Min Han

Greg McClure

Writing 39B

December 12, 2018

Final Reflection

As temperature drops, and holiday spirits rose in the air, anxiety level of college students

starts to rise. Finals… the final determinant of what their grades will be. Writing 39B has been

quite a bit of a journey. This 10 week of writing in Writing 39B is probably the most writing I

have ever done in my whole life. Coming in, I didn’t know what I was getting into. I knew I had

to take writing to be prepared for my future as a biology major in instances when I am writing

my research papers but I didn’t expect the workload that I was assigned to. Every week, I had to

write, whether it’s a response to an assignment or a weekly blog. This is when I knew what

college was like. The first few assignments that Mr McClure assigned us were my favorite

because I could showcase my greatest strength… creativity. These assignments consisted of

coming up with our own stories in the realm of horror. Before I came into Writing 39B, I didn’t

know that the horror genre had deeper meaning to it. I thought it was just a story that was meant

to scare people. But, after taking this class, I have learned what makes horror, and what the

purpose of horror really is. Not only that, I have learned how to rhetorically analyze texts, read

texts deeper and carefully using metacognition skills, and effective collaboration and

communication with people . Most importantly, I learned a lot about myself as a person.

Horror is something that all of us are familiar with. Since we were young, our parents

told us tales about ghosts and spirits to scare us into being quiet, or to prevent us from going
outside at night. When we grew older, we go to watch horror movies in the theaters with friends

and significant other to bond and share memories together. Yet, we never stood to realize the true

extent to what horror really is. Through Writing 39B, I get to explore the horror as a genre and

why it is important to have horror in our society. As stated by Tony Magistrale and Michael A

Morrison --- both of whom are English professors--- in their essay, ​Intro to Dark Night’s

dreaming,​ “Horror art is essentially a moral medium: it teaches us behavior to avoid…”

(Magistrale and Morrison 3). Horror essentially teaches us behaviors to avoid by showcasing the

worst behaviors in human beings and the consequences that comes with it. For example in the

horror novel ​The Road, ​written by Cormac McCarthy, the author shows us the very innate

human behavior to survive and protect for themselves and their young contributes to the

downfall of society. It shows images that ranges from a charred human fetus on a split to a group

of people kept in basement as food for cannibals to eat. It highlights the innate human selfishness

to the contribution of the loss of humanity in people.

Furthermore, I learned what the art horror monster in a horror story really represents.

Most of the time, we don’t really think too much into what a monster is suppose to be. We just

think that monsters are something scary, but art horror monsters serves a deeper purpose in a

horror novel. The monsters portrayed are not monsters at all, but a representation of what the

actual monster really is. Art horror monsters “... embodies the worst aspects of social and

personal contexts…” and they “violate the norms and values of society it attacks.” In ​Bloodchild

written by Octavia Butler, the monster in the story really aren’t the monstrous creatures called

Tlic, but rather the selfishness of an individual. In the story, the Tlics are seen using human

beings as objects where their larvae can grow, but at the same time, humans are using the Tlics to
escape the world that they’re from. The will to survive and protect their offsprings is the

selfishness that the monster represents.

Before I came to UCI, I had to do several rhetorical analysis pieces based on short essays

and stories in my AP Language and Composition class during my Junior year of High School. I

did my rhetorical analysis based on the types of rhetorics author used to appeal to ethos, logos

and pathos. My school did that for the entire year, but the teacher never really graded the paper.

Classmates peer reviewed and gave grades based on a rubric. Most of us didn’t know what we

were doing, so it was essentially the blind leading the blind without the help of the teacher.

Thinking it was the same rhetorical essay, I wrote my college rhetorical essay essentially the

same way I wrote it in high school. As it turns out, it is not what a rhetorical analysis is supposed

to be. Granted, I should have communicated with Mr McClure more to grasp the idea of what

that story is suppose to be and go to more office hours, but I was confident that what I had was

right. Unfortunately, I was shut down quick because the essay wasn’t what it was supposed to be.

It didn’t explore the idea of horror as a genre and it didn’t analyze the rhetorics of the author to

make the story horror. Fortunately I was helped by one of my group mates and she told me how

to write and put me on the right track to writing a decent rhetorical essay. She essentially taught

me the ways to think while writing a rhetorical essay and gave me an outline to what a rhetorical

analysis essay is supposed to be. Throughout this process, I was given many chances by Mr

McClure to complete the correct rhetorical analysis essay. I grinded through and completed the

correct form of rhetorical essay a month after it was due.

Furthermore, we were taught metacognitive reading tools in order to read texts carefully

and understand the text to its full extent from its obvious meaning to the deeper meaning that the
audience intended to write in the text. Essentially, there were tools that we use as read along the

text. These tools consist of symbols that predict, picture, contextualize, make connection,

identify a problem, wondering, fix ups and summerizition. These are tools that slows us down to

make us take a step back and view the whole text as it was intended for the author to make us

understand. Though we already use these tools subconsciously, it is a good way of thinking to

write it down so that we slow down to absorb what is being said. Most importantly, I have used

this tool whenever I’m reading my biology textbook as seen in the picture below. Though this

class focuses on fiction and horror, the metacognitive tool works wherever there is text to be

understood.

This class not only shows me the ways to write and understand texts, it also taught me

ways to effective collaborate and communicate with people. This is done through the quarter

through presentations and group assignments. There were instances where we have to go in front

of the class and give presentations. Though public speaking might have been a struggle to many,

it is one of my strong suits that defines my personality. Though, on paper I often have trouble

communicating my message with the audience because my ideas tend to be everywhere. To help

with that, Mr McClure posted a structure and evidence activity that effectively gives structure to
an essay so that our ideas can be communicated effectively. This really helped while writing the

RA essay because it gave me structure to communicate my message across the paper to the

audience. In terms on collaborating people, it taught me that being, level headed, patient,

decisive with actions and clear with messages is the key to communication. Throughout the

quarter, we often collaborated on small assignments, but towards the end of the quarter we had to

collaborate on creating a video that is worth a big chunk of our grade. From the start, I started

communicating with the group members and they were all in with what I was saying with little to

no conflicts. Then during the day of filming, one of the actors were not complying with what I

was saying as she was distracted from something. This really tested my patience because I

originally was not a patient person because I want everything to go my way and everyone to do

what I say. Fortunately, my friends were there at the time of filming and they calmed me down.

After that, things went well because all of us were patient with the person who was distracted

and communicated to that person in a way which he/she can comply.

As I stated in the previous paragraph, this class taught me more things about myself than

I have previously realized. Most importantly, this class taught me determination more than

anything else. As a student athlete who is also a biology science major, time is a precious

commodity. The workload of this class taught me time management and determination through

the hardest times. My determination was put to test when I had to study for chemistry final, and

biology final while writing the RA essay, RIP reflection, Final Reflection and finishing the

portfolio all at the same time. Moreover, during the process of writing the RA essay, Mr

McClure suggested that I retake the class because my rhetorical analysis paper was so bad and it
didn’t show the class objective whatsoever. Though sports, I was taught to never give up, so I

asked Mr McClure for another chance at writing the essay and got a grade for it.

Works Cited

Butler, Octavia E. ​Bloodchild: Novellas and Stories.​ Four Walls Eight Windows, 1995.

Magistrale, Tony.​ Introduction to Dark Night’s Dreaming​. Print

MCCARTHY, CORMAC. ​ROAD.​ PICADOR, 2019.