Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Writing 39C
Professor Broadbent
4 June 2018
Reflective introduction
“Oh, great. Another writing class I have to sign up for,” I thought to myself. Growing up,
I have always had a hared for writing. I never liked it because it wasn’t like math or science
where there was a concrete final answer. Instead writing was an area where I was taught how to
think and write, and every teacher had a different idea of what was good and what wasn’t. I
didn’t like the fact that I was confined to this world of writing- where there had to be five
paragraphs, timed essays, or the topics I was writing about didn’t interest me or that my teacher
said it “didn’t intrigue her.” I carried this hatred with me to college when I found out that I had to
complete the writing 39 series. But I was wrong. Through the process of Writing 37 and 39C, I
found out that writing is a whole new world. It is a space where I can go from creatively
expressing myself to finding evidence for an intense research paper. Writing 39C specifically
was more intense than I thought but it wasn’t difficult. With hardwork and dedication, I pushed
through and learned more about myself not only as a student, but as a writer.
It was hard transitioning to the WR 37 college level writing class coming from a
highschool that underprepared me. I had to get rid of my old writing habits and it wasn’t easy. I
was used to writing with the formulaic five paragraph essay style that got straight to the point of
my essay topic with me reader. It was simple. Easy. So when I came here and learned to throw
all of that out of the window, I was shocked. The most I’ve written for an essay was four pages,
and now in my writing class I was told that the normal amount of pages for an essay was 10! I
was scared, I knew my writing wasn’t horrible but I knew it needed some work. Over the course
of WR 37, it taught me how to use rhetoric to relate what I’m writing back to my audience. With
this, it helped me connect with my audience for them to realize the importance of the topic I was
writing about. Anyone could write an essay, but not everyone could write an effective essay
where the readers can understand and relate to what the topic is. Taking this information with
me, I moved on to Writing 39C where I believe I made the biggest improvements as a writer.
The picture above is how I used to search for scholarly articles when writing a paper and needed
evidence. I would hop on Google, not even GoogleScholar, and type in keywords that related to
my topic.
In WR39C, I was exposed to what makes an article a “scholarly article,” different methods of
finding scholarly articles, and different websites/databases that are available to me whenever I
need to use them for research. We took time out to go to the library to learn about the different
academic search tools that were available to students, not just for english classes but in general
when needed to search for a scholarly source such as databases like Academic Search Complete,
JSTOR, and think tank links that were under the Writing 39C tab on the UCI library home page.
From this, I learned how to navigate my way through scholarly databases in order to add
evidence to my essay. This strengthened the argument of my essay to allow me to reassert my
claim that my topic is/was a problem. For example in the HCP, we were suppose to write about a
political/social/cultural/economic issue that is currently around us. For my topic, I wrote about
Eurocentric beauty standards and the effect that it has on Asian and Asian American women. I
knew about this partially because of my personal experiences as an Asian American woman
myself, bt after researching, I learned that there was so much more to the issue than people just
calling me “fat.” It is a standard to reach social acceptance that derived from the colonial ages of
Europe! I was not only shocked but intrigued of what researching can do, I found out about the
rise of skin whitening products, plastic surgery reconstruction of the Asian monolid, how Asian
beauty standards are influenced by Eurocentric ideologies etc.
The picture above shows how I do research for essays now. I use legitimate and scholarly
databases that have articles made by researchers, professors, doctors, from all over the world at
the palm of my hands.
Looking back at how I used to “research” to how I do now, I realized that my method was wrong
and I grew from it. I now notice that my method before was not accurate or efficient to use as a
way of researching. Random Google searches provide multiple websites/articles but it is up to
me to determine what was trustworthy or scholarly and now academic search bases do that for
me automatically. The new way of researching cuts the work that I used to do into seconds,
allowing me to not only finish work faster, but ensures accuracy of evidence. It’s a little
embarrassing to look back at my old research ways, but this was a major area of growth for me. I
learned from my past mistakes so that now I can apply the proper way of researching not just to
English essays, but for whenever I need it inside or outside of school.
This structure was much better than the one I originally had and allowed me to narrow down my
ideas/evidence to use in my essay to make sure that it gets straight to the point. Using this
structure, I submitted my HCP final draft and got amazing feedback on it! I was so relieved
because structuring essays is something I continuously need to work on, but with the helpful
comments my teacher left I was able to make an effective essay! Motivated by this, I took the
advice from my HCP and applied it to writing my Advocacy Project rough draft. Even though it
was just a rough draft, if I could get the structure right I would have a guide of how to write my
final draft. Eventually, all my hard work paid off! I submitted my AP and not only did I get good
feedback on it but I got a good grade! YASS!
Researching and proper structuring doesn’t only apply to when you’re writing. I found it
useful in both my personal and scholarly parts of life. Nowadays, there are various topics with
varying sides- from current politics to current social movements taking place, there are always
new things happening. And in order to be informed about what is going on and make an
informed decision when acting/speaking upon these issues, one needs to do research on the topic
and that is where the skills of writing 39C goes hand and hand. I am a very big advocate for
social justice so with the current movements, I like to do my research on them before I say
something. Overall, the writing 39 series was a ride and my favorite so far has been 39C. Even
with the heavy workload, the course work is interesting so it makes it go by faster. Would I take
this course again? No. Was it a good experience and useful? Yes.