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Allison Flores
Professor Greg McClure
Writing 39C
August 28, 2016
Reflection Essay
Writing 39C was an intensive writing course that focused on research and rhetoric. This
course has improved my writing skills as well as my communication skills. It has led me to
become more curious about our theme that were were studying, animal rights and it helped me to
learn how to be creative in different aspects of writing. Also, this course helped me to improve
my ability to research and use different forms of social media as forms of communication
methods. Throughout this course I have completed many tasks that ultimately lead up to me be
able to create a persuasive argument to implement a solution for my Advocacy Project. This class
began off by me reading different articles and annotating them and then moving on to the book
by Carl Safina Beyond Worlds: What Animals Think and Feel, and annotating the whole book
over the course of about three weeks. In the beginning of this class as well, I had to create a
website that would be my final portfolio for this class. I also created a twitter account that would
be used as a way to put my information on social media so that people could learn about some of
the research that I was finding. Another account that I had to make was dingo which was used as
a way to keep all of my links for information organized. The next part of the class lead me into
preparing me to write my first essay called the Historical Conventions Project. The Historical
Conventions Project (HCP) objective is, a review of scientific literature that aims to provide
evidence to support an advocacy topic that is later explained in my next essay, the Advocacy
Project. Once I completed my HCP, the next task consisted of working on a Social Media

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Campaign with a group. The purpose of this group project was to work/improve our social media
and rhetoric skills. The second to last task was to write my Advocacy Project (AP). The
Advocacy Project is an extension to the HCP where we add to our scientific research to now
define the problems and to offer solutions to the problem. Once I completed the AP, my last task
included writing this reflection essay in addition to finish my portfolio, which is an online
website that I created that showcases all of my work that I have completed for this class. Overall,
this course challenged my ability to effectively make an argument by using multimodal
composition and scholarly evidence.
The first couple weeks of this class began by annotating many articles as well as the
book, Beyond Worlds: What Animals Think and Feel by Carl Safina. Annotating these articles
helped me for when I was reading the long texts that I had found for my HCP as well as my AP.
By annotating it helped me to break up each section piece by piece to better my understanding of
what the article was talking about. The texts that I used for my HCP were scientific articles, that
were a bit confusing at times because of how dense it was as well as the language that was used.
With annotating it has helped me to be persistent and to keep pushing at articles that are tough.
Also it reminds me tp take it a section at time to understand the information. Also, in the
beginning of this course I made the platform for my website that would be turned in as my final
portfolio. Creating the website was a bit difficult because I had never made one before. I had to
learn how to navigate the site and then adding everything that I completed for this class a little
bit at a time. Although at times the website was difficult it helped me to engage and learn a new
form of technology. On my website I had a blog page that re-capped everything that I did for
every week, I showcased all of my essays that I wrote with rough drafts to my final drafts and I
have a page for the Social Media Campaign that I completed with my group. This website was

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really time consuming, but I was able to improve my social media skills and I really enjoyed
showcasing everything that I have completed for this class from the very beginning till the very
end.
The next couple weeks involved preparing for my Historical Conventions Project. I took
this paper step by step, beginning with
finding articles that I was going to use
to review and then on to writing my
first draft, and then receiving
feedback from my professor and peers
and then revising it to turn in the final
Figure 1
Blog Post from my portfolio

draft. One of toughest part of this paper was finding

the sources to review. It took many hours of

researching to find the best papers possible. Finding the papers that I was going to use to review
was difficult because I kept thinking what if there is an article that is better than this one. After
asking my professor for some guidance, he recommended that I look at how many times the
paper had been cited to give me a reference of how credible the source were. After learning how
many times the papers had been cited, I was able to choose which sources were the best to
review and began writing my HCP from there. Initially, writing the paper was difficult as well
because I did not know how to organize my paper. I began writing the introduction and then
developed the common writers block syndrome. To overcome writers block, I looked at
document that my professor had put up by Allison Jolly, a famous scientist, that gave me ideas
on what information should go where in my paper and how to include the information. Using
Jollys paper as I guide, I began writing the body paragraphs and my paper began to flow. Before

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I knew it I had finished writing the paper. After turning in the first draft and receiving feedback
from my peers and my professor, I had a lot of revising to do. I was told that I was on the right
track, but I had to stop over quoting and instead summarize the information; and if I was going to
quote I had to follow the three step method to ensure that the quote was needed. I did not think
that I had over quoted, but
after reading my paper again I
did have a lot of quotes. I took

Figure 2 Before revision

this advice and followed the

three step method, which
really helped me to take out
some of my quotes and
paraphrase instead. Another

Figure 3 After revision

revision step that I received was to add transitions between my paragraphs, to make my paper
stronger. I also took this advice into consideration because I after adding the transitions, I saw the
huge impact of how much stronger my paper sounded. In figure two and three, I have highlighted
before and after pictures to show how I took out one of my quotes. I also revised some grammar
issues and sentence structure to my paper. After I made these changes, I realized how important,
the revision process is. Reading my paper after I had made all the revisions necessary, my paper
sounded so much better. I did not realize how some changes throughout the paper could make a
huge difference. Submitting my final draft, I felt confident that I corrected all the issues that were
in my paper. Overall, the whole process for writing and revising my HCP has allowed me to
improve my research skills in addition to my writing abilities.

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Following revising my HCP came the Social Media Campaign which was a group project
whose object was to prepare us for our Advocacy Project and spreading this knowledge through
the use of social media. At first, I was unsure on how effective this campaign would be but with
openness, I was willing to be persistent to make this campaign as successful as possible. Through
social media I was able to make certain arguments through using ethos, logos and pathos. Using
social media to make an argument was very new to me, however I found that it was quite
effective. It took some planning with my group members to successfully get our message out
there. Planning for this campaign, it taught me that there are many ways one can get a message
out as well as the importance of being responsible. Since this campaign was a group project, I
had to always stay on top of the assignments for my group and take over if assignments were not
finished. I took on this responsibility because I did not want to be penalized, if my other groups
members were not doing their part. For the most part though, mostly everyone did what they
were supposed to do like tweet three times each day for a week, add information to a website that
we made and to help make an infographic. Creating the infographic, I feel was one of the best
ways to advocate for our problem because it is something that people could glance at and
immediate know what the purpose is. Figure four is the infographic that my group and I made
about killer whale captivity. By using many different forms of social media, is what helped us to
effectively get our message out and be successful in our campaign.
Figure 4 Infographic

My final task was to write my Advocacy Project, which is an extension of our Historical
Conventions Project. The Advocacy Project in addition to the historical review of literature
which the HCP covers, now defines a problem between the animal and humans and advocates a
solution to the problem. I found that beginning to write the AP was easier for me than the HCP
due to the fact that I now had learned how to research and find the correct articles. Also, the AP

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was broken up into parts and I had flexibility to know what I needed to focus on each week. The
first part for writing the AP began by me researching to find a problem with humans and my
animal, killer whales. Finding articles showing a problem was not difficult at all, writing this first
part felt good. After turning this part in and receiving feedback from my peers I had found that
my essay was good, but I needed to cite where I was getting all this information from and that I
had to include a solution to the problem that I was advocating for. I took my peers and professor
advice and made these changes because I saw their point and did not realize this when I had
written. From making these changes I learned how important it is to cite your information, no
matter if you have paraphrased it because it is still not all my own words. Once I completed this
section the next part consisted of me researching now for solutions to this problem, specifically a
law, bill, or act that has been proposed but not yet into action. Initially, finding a solution that
has not yet been put into play was challenging, but I had a moment that clicked in my mind and
rephrased the way I searched on goggle and on two sites, I had found a bill that has been
proposed but not yet passed. Once I found this solution, I began writing and showing how this
was the best solution by showing how the other solutions had not changed anything for this
problem. Also in this section, I had to have a counter argument side and then finish the paper
with the conclusion. For writing the counter argument side, I had to research reasons on the
opposing side and show how their argument is not valid. Once I finished writing the conclusion,
I submitted my whole AP and obtained feedback from my peers and professor. Feedback that I
took into consideration was to take out some of my quotes because I was over quoting, some of
the wording in sentences was confusing. After making these changes, what I learned was that I
need to really focus when I am going to quote because I end up quoting too much. On the other
hand, though, I also received some pros to my paper. For example, I was told that the statistics

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that I presented were really intriguing and that evidence that I had mentioned for my solution
was good. From my Advocacy Project, I have been able to improve my researching skills in
addition to my communication skills.
Overall, not only have I improved as a writer and communicator, I have been able to
learn how to approach writing in many different ways that I can now use for further classes. For
instance, researching is something that I am not currently taking part in for my chemistry class. I
have also strengthened my critical thinking skills and have opened my eyes to a new perspective
on the incredible ability of what animals can take part in.