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Young Hoon Song

Professor Gregory John McClure
Writing 39B
7 December 2015
Final Reflection: Looking Into the Mirror Once More
With the end of this quarter comes the end of my time in Writing 39B. The course
really lead me to realize that writing can really be considered a form of science as well
as an art, and, in turn, how artistic you can make logic and science if you have an
understanding of the two. In addition, through the multiple times Ive gone through the
writing process this quarter, Ive learned much more about myself as a writer, including
my own strengths and weaknesses. My writing experience in high school really couldnt
have prepared me for taking a university level writing course, and now that Ive reached
the end, I can justifiably say that Ive grown over the course of these past ten weeks.
Before coming into this class, I held the notion that a genre was simply a form of
categorization for writing and film. My definition of the word didnt go any farther than
that, and it seemed like a very simple concept to me. It wasnt until I came to this class
that a full understanding of that word came to me, and it started with Nol Carrolls
essay, The Nature of Horror, in which we explored the real definition of genre through
the lens of the horror genre. Through reading this essay, I learned how a genre is really
defined by an audiences perception of a medium, not the medium itself. I found it
particularly interesting how we, as a society, have a set of expectations for everything,
and that these expectations could be played upon and manipulated by authors in order
to call upon certain reactions. This key and crucial concept, learned so early in the

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quarter, would later be reapplied over and over throughout the quarter, in particular
through the Rhetorical Analysis paper as well as the Rhetoric-in-Practice project and
follow-up paper.
From there, we moved on onto the Reznor vs. Cash essay, which was our first
real piece of writing as well as our first rhetorical analysis. Looking at the earliest work
with rhetorical analysis, I found that my work simply wasnt argumentative enough
during the earliest draft and I had issues with making my topic sentences strong enough
to be supported by the rest of the following paragraphs. I also didnt have the instinct yet
to know whether or not my arguments were strong enough, which is a skill Id develop
later. This specific assignment, however, brought attention to my eyes how weak my
topic sentences were, and its something I would have issue with again in Rhetorical
Analysis paper, just at a more minor degree. At the time, through the revision process, I
also learned that a preconceived mindset that my work was finished and couldnt be
improved was a major deterrent and would slow me down in the overall process. You
can see in the Pieces section under Reznor vs. Cash how my initial draft and my
revision of the paper show definite progress and realization of my mistakes. We
wouldnt revisit this style of writing until later, but the small things I learned here
definitely carried onto my bigger works later.
We then started learning more about the specific genre of the class, horror, and
spent time getting familiar with the genre, specifically through reading, discussion, and
analysis. Our first writing assignment with horror was My Own Monstrosity, in which we
applied what we learned through Nol Carrolls work in order to create our own genredefined monster. Shortly afterwards, after reading and discussing Mary Gaitskills story,

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The Other Side, we did an imitation of her work, which was a continuation of the
monster we created in the preceding essay. This is where I feel I had my biggest growth
in the shortest amount of time. While writing My Own Monstrosity, I felt awkward and
knew that my words were stumbling on the page, recreating only the blurriest of outlines
of the horror genre. I was very unimpressed with my work and felt extremely
disappointed with the resulting paper, it was painfully apparent that I didnt understand
the genre. From there, after a short discussion in class of Mary Gaitskills work and
analyzing at length how her stylistic choices made her work fit into the genre, we
worked on the imitation paper, and I felt so much more ease while writing. The words
felt natural and the sentences fit together so nicely. It was a shock to me, and I felt real
excitement, pleasure, and passion while writing. The difference in the quality of writing
can clearly be seen, just by reading the papers themselves, which can be found in
Pieces under Writing in the Genre. While in My Own Monstrosity, I attempt at a
connection with the audience by writing, His problem now was that, maybe it was
growing too much. He dreamt of the day that the world may accept his art, his beauty,
when before he couldnt even deem his pieces as anything but evidence of his crimes.
in the imitation I write, Thats really all I want and I think thats what everyone wants, to
be okay, to be normal. Do you understand that? Do you understand me? Between the
two excerpts here, its clear that one is too specific for an audience to really feel a
connection to, while the other one calls upon a very general and accepted social
struggle. I felt, while writing the second piece, that generalizing my monster more to
make it much more acceptable made it all the scarier as an audience would find itself
able to understand the monster on some deeper level, a stylistic choice I learned from

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observing Mary Gaitskill. I better understood the rhetorical devices used in order to
create fear as a response from an audience, and the growth between the two pieces
was definitely apparent.
Afterwards, we moved onto the next big writing assignment, which was the
Rhetorical Analysis paper. This paper asked students to write an analysis of an authors
or directors work and argue how the text was shaped by the genre. This is where my
last three pieces of work, the Reznor vs. Cash paper, the My Own Monstrosity paper,
and the Mary Gaitskill Imitation paper, all came in together. My paper was based on
Richard Mathesons 1954 fiction novel, I Am Legend, and by both using my knowledge
of the horror genre as well as my argumentative skills, I wrote a rhetorical analysis of
the book. I planned on getting some individual time with Professor McClure during the
writing process of this assignment, but due to a hectic schedule during this time, I
wasnt able to, and not trying harder to find time is a move I regret to this day. If I had
spent some time better understanding the key issues with the foundation of my essay, I
probably would have received a better score overall. After my initial draft came back
from Professor McClure with some reoccurring commentary on topic sentences and
argumentativeness, I rewrote large parts of my paper in order to fix these issues, both
drafts of which can be found in Pieces under Rhetorical Analysis. This is where I
started to grasp the concept of argumentativeness, and my instincts were better
developed in picking up on the small words and the structures of sentences that took
away from this concept. I realized that in order to be argumentative in your paper, you
cant be passive with your points at all, which was a core part of my writing stylistically. I
realized that you couldnt leave any openings or doubt in your words, and if anything

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your words should be trying to start a heated argument with its confidence,
assertiveness, and maybe even arrogance. After submitting my final paper, I didnt
receive the grade I was looking for, and I realized that, had I gone to office hours for this
paper, I would have learned beforehand that I had to handle my topic with more care as
there were certain topics and subjects that I had to assert more strongly in order to
create a sturdy foundation and basis for my arguments. This, in turn, taught me the
importance of the revision process, and how the reality was that, although my topic was
indeed difficult, it was doable had I sought after more insight on it, which is why I made
sure to go to office hours on the following assignment, the Rhetoric-in-Practice project.
The Rhetoric-in-Practice project really called upon everything we learned up until
this point, including the general skills of presentation that we had practiced throughout
the quarter. The project was done in the same groups that we had worked with
throughout the quarter, and, in our case, was a video presentation in which we
discussed the specific subgenre of horror, zombie apocalyptic horror. This is where I
realized that I really had grown a lot throughout the quarter. The topics our group
discussed, history, examples, tropes, and expectations, came easily to all of us, and we
had, at that point, developed the skills instinctually in how to present our information
correctly and efficiently, which you can see in Pieces under Rhetoric-in-Practice. It
wasnt until I wrote my Rhetoric-in-Practice essay later that I realized we made certain
decisions in a manner that were actually correct rhetorically. At this point, we
understood that things like music, order, visuals, and the actual cultural relevance of
information all mattered in communicating with an audience, and our presentation
reflected this. My follow-up essay on the project, which you can also find under the

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same section, in which we were asked to do a rhetorical analysis on our own work,
came naturally to me, and, after a short office hour session with professor McClure on
the papers contents, I found that I made no mistakes in relation to topic sentences and
only one in relation to argumentativeness, which was simply the usage of the word
feel. You can see in the initial draft that far fewer mistakes were made here than they
were in my Rhetorical Analysis first draft. This was the final confirmation, in my growth in
the class. I had little to no of the types of mistakes that plagued me earlier in the quarter.
I had been able to weed them out before the first draft was even done.
Looking at those four major points in this quarter, the Reznor vs. Cash essay, the
two pieces in which we explored the genre, the Rhetorical Analysis paper, and the
Rhetoric-in-Practice project, you can clearly see growth. From the first assignment, I
was able to better grasp the usage of topic sentences, and from the second I was able
to better grasp the genre that we were analyzing and studying. From the third
assignment I started to really learn instinctively the aspects of argumentativeness and
the fourth I applied all learning moments together. My ten weeks here at Writing 39B
was definitely an experience in learning and growth.

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Works Cited
Carroll, Nol. The Nature of Horror. 1987. Print.
Matheson, Richard. I Am Legend. New York: ORB, 1995. Print.
"The Other Place - The New Yorker." The New Yorker. Web. 7 Dec. 2015.