Reflection Essay

Dear Sophia,

We are at this point of the quarter, where finals are around the corner, anxiety levels

increase, uneasiness in the air with GPAs hanging on its last string. While the quarter is counting

down, we forget to realize the obstacles we’ve over came; the amounts of typing on keywords to

finish our Style and Reflection Posts (assigned twice per week, min. 250 words), annotating

dumbfounded information that made us reflect the corruption in the education system and

important topics that will shape our style and thought-process in writing. This quarter has truly been

a reality-check.

Articles like Foley’s Unteaching the Five Paragraph Essay was a true stab in the back by Mrs.

Robles, my senior English Teacher. I was truly shocked, un-able to contemplate the fact that I have

been deceived by the education system. Having read this article, the first week of class, I was surely

unprepared to succeed the rest of the quarter. Because the five paragraph format was the core to

writing, I have had the mindset that a five paragraph structure is the foundation of a good paper.

Little did I know that that was so wrong. In class discussion, I remember raising my hand, saying

“what is the right way then?” Throughout this quarter, I did question “what is the right way.” How

am I supposing to write? Is there a structure, formula, pattern that I have to follow?

In actuality, there’s no right way, which was daunting. There’s no structure, formula, nor pattern

that reflected the perfect paper. There’s only suggestions, comments and revision that help writers,

like me, articulate a well developed paper, the “perfect paper.”

This was troubling, not having someone there to tell me that this is how your suppose to

write or this is what’s acceptable. It was truly challenging to have purpose in my style of writing. It

was hard to give reason to why I purposely chose to include a certain order or why I chose to

writing my paper in a certain way. It was hard to understand the concept of “reflecting on my
reading and composing processes.” I thought to myself, “what the [heck] does this mean.”

Reflecting on your reflecting, would surely confused anybody, but after a while it does actually

makes sense if you pass the phrasing.

Even though, I was cognitively aware of the rhetorical choices other writers purposely

imposed on their writing, it was hard to implement this in my writing. I wrote essays that were flow-

y, that sounded nice, and had good transitions between paragraphs. But little did I know that was

not the only thing that I had to worry about. According to Trimble’s article, Thinking Well, as a

writer, I have to anticipate the reader’s response and provide clarity throughout my paper. Trimble

would surely agree, that “we must hold the reader’s hand” I, as a writer, must place myself in a

mindset that I am reading this essay for the first time [knowledge of conventions]. By having this

mentally, thinking as the reader, has helped to sculpt my essays into a well developed papers. It

would make my question; my style, my introduction, phrasing of words, and how I decided to

introduce/conclude my argument. In total, it creates a “perfect paper.”

The “perfect paper” would not come naturally, well not for me. It would take an ample of

attempts to actually envision an awareness of why I chose what I chose, or to anticipate the reader’s

response. Having read Shitty First Drafts, by Anne Lamott, it felt like my prayers to GOD have been

answered. This article was so relatable. As I was reading her article, every writing experience she

stated, I said “yup, that’s me too.” She described her attempts to writing as “pulling teething” and

that “the right words just do not come pouring out like ticker tape.” I was so shocked that renowned

writer like Lamott, award-winning author, also had anxiety and frustration in attempting her first

draft. In her article, she suggests that, as novice writer, I should consider writing shitty first draft to

generate ideas, to basically get the juices flowing, in order to put ideas on paper, because you have to

start somewhere in order to lead to the “perfect paper.” Lamott is right in calling them “shitty first
drafts,” because it makes me feel less worried and centered on grammatical errors which limit my

creativity when writing my drafts.

Towards the end of the quarter, when you introduced many projects like the discourse

community paper, literacy essay, and the multimodal map. I felt more prepared than if you would

have assigned these projects in the beginning on the quarter. I would have done bad and gotten a

terrible grade. Through reading these articles like Shitty First Drafts and Thinking Well, I now have

some awareness of what the heck I’m actually doing. These articles shaped and make me realize how

much input I have as a writer and how much revision goes in a paper (a lot by the way).

When I writing my literacy essay, I did as suggested, I wrote the world’s shittiest first draft

ever. I was in the library on a Tuesday tonight, put on some Coldplay, and wrote what I was feeling,

what my heart was telling to me write. A few days later, “Who wrote this” I franticly said as I re-read

my first draft. As I was reading my draft through incorrect tenses, and grammatical errors, I found

key words like privileged, unique position and growth. These where the key words that shaped and

sculpted the rest of the essay. I purposely wanted these words to stick in the minds of my intended

audience, UC Davis Chicanos, so that could so relate to the disconnect that I felt throughout my

first year at Davis. In my Introduction, I wanted my audience to know I little about me, and why I

truly felt alone at Davis, I wanted the readers to know the racial differences that affect my

perception of who I am. I wanted them to understand why I felt what I felt, which lead to my self-

reflection on my identity as a Chicano. Even though I did create a well thought out and relatable

introduction to my Chicano readers by anecdotal evidence, I started to rambled off on about what I

am prideful of throughout the rest of my essay. It was difficult to transition from a relatable

introduction to my own experiences as a Chicano. When I was writing out my experiences, had the

mindset of common cultural and social conventions that would make my audience say “yup, me

too.” But I came to the realization that I need an intermediate phrase/paragraph/sentence, just
something that would “guide my reader” to my own experiences, so I wrote a two sentenced

paragraph that would lead my readers know that I going to start talking about my know experiences

as a Chicano. I believe this was not the best transition but it did not leave my Chicanos feeling

bombarded and misguided. I also PURPOSELY, with much exclamation, decided to say use a one

lined concluding statement, “ Who am I? What defines me? I am a first generation Mexican-

American.” I wanted my Chicanos to understand my journey from self-doubt to my pride as a

Mexican American [megacogntion]. I used these specific questions to challenge other Chicano, just

like I challenged myself, to answer these questions and claim their pride too. This strategy of a one

lined concluding statement might not have being practical, but I wanted make them to think, and I

thought that this statement would create that type of response.

I wanted this growth and self-realization to carry on to my multimodal map. I wanted to

create the same response that makes my intended audience think. I decided that a short narrated

video of a plant growing into a sunflower would A) resemble growth B) make the audience think of

their own core values that has made them grow. And I thought that this could best be displayed by a

short narrated video about the life of Jimmy Seed (the plant who grew into a sunflower). I decided

to give the plant a persona, hence the life of Jimmy, in order, make the audience more malleable of

my message because if you give something a name/persona its has more value to a person

[rhetorical knowledge]. Though out the video, the narrator, Karen Marquez, explains Jimmy

continues to grow despite the idea of isolation. I wanted to the audience to understand that Jimmy

grew because he knew who he was on the inside (a beautiful sunflower) and that the outside only

resembled who he was on the inside. I also wanted my audience to question what their core values

were and if their perception of themselves in the inside reflected their physicality. I believe I have

guided the readers through Jimmy’s life enough to make them question themselves, but at same

time, I could understand that the readers might not naturally question themselves like I would love
them to. That’s why I put a question in end of the video to direct their train-of-thought after, to

make them reflect and think. In my next revision, I would like to add an introduction so that my

audience understands that the Jimmy’s life is a metaphor.

The last and final project you assigned was the discourse community project, the

hardest/tedious/headache-causing project this quarter. First of all, as you may know I did my

discourse community project on Spanglish Memes. What an unconventional research topic you may

ask, well you where right, this was something very uncommon for a research topic especially finding

creditable peer-reviewed journals for it. But I was lucky to find some articles that did discuss the

topic of Spanglish as a language and some article of memes. Having two different types of

information, I was able to take pieces of each and articulate it in my topic, Spanglish memes

[research]. This wasn’t as easy as you might think, it was truly puzzling. When I was writing my first

draft, I initially my intention was create subtitles (Origins of Memes, Spanglish language, Spanglish

Memes) to organize the flow of information to my audience so that they would be able to

understand what my Spanglish memes are in the end. After peer-review [processes], I found that the

transition of each subtitle was misleading, as if I was discussing three different topics. It turned out

that I was not connecting each topic to the next, I was bombarding my readers with different topics

that didn’t not carry on. That’s why I came up with final draft of this essay, I decided to leave the

paragraph of Origins of Memes (to give my audience some context of what memes are) and

incorporate Spanglish languages with Spanglish memes together (to not make the text disconnect).

Because of this choice, I still see disconnect when I in the converged paragraph. For example, in my

fifth paragraph where I tried to mix both of the topics together, I felt that I started talking about

Spanglish memes, when I stated “Futhermore, the surge of …..” but the rest of my paragraph

started talking about the Spanglish language, stating that “Spanglish provokes more expressive

skills.” If give more time to revise this paper I would definitely made a better topic sentence that
didn’t talk to much about the Spanglish language but more on Spanglish Memes, and see how that

would work out. In addition, my conclusion was not that great. I did not felt that it did a great job at

introduction this topic in an ongoing discussion. Even though, I feel that it contribution to a

ongoing discussion, I did state “that’s to say, Spanglish language is a new way of speaking that might

be seen more frequently,” to say that this might create a formal language. Also, I didn’t think that I

found my argument in this essay, I wrote about why this genre exist and how it came about. In total,

I did a lot of reflection and revision, but I the end of the day, there’s still much work that needs to

go on in my discourse community research paper.

In brief, writing is hard especially having had the mindset I had in the beginning of the

quarter. This quarter I truly made me reflect on the processes that goes in writing (its not was easy as

you may think). Expository writing takes plenty of analyze and revision. After having the sense of

analyze and constant dedication that I saw myself do because of this course, I could implement this

onto my another classes, especially in psychology where I have to interpret data, revise my reports,

understand the genre of psychological writing styles. In total this course, as giving me an awareness

to acclimate and articulate the learning outcomes of this course to fit distinct genres of writing.

Sincerely,

Mario Hernandez