc), editing, and sound recording. My group and I really dedicated our time into this project.

 

Another inspiration we used is a trope from the Hush episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. However, we chose to put our personal twist and switched the idea. Unlike the typical trope where the victims try to scream for help, silence became the savior in our short horror film. Every victim screamed before their death.

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There is a photo of us behind the scenes.

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Overall, the RIP Project was an exciting project and we were able to present our own interpretation of the horror genre in our short film. The only comment I would make in the process of creating the RIP Project was that the quality of the finished product would be better if the assignments followed the schedule of the RA paper where we wrote a draft first before filming the short horror movie.

 

Writing 39B has been a journey that has reached its end. But my journey as a writer still continues. The last ten weeks has not only been about a road trip to Santa Barbara, crazy Black Friday shopping, and midnight Boba runs. It has also been about my progress of becoming a better writer. Taking this course has not only made me become a writer but also an audience who looks closely within a piece of writing. I began to question every piece of writing I encountered, including stories, newspaper articles, journals, research papers and even social media pages. I wondered “Why is it written like this? Who are the audience? What does the author want to tell them? What is the intention of writing this piece?” It is important to be capable to read, but thinking about the writing behind the words while reading is also crucial, and it creates a connection between you and the writing.

 

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I really enjoyed taking Writing 39B with Professor Greg. Even though each seminar was almost two hours long, it went by fairly quickly. He showed enthusiasm of the course topic and his class was very interactive. The sense of humor he has made it even better! Throughout this process, I also realized the beneficial influences of peer reviews. The feedback I got from my peers not only allowed me to recognize my own strengths and weaknesses as a writer, but also provided an opportunity for me to learn from my fellow classmates. This course enabled me to look at the “horror genre” from a different perspective. Moving forward, I believe that I will be able to apply the skills I have learned in this course to Writing 39C and throughout my academic career. Despite the fact that I still have a long way to go as a writer, as long as you step out of your comfort zone and walk through the obstacles and hardships, you would eventually pursue your goals and succeed! Just remember never give up because as Professor Greg stated “Life is a process of figuring things out.” You never know what you are capable of once you try it. Lastly, I want to thank Professor Greg for these past ten weeks as you are truly an awesome instructor!

 

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