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Kimberly Ting
Professor Haas
Writing 37
4 December 2016
Final Reflection Essay
When I was first placed into this class after getting the result of my placement test, I was
devastated. My first impression of Writing 37 was that it was a beginning writing class that
would make me fall behind academically. Luckily, it was everything that I didnt imagine it
would be. The purpose of Writing 37 was to teach students how to show how text are shaped by
and reflect the time period and culture from where they came, specifically folk and fairy tales. I
was grateful that the theme was fairy tales and folklores because they are something Ive heard
and read growing up. Little did I know that my prior knowledge of them was only a small
fraction of what fairy and folk tales are all about. Fairy and folk tales are stories that try to find
the truth and give us glimpses of greater things [and] this is the principle that underlies their
growing presence in writing, art, cinema, dance, song (Warner). My understanding of this genre
has grown immensely from taking this class. In the first week of school, we learned about the
rhetorical situation triangle. This was illustrated to us in a form of a fishbowl. The text is
communicated to a person (the rhetor) to the audience or the people reading the text. The water
represents the historical/cultural context that all three are influenced by. In this course, we had to
keep all four in mind while writing and creating presentations.

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Within the first month, we were asked to do two group presentations. The first one for me
was focused on Perrault and the Salon Era. Throughout this presentation, we focused on
providing historical context, like stating how the Salem Witch Trials as taking place
simultaneously and making sure to mention who the audience was that the text was created for.
Content-wise, I would say this presentation was informative and informed our class, the
audience. However, we were far from grasping one of the main objectives which is
understanding how every text grows out of and reflects its rhetorical situation. This was
pointed out in my second group presentation on Basiles 1634 tale The Young Slave. From the
critics that we got from our peers, I acknowledged and worked on improving through the major
projects such as the RIP video, RA essay, and our portfolio.
From the beginning of the course, we were asked to annotate and note conventions we
saw in the fairy tales and folktales we read. Starting from Red Riding Hood, our class compared
different versions of certain fairy tales written by different authors during different time periods
and places. During this time, I do research on the historical context of the time period. The

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objective I focus on while working on these annotations is to read the text closely and understand
them within their rhetorical situation. This meant understanding why certain differences occurred
in different versions of the same tale. From these differences, it can help identify certain
conventions that were used in that specific area, such as the common setting of the forest in
German tales. These annotations also doubled as a cheat sheet I use when writing my RAs on
the discussion forum each week. It has been helpful to look back on them and pick from the
conventions Ive already identified rather than go back and try to recall them. It also prevents me
from procrastinating reading or watching the fairy tale, allowing me time to think about how Im
going to tackle this weeks RA. This constant practice to slowly work towards a final piece rather
than just throwing it together all at once is something I rarely do but now find myself
appreciating. Through this I learned the habit of engagement because I invested my time doing
these preliminary assignments in preparation for what was to come.
In our weekly RA discussion forums, we covered fairy tales such as The Sleeper and the
Spindle, Disneys version of The Little Mermaid, and the Disney film Maleficent. These were
crucial in helping me pick which fairytale I wanted to expand on for my RA essay. The objective
that I worked on was to read the texts closely and understand them within their rhetorical
situation and not just summarize what happens. This was hard for me because I was still trying
to completely grasp how to eloquently explain the rhetorical situation of the text. From writing
about The Little Mermaid to Maleficent, each week Ive touched on repeating conventions from
prior stories and conventions that arent necessarily common. As the stories and film slowly
become more common, I find it harder to find historical context since there are so many different
reasons why an author wrote the way they did. However, these RA discussions are the key

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components that are supplementing my growth as a writer. The constant practice of writing short
rhetorical analysis posts made writing the actual essay easier.

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Throughout the quarter, many activities such as assignments on Connect or close readings
were all meant to prepare us for the projects to come. Connect is an online teaching website that
provides exercises, such as Italics, Quotation Marks, & Semicolons and Conventions of an
Academic Essay, to improve grammar and writing skills. Through these exercises, I was about
to improve on my grammar as well as other skills. Connect definitely takes persistence to
accomplish, especially with more frustrating ones since they need to know you completely
comprehend the topic before moving on. Each question asked how confident I was with my
answer and generally I answered I know it or I think so. From there, Connect complies the
answers I got correct and correlates it to how confident I was and shows me the percentages of
what I knew and what I thought I knew. Going back to see the percentages I got on certain ones
helped me better understand where I stood progress wise. This also made me understand the
importance of reflection as part of the learning process because from there I went back and
reviewed what I needed to work on. Since I will probably not have the opportunity to use this
website again, I will try to focus on improving on topics such as Wordiness and Italics,
Quotation Marks, & Semicolons, which I struggled in. I plan to do so by just reading more and
hopefully my future 39C teacher will also guide me in this growing process like Professor Haas
has.
These writing assignments ultimately lead to the big writing assignment of the quarter,
the Rhetorical Analysis essay. After doing the annotations and the discussion forums, I then had
a better idea on what fairy tale I would be doing my RA essay on. Since I grew up watching
Disneys The Little Mermaid, it was already on the top of my list of potential candidates. With
Professor Haass encouragement on my RA discussion forum on The Little Mermaid, I decided
to go forward with it. Since Ive always idolized Ariel when I was young, it was hard for me to

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take a skeptics view of the film. However, as I did more and more research, many of the flaws
of the movie began to show. From there I began to list possible conventions I could use for my
essay by creating an outline. This acted as a skeleton for my first draft and made writing the draft
much more painless. The constant redrafting process helped me understand the importance of
the process of writing (drafting, review, revision) and to participate effectively in that process. It
was something Ive always overlooked in high school because I would only just have one draft
and make edits on it. Having more drafts to see how my essay has changed just shows how much
Ive learned through this course from peers and Professor Haas. From Professor Haass edits, I
ended up talking about the conventions of beauty and the lack of agency, or the inability to
decide ones own fate. From there my peers reviewed my essay which produced my final
product. This was quite a process but it all started with my curiosity, a habit of mind, to learn
more about the fairy tale I grew up watching.
The next project we had to face was the RIP video that we were going to present to not
only our class, but other classes as well. The RIP or Rhetoric in Practice is a group project that
demonstrates the rhetorical situation of a fairy or folk tale through a specific type of medium.
Our group, Arielan, was voted to continue our project, The Bride Test, as a live action video.
My group consisted of Devora, Anna, and Nathan, each an integral part of this group.
Throughout our video, we tried to point out certain conventions of classic fairy tales as well as
entertain our audience (UCI students). We kept in mind that the students that are seeing the
video may not understand certain jargons so we included definitions and explanations to assist
our audience. To display that we kept the historical context in mind, we modeled one of the
girls as a 19th-century woman and juxtaposed her with a 21st-century woman. Through this
process, we were able to practice collaboration and learned how to be effective collaborators.

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Individually, I was able to sharpen my digital literacy through the creation our video. Since I
was the video and sound editor for the video, I became more familiar with using the video and
movie editor, iMovie. The accompanying sound effects I used a Youtube to MP3 converter to
convert certain songs or sounds into clips. This proved to be a tedious task because we had to
show our continuous progress of our video so I would spend hours editing. However, as the
weeks passed, I became more comfortable with editing and learned how to insert titles and
pictures. This pushed me to be more responsible, a habit of mind, and make sure videos are
edited properly and on time.

Unlike prior writing classes, my whole writing journey was documented on my

ePortfolio. This was a first for me and I did not understand the real purpose of this at first.
Reflecting back, I see how creating one is beneficial for me in seeing how I progressed as a
writer and student. Each week we were asked to post a weekly blog post about the highlights of
that week. From this, Ive learned the habit of metacognition, or the ability to reflect on ones
own thinking as well as on the individual. This week, I went back to read my work on the first
week and already I feel like Ive become a different writer in a span of ten weeks. This course

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showed me faster results than Ive ever seen in the diet plans I try to do. All jokes aside, I am
beyond grateful for Professor Haas and my peers for enabling me to grow. This course has made
me stressed at times but made me have some laughs as well. It has introduced me to some
genuinely great people, and most importantly it has paved a new road for me as a writer. I know I
still have a long way to go but this has given me a running start. Thank you for everything
Writing 37!

Works Cited
Spitz, Ellen Handler. "The Irresistible Psychology of Fairy Tales." New Republic. New
Republic, 28 Dec. 2015. Web. 05 Dec. 2016.
Warner, Marina. Once upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. Oxford, United
Kingdom: Oxford UP, 2014. Print.