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Vishal Victor
Writing 2 / Nora Kassner
14 December 2020
Final Reflective Letter
Dear Nora,
First, I wanted to say that I had such a good time in your class and your class was
definitely a highlight of my quarter. From being understanding, to honestly listening to your
students, to the quick and thorough responses for our journal work, you have put in so much
effort to become a better teacher, and it really made the class enjoyable. My final portfolio
consists of my WP1, which translated a scholarly article about machine learning into a TED Talk
introductory essay, my WP2, which was a Burkean Parlor conversation into the form of a blog
post, and my final reflective letter. The website I made for these components is personalized to
me as each page has a different theme based on my favorite games. My WP1 page consists of
League of Legends and Rocket League, my WP2 page contains Mario, and my final reflective
letter page has Counter Strike: Global Offensive. My homepage also showcases video games, but
includes football as well, which is my favorite sport and the sport I played throughout
highschool. For the genre translation part of my WP1, I made the most changes by adding a
larger theme that the essay connects to, and integrating this theme into paragraphs explaining the
content of the TED talk with a clear introduction and conclusion. I also expanded my audience
from just the public, to include those who are already knowledgeable about computer science
and machine learning by adding more machine learning concepts into the essay. For the
reflective essay, I included more stylistic and substantive conventions and explained the
conventions in further detail. In addition, I also changed my quote into one that was more
personal to me and the article. For WP2, I went in depth within concepts that the others talked
about, clarified my overall question in the beginning of my blog post, and made slight changes to
the end rubric. In WP2, most of my effort was concentrated in expanding the concepts each
article contributed to the blog post.
My understanding of writing has changed greatly after taking your course. I never
thought of myself as the best writer and never really enjoyed writing as a subject. I followed a
formula for every essay, doing the same thing repeatedly, and I found it hard to be creative.
However, after learning about genres and translating genres, I found a way to be creative with
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my writing. In addition, I learned how important focusing on revisions are. In highschool, I was
so used to having a really bad rough draft that my peers would skim over with little to no
feedback and then spending a couple hours on it the night before the final draft was due. In your
class, I was able to have time to really spend time on my revisions and reviewing your comments
that pointed out what was confusing or could be changed. This really helped me with making
better pieces of writing. I think the threshold concept of good writing being contextual really
helped me understand how to be creative with my writing. Additionally, in the article “Genre In
The Wild : Understanding Genre Within Rhetorical (Eco)Systems,” by author Lisa Bickmore,
she mentions that “another way to think of these compositions is as predictable and recurring
kinds of communication—in a word, genres.” This quote really helped me understand what a
genre truly is and that it is not as daunting as it sounds. Each genre has its own set of patterns or
rules that it follows and by following these rules while keeping the content the same, one can
switch genres and completely switch the purpose or sound of a piece of writing. In the beginning
of the quarter, I identified my strengths as being able to create a good structure and come up with
compelling arguments, but that said I usually could not put these together to create an essay with
coherent flow. However, after taking this course and understanding stylistic and substantive
conventions in genres, I think that I have a much greater understanding on overall flow, how to
integrate evidence and connect everything back to the overall main idea of an essay.
My WP1 shows my growth as a writer because it shows my ability to take one piece of
writing and change it into a new piece with the same content that is meant for a different
audience. This taught me all about stylistic and substantive conventions, which was my main
struggle that I mentioned in my first journal entry. I wasn’t able to convey my evidence in the
ways that I wanted to. However, after WP1, I was able to: analyze the different conventions of
writing in different genres and use those to create an essay that flows well, include all the content
I want, and appeal to the audience I want it to. My WP2 shows my growth as a writer as it
reinforces my ability to take content and change genres while showing creativity. My genre
choice for my blog post is something much different than the original scholarly articles, so my
ability to take scholarly content and change it into a blog post amazed me. I never thought I
would be able to work with and manipulate pieces of writing in such a way before. It also shows
my creativity through my genre choice of a blog post, which I thought was out of the box and
interesting.
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Overall, I really had a good time in your class. I especially enjoyed having our small
groups and getting to know two others who also go to UCSB, especially in this pandemic. You
were surprisingly easy to talk to and you truly wanted to help each and every one of us become
better writers, and I truly appreciate and respect you for that. I’m sure that I’ll be able to use
what I learned in this class from now on through college and even when I’m working.

Regards,
Vishal Victor
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Works Cited

Bickmore, Lisa. Genre in the Wild: Understanding Genre Within Rhetorical (ECO)Systems.
E-book, Open English @ SLCC, 2016.