CEJA 1

Kassandra Ceja
March 13, 2015
Writing 37
Lynda Haas
Reflection Essay
Your next assignment will be an essay. I despised hearing this
phrase, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. The only logical
thing to do was sigh like the classmates next to me and hope that
maybe my school would light on fire, so I could get out of doing the
assignment. Of course that hope was unethical. Since second grade, I
began to hate writing, and that was not the only problem, I also hated
reading. At that time I didnt understand why we had to go through
such a painful task. Getting older I began to learn that there was more
to writing than a summary and not all books were boring. I also began
to understand that reading and writing would be essential to get me
through school and into the real world. Before even graduating from
high school I would think about college and the difficulty of the
workload. The subject, which I was most afraid of taking, was writing
and I thought that I would not be able to survive it. As soon as I created
my schedule for winter quarter and enrolled into writing 37 I began to
doubt my ability to perform to the class standards. Eventually, the first
day of class came and I remember Dr Haas introducing herself and
what we would be doing in the course. I was so glad she was my

professor because she was so enthusiastic about the next 10 weeks

and she had one major focus, to help us improve our writing, she also
seemed approachable and understanding. We then learned our course
topic was animals, which I was very fond of because I would learn a lot
about the subject while at the same time improving my writing skills.
This courses primary focus was on critical reading and rhetoric.
At the beginning of the course I had no idea what rhetoric meant but
as the quarter progressed I got a better understanding of it and how to
use it in order to make the audience feel or act a certain way. One
assignment, which helped me learn more about rhetoric and how it is
used was our PSA. My PSA group decided to focus on polar bears, and
decreasing global warming in order to help them. Before starting the
assignments we were told to view different kinds of PSAs and we saw
how some of them where more persuasive then others; the PSAs,
which had logos, ethos and pathos, were more impacting and
encouraging for viewer to see their call to action. The most persuasive
PSAs had good music, images which appealed to the audience and
good evidence. We then engaged and made our PSA, which
incorporated all these factors.
This course also consisted of reading different text, including
scholarly articles. Getting to the class I had no idea what a scholarly
article was, but as the course progressed the assignments helped me
understand. An assignment in the class, which consisted of reading a

CEJA 3
variety of scholarly articles was our Wiki, which was one of the first
assignments of the quarter. We had to get different articles on a
certain subject, mine being Horse Therapy. The scholarly texts were
difficult for me to read because of the higher vocabulary, which is
something I have been having trouble with throughout my education.
In order to understand a scholarly text I have learned that I have to
read it multiple times, and even though it is time consuming it is
something I have to do and remain persistent on to get the message. A
different medium of literature was the documentary film, Blackfish we
had to watch and analyze it. By analyzing it I was able to get the
motives of the film, to help stop whale captivity. The graphics and the
different interviews, which took place, helped me approach the
documentary to better understand it. We3 is a comic book, which we
also analyzed and additionally, wrote forums about. I was not very fond
of this text because it was a comic and I had trouble reading and
understanding it. I approached analyzing the text by the different
articles about the authors and by some of the graphics, which I did
understand.
The course was focused on two essay genres, Literature Review
and Rhetorical Analysis. I chose to revise a paragraph of my Literature
Review essay because I wanted to make it seem as if the scholars in
me essay were having a conversation and thats something my essay
failed to do the first time. I failed to give the importance of the

scholars so by changing my sentences and acknowledging one scholar

to the next it made the reader know that my essay was a Literature
Review. Katina screaming on the edge of the pool when they took her
baby Nothing you could call it besides grief. I chose to revise this
part of my Rhetorical Analysis essay because the people who peered
reviewed it told me it was a strong piece of evidence but it did not
analyze the content enough. I analyzed different scenes and made sure
that it referred back to my thesis on pathos appeal. I could definitely
still improve on my writing skills. Peer reviewing was significant to
these essays and the difference of drafts. I knew I had to be
responsible because the peoples whose essays I was reviewing were
counting on me, as much as I was counting on them to review my
essay in order to make it better. I remember reading Sarahs essay and
from doing so I obtained acknowledgement on changes I could make
on my drafts. Overall reading and peer reviewing some of my peers
essays helped me revise mine even further from knowing that I had
similar mistakes.
My interaction with my peers did not only involve peer reviewing
but collaboration as well. It is an important factor throughout the
course because working in groups required learning how to be open
about certain ideas and incorporate everyones ideas into our work.
Our first project was our wiki pages were each group had a topic and
then subtopics. My job was to look for information about horse therapy.

CEJA 5
My knowledge on the subject grew and helped me realize how animals
are an important factor in our society. We had various presentations
such the one of our PSA. Not only was I was able to get creative, but I
saw how making small changes could affect what the audience feels. I
put the first draft of it together by getting information from my group
members and pictures, it was at first difficult because I did not have
much experience with iMovie. Even though I did encounter problems, I
had to be responsible and keep trying because not only did I want to
do a good job but also I didnt want to let my group mates down. From
seeing everyone elses PSA and presentations it opened up my
curiosity into other animal topics and wanting to do something to help
them. I really like the fact that everyone in my group collaborated
equally and there wasnt just one person doing all the work.
Collaborating also made it easier because we were able to get different
opinions and to help our work get stronger.
Part of our weekly homework was connect, where we learned
various types of subjects in a short amount of time. This was very
helpful because I learned things that I thought I had prior knowledge
on and even though they were small they helped my writing and
understanding. By doing assignments on connect I leaned about topics
that are challenging for me such as grammar and common sentence
problems. I also learned that I had trouble with recognizing how to use
my tenses. I have a good understanding on identifying pathos and

logos but need help with ethos. I also had trouble with citation at first
but now I see a minor improvement. I had to recharge on using verbs
and verbals in order to recall the topic and understand it with more
clarity. Over all assignments on connect helped me determine my
weakest points, and now I know what I need to continue improving on.
Something that I could take away from the course is that there
could be dramatic changes made from creating various drafts of an
assignment. I learned that writing essays is not so bad but I have to
keep working on certain aspects that I know for a fact are my weakest
points such as my grammar. I learned a lot about scholarly sources and
citations and how to use them properly, which will benefit me
profoundly in the future. This class also taught me how to be flexible
which will not only benefit my classes but my life too because within all
the group work I had to learn how to be flexible with my time to
accommodate my group meet ups. Moreover, I also had to be flexible
with my schedule because the majority of the assignments were time
consuming although they werent difficult. Over all I really enjoyed this
course with Dr Haas, she did different styles of text and different
assignments to accommodate all of us and to help us improve on our
writing skills.