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Jenny-My Tran
Writing 39B
Professor Haas
August 24
th
2014
Final Reflection Essay
Solving My Own Mystery
Ten weeks have passed since Ive entered Writing 39B, and I have to say; it has been a
difficult journey. Seventy days was what it took to break down and build back up my writing
skills. Wanting to start off on a clean slate, I erased everything I have ever learned from my
previous class and taught myself how to interact over a screen rather than in person. I learned
that asking for help would only benefit me. For years, I thought I had a firm understanding of the
prompts, but when it came to writing out my essays, I struggled tremendously. Feeling agitated, I
continuously asked my peers and professors for help. Emailing, texting and Facebook
messaging, I desperately fought my way through the barriers of not being in a formal classroom.
Being put through the challenge an online class; I developed new skills to get me through
obstacles that would only better my writing. Throughout Writing 39B, I have developed new
abilities such as: communicating with my peers, analyzing and learning the importance of
improving my grammar as well as the beneficial outcomes of peer revision.
During the first few weeks of class, my peers and I were assigned to groups in order to
research about the Victorian England Era and provide information through our very own Wikis
page. In this assignment, I was assigned to be the group leader and given the responsibility to
gather up my group mates in order to assign each person a topic to work on. This leadership
came with great responsibility, as this was the first time I had ever communicated with my
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classmates outside of a classroom. This assignment was a big challenge due to
miscommunication within the group and failure for some of the group members to meet the
deadline I had set up in order to create our Wikis page. Working in a group was a total game
changer, especially with the environment of the classroom. I had to be available at all times,
attatched to my phone and computer in order to meet the times of my group members.
Whether they were busy with personal activities, as a leader I needed to make sure they
understood their assignments. Without the responsibility of being a team leader, I would have
not known the struggles that some members had on their part of the work. Through this
assignment, I have learned that the group has to hold each other up, and without someone
constantly checking up on the group, the group would fall out of synchronization and lose track
of their work. If our group were independently working on their parts of the project, there would
have been a possibility that the project would not have turned out the way it was. The
communication that my group had carried out through the project had improved our work
and led us on the right track onto finishing our projects before the deadline.
When it came to watching Sherlock Holmes constantly, I became interested his
superpower of analyzing and dreamt that if I had the power Holmes possessed, would I have
been able to easily glide through the class without a struggle in sight. However, I did not possess
Holmess power of observation and struggled to analyze as well as he could. The assignment I
struggled the most on was a Wikis assignment to analyze cinematic events. At first, I realized
that analyzing these scenes was harder than they appeared. Transitioning from one scene to
another that came thirty seconds later required me to sit at my laptop and observe the
actions that occured repeatedly until I caught the exact moment I needed to write my
analysis. Although I didnt go into much detail as Holmes would, I attempted my best to
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understand the film analysis guide and incorporate it into my work. Analyzing required me to
revise my work and make sure that what I had was clear to my understanding. This taught me a
lesson that related to my writing: revise my work until I understand what I am writing.
Grammar is a priceless skill, which will benefit you in the long run. For my rhetorical
analysis essay, I read through my peer reviews and realized that my grammar skills were off
track. Without the comments I received from my peers and professor, I would not have
realized how horrifying my essay was to read. As I saw the red marks and arrows I thought it
was a mistake until I was forced to indulge into my own writing and found myself in a mental
breakdown that caused me to develop frustration for the class. After speaking with the professor,
I had agreed that this was the essay that I was going to choose for my paragraph revision due to
the fact that I could not fix what I had wrote nor had time to start over and develop a new idea
for the prompt. I came to the conclusion that asking for help can only benefit me instead harming
me. Setting up meetings with my professor not only helped me relax my mind, but also took
a load off of my shoulders and gave me perseverance to pass the class. My analysis was off
for the cinematic events and my essays were non persuasive. I realized that if I fixed my
mistakes in my portfolio, then this would give me a chance at realizing what I had done
wrong and enable me to move on to a higher writing course.
Realizing that my rhetorical analysis would only hold me back from turning in my work
on time, I had chosen to choose my literature review essay as my final revision to include in my
portfolio. I chose this essay because it displayed my greater analysis of Sherlock Holmes as well
as my skills to give credibility to authors. Now realizing that if I had more time for this essay,
I would have focused more on improving it to meet the requirements and better
understand the topic. With that being said, my final draft is an improvement to my first.
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As I said before, grammar was a priceless skill to obtain. For the Connect assignments, at
first, I thought that it was an unnecessary thing to give college students until I realized how much
it has helped me in the long run. From citing authors to parallelism, the connect assignments
have taught me nothing but only to better my grammar by reading carefully and scanning
through the lessons provided. This module benefited me more than I could have ever thought
coming into this class. My three biggest issues for the connect assignments was that I didnt
understand how to cite my work properly until I engaged with the assignment from a
better understanding. I also did not really understand the importance of parallelism within
essays, and choosing the right type of concise sentences to include into my essays. With the
help of these three components, I have reviewed and incorporated them into my essay, making
sure of knowing that I have a resource to turn back to and correctly learning the appropriate
editing.
In conclusion, Writing 39B has definitely been a journey for me to solve my own
mystery. As Holmes discovered his criminals through observation, I had discovered through
observation about what was affecting my writing skills. I have learned what it takes to become a
better writer by developing my skills and advancing them further enough for me to showcase
into my essays. Although I had started off weak throughout the first eight weeks, I had caught
myself just in time to fix my writing skills and advance my work. With the power of
responsibility, metacogniton and engagement, my social skills as well as my portfolio have
shown a greater understanding to each prompt I was assigned to. Being a late bloomer for
English does not mean you should give up, it just means you should keep on pushing until you
bloom and develop your mind to understanding English. In the future, I will remember the skills
I have learned and incorporate them into each writing assignment I am given.