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Andrea Lu
Professor Lynda Haas
Writing 37
12 December 2014
The Process of Becoming a Writer
Every writer starts somewhere. My writing career began when I first traced the
letters of the alphabet in Kindergarten and I have been improving every day since. Now
that I am in college, my writing and reading skills have developed tremendously. I have
learned a lot from Writing 37 with Professor Haas, such as reading more closely and
carefully, being detailed and concise in my writing, taking peer reviewing seriously, and
developing the habits of mind. The ten-week course exposed us to the Sherlock Holmes and
mystery genre, focusing on the readings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyles The Hound of the
Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes during the first portion of the course
then modern films which included Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes film and episodes from
BBC's Sherlock and CBS's Elementary and cinematic elements during the second portion.
Through all the endless pages of reading, tedious writing, and many presentations, I can say
that I became a more advanced reader and writer.
We have read several scholarly texts written by Konnikova, Panek, Dove, Binyon,
and Delamater. The difference between these texts and the ones I have read before in high
school is that they are more complex and intellectual. There is not one paragraph that I can
read through easily without having to Google at least three words. These are words that I
were unable to make intelligent guesses on, such as nabobs, ennui, and monikers. I
had trouble comprehending these texts, but as I kept reading and persisting, I felt

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increasingly comfortable when it came to reading assignments. Though the scholarly texts
were challenging, they forced me become an attentive reader by not letting me skim
through them and skipping the words I did not know. By becoming a better reader, I was
able to become a better writer as well.
There were only two essays during the whole course: the Literature Review and
Rhetorical Analysis essay. Even though there were only two, they enhanced my ability to
write and analyze. For the literature review, there was one paragraph about how the
detective genre stories were simply meant to entertain readers that was lacking in many
areas. The scholarly quotes I used were not introduced and were thrown into the
paragraph, causing my ideas to jump place to place without coherence. I was interchanging
between Dove and Panek without any transitions; thus, in my revision paragraph, I made
sure to use transition words such as additionally, due to this, and besides. Along with
adding transition words, I needed to revise the paragraph to be more distinct and brief on
how the scholars statements related to each other. I forced my scholars into conversation
by stating that one scholar agrees with another when in reality, they were not agreeing
with each other. To fix this mistake, I defined the relation between the scholars by pointing
out how their ideas were similar instead of making them agree. It was difficult to adapt to
all of these specific concepts, but I learned to be flexible and familiarize the various tips the
course exposed me to because they will benefit me as a writer in the future. It takes draft
after draft to result in a well-written essay. Though receiving suggestions for essay
revisions is effective, giving peer reviews to others has a greater advantage.
From the scholarly article, To Give is Better Than to Receive: The Benefits of Peer
Review to the Reviewer's own Writing, Kristi Lundstrom and Wendy Baker

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acknowledged, To give is better than to receive, and that, in fact, is true. As I read over my
classmates essays, I can see what they did well on and what they needed to improve on. I
peer reviewed Amy Gutierrezs genre convention forum and saw how nicely she put it all
together; she presented her idea well in the beginning, introduced the sources she was
using, included coherence in her paragraph, and was concise throughout her forum. From
that, I saw what I needed to work on for my next forum and used her as a model. I also
received peer reviews from other colleagues and Professor Haas. This took openness, as I
had to receive other peer reviews and consider their advice and revisions even if I
personally agreed or disagreed. I did receive peer reviews from a couple people that stated
that my essays were well done and did not need much revising. However, I learned that no
essay can be perfect; there is always room for improvement.
This course included several group assignments that triggered curiosity,
engagement, responsibility, and creativity. John Barlow and Sergio Medina were my first
group members that I had to work with. We had to collaborate on a wiki for the Victorian
Eras socioeconomic classes and I was assigned the lower class. As I researched on my
portion of the assignment, I became curious of everything. Their lifestyle was extremely
diverse from our lifestyle; and it inspired me to engage more. Researching was the
effortless part, figuring out how the wiki worked was tough, yet it was my responsibility to
put in my best effort and finish my part. My group members and I were all new to this wiki
formatting even though we have seen Wikipedia pages for years. It was difficult to align the
pictures nicely with the text, as I had to keep checking back and forth if it looked correct on
the actual page. Because this was our first collaborative wiki, it was not the best. We had
different fonts, different picture alignments, different everything. We were creative, but not

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cooperative. Because we were not communicating so well with each other on the format,
our wiki turned out random and unorganized. My second group included Gissel Enriquez
and Chang Tang. Learning from my previous group, we were able to communicate
efficiently on our cinematic wiki. We planned several meet ups so that we can organize our
ideas and create a better wiki. Having first attempts gives us the ability to make mistakes
and learn from them. Doing so will only give us chances to progress towards success.
Another group assignment we had to work on was presentations. In high school, I
was perfectly fine with speaking in front of a large audience; but when I came to Writing
37, my confidence level was a bit shaky. Presentations became challenging and lengthy as
we were covering topics that I had no previous knowledge in. The fact that we were being
critiqued on a Google Doc by the whole class made presentations far more frightening. The
ticking of everyones keyboards as they were typing adds much pressure on speakers. My
second presentation about Doyles short story, A Scandal in Bohemia, went downhill
fairly quick. As I stumbled over my words and heard my colleagues typing furiously on
their laptops, my eye contact and confidence diminished rapidly. It was a complete
embarrassment for I was ashamed of my performance; but yet, there is no one to blame but
myself. Though it is painful to read the comments about how bad I did, it will only make me
better. The presentation after that was much better because I took the mistakes I made in
the second presentation and fixed them in my third one. I am sure that I will make plenty of
mistakes in the future; it will be my choice to learn from them and move on.
Grammar is sometimes overlooked, except without grammar, essays and
presentations would be excruciating to read or hear. To refresh our memory on grammar,
we were assigned exercises on Connect. The simplest grammar tools like commas and verb

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tenses can be misused even after years of practicing them. So these weekly Connect
assignments have tremendously helped me in many ways.
Writing 37 is more than just a regular writing course. It has taught me
metacognition, which is the ability to reflect on my own learning and understanding. The
reading, writing, group work, and presentations that I have done throughout these ten
weeks were merely building blocks to my career. There is still much room for
improvement, as I have not yet become the perfect reader, writer, or communicator. This
class has helped me far more than I can imagine and it has led me to the right path into real
world.