Beatriz Ulloa

Writing 2
June 8th, 2016
Writing Two Class Reflection
I honestly had no idea what I had to expect going into Writing Two. Once I saw the
syllabus and we went over the main points in class, I found the material familiar because of the
IB curriculum. One of the requirements for the IB English portion was to analyze genres and
their conventions and what differentiated genres. We looked at the book, Into the Wild and
looked at how backpacking articles and other sources talked about Christopher McCandless
and living in the wild in general. The thing about this class though is that I was thrown off with
how much liberty we were given. I remember during the first couple of weeks of class we were
asked during a journal exercise to brainstorm some unconventional genres and I remember I
jokingly wrote down Birthday Cards not thinking too much of it. Then you asked the class to
pick a genre from our small groups to share with the class, and my partners wanted to share my
Birthday Card idea. Honestly, I was surprised that you liked the idea and that other members
of the class did as well. From that moment on I realized that the class was very different than
any other type of academic writing Id ever done before.
The thing I found the least engaging for me was the readers. I personally enjoyed the
Understanding Genres and Writing With Pictures. The information on those two pieces
managed to stick, because Id go back and look at the illustrations to see if there was anything I
missed. Im a visual learner, and I could analyze scenes in films frame by frame for hours, so Im
really glad you included pieces that arent conventional scholarly pieces. I do wish the schedule
allowed for us to discuss the readings more, because there were some extremely valuable
lessons in the writing. For example in Understanding Genres page nine has writing across the
page that suggests that, Each writing situation has its own demands.. Its own
expectations...and its own sense of how writing is to be presented. When approaching a new
composing situation...we need to consider what writing means...what it does and how it

moves from one context to another. I think that page sums up a large portion of what we were
trying to learn by writing our WPs and PBs.
I spent so long on the first Writing Project, I thought by the end of it I would have the
whole thing memorized it. I also enjoyed it, because It was a topic I had pondered about before
the writing project. It came to my attention when I was talking to my younger cousin that she
talked about the Jenners/Kardashians as if they were her friends. She said something like,
Kylie uses the FitMe Tea, so I want to try it. Before she said that I had thought that everyone
knew that Instagram posts that celebrities make are largely based on advertisements and
keeping up the celebrity persona. As I wrote more about the topic I realized how important Dirks
sage words of advice were. It really is important to understand all different sorts of genres, even
though I had never previously thought of Celebrity Instagrams as their own genre.
I did not enjoy Writing Project Two in the slightest. I think that had to with the fact that I
was not particularly interested in the topic that I had picked. I was also overeager to reach that
word count, that I noticed that I wrote a lot of fluff at the beginning of my paper and when I was
getting to the page limit I felt like I was running out of space, so I just called it quits and gave up,
because I thought it was good enough Well, it certainly was not good enough. My grade
reflected the room for improvement that I still had. I was hurt at first by the grade, but after I
revised it for the final portfolio I realized how much work the project needed. I think the grade
was a good wake up call for me, because I always prize myself in getting good grades for my
written pieces. You started class one time by reminding us that each time we write, we should
not assume that we already know everything. In truth I do not know a lot about writing, and that
is because there is so much to learn about.
I went back to my original try-hard ways when it came to the third writing project. I think I
would have enjoyed the project more if I was not so fixated on my grade, but I still managed to
have fun while writing my pretend buzzfeed article. I thought I would have received a higher
grade, but the comments that you left made me realize that as always, my writing was not done

progressing. I think that this class has allowed me to see grading in a different way, because of
the manner that the class is formated. Even though I detested doing revisions during the same
time that I was studying for my other finals I know that the revision process reinforced what we
had been working on the entire year.
I did not think that this class would be relevant to my major, because of the different
nature of the essays I write in my film classes. I decided to take an upper division course for my
major this quarter that focused on a specific genre of film and media, so the classes actually
ended up working out really well together. Writing 2 as whole has reinforced the ideas I already
have about genre, while also adding more to my bank of knowledge. I think that understanding
why writers make certain moves to the way that director makes moves about what is going to be
included in the scene and how its going to tie into the narrative of the rest of the film.
You made a comment on my first WP that I needed to massage my sentence like a
steak, I dont eat meat so I did not enjoy the analogy so I switched it to massaging it like dough.
As the dough is massaged more and more it gets closer to being bread, so as I massage my
ideas and sentences more to fit with each other in my essays I am getting closer to having my
desired product. I still need to work on that though, because sometimes Ill think of an idea for
my essay and I wont want to forget it so Ill place it in my essay without thinking twice about the
location, because at least the information is there. I am more aware of how unproductive it is as
a writer to include ideas without a structure though, so I cant just place sentences anywhere.
If I am still being honest with myself, I will admit that I am not completely satisfied with
my WP2 revision. I tried my hardest to move around ideas, change my thesis, and have each
paragraph go along with the thesis, but I still was not happy with the topic I picked so I dont feel
it was my best work. Even though I am not completely happy with it, I do think I learned the
most from the process of trying to re-write my WP2. All the comments you made at first seemed
so overwhelming. I appreciate that you take the time to mention specific aspects that are
lacking in my papers though, because when I read sentences to myself they seem. Once you

point something out though, it becomes so apparent how the sentence can be improved. Half of
the comments you made were to clarify and be more detailed about my analysis, and that
helped immensely because I was so invested in the writing that I did even think to consider that
the reader was not going to have the papers I was analyzing right in front of them, so they were
not going to know what I was referring to unless I explicitly mentioned it and described it in
detail.
As I am finishing up my revisions for my WPs I am noticing how much more attention I
pay to answering the So What? Who cares question? For so long I thought it was enough to
just write a paper, because I was told to do so, but I never really thought about why I was writing
it. I think knowing why I am writing a paper gives me more direction and structure. I still struggle
because my thoughts naturally wonder of in my paper, but now I notice that I police myself more
by asking Is this relevant? Does this matter? I know that there is always a reason for writing,
but for so long if someone asked me that question my answer would have been, I am writing
this because I my teacher is asking me to. Now I know that is not enough and that each piece I
write serves a higher purpose that at first I may not even notice.
Throughout the course I did not really know what I was doing. I think that the PBs were
an efficient way to get my mind thinking about the writing projects that were coming up. I think
that it may have helped me though to know what grades I was getting on the PBs as I went
along. As Hannah mentioned in class, grades are a way to measure my progress. I got a couple
of points off in a couple of my PBs and I think it would have helped to have gotten those grades
before, so I could improve my future PBs and therefore improve my WPs. I also think the same
thing with the thlogs, I thought we were getting credit for just doing them, so I think if there was
a bit more direction and explanation about the beginning so I could have gotten more out of
them.
Overall I did notice slight changes about the way I read articles for my other classes, and
I definitely was more aware of the genre convention of the pieces I was reading. I still have a lot

of room to improve the way I communicate through writing in an academic manner. I actually
think I have more to improve on now, because of how aware this class has made me of the
common mistakes that I make in my writing. I am glad I took this course as a first year, and I
wish it was required that people had to take it in the first year, because I think I would have felt
like I missed out on some very helpful information if I would have waited to take it until my
second year. Thank you for the awesome class and experience!