Weekly Reflection Blog
Here you will find reflections of select weeks in class and personal accounts of my triumps, my struggles, and my epiphanies as a writer and rhetor.
Before Writing 39B, I identified as the Queen of B.S. I got good grades in all of my high school writing classes because I could write fast and generically, but add flashy language to make the teacher think I was a genius. This isn’t to say i’m not a good writer, I totally am, but I never really enjoyed writing or anything in school for that matter because it wasn’t focusing on things that interested me, or that I even remotely cared about. And although I still can’t watch a horror movie all the way through without covering my eyes the entire time, the investigation into the rhetoric of horror is something that drew me in from day 1 of class. Professor McClure helped me fall back in love with the written word and the power of it. Having the freedom to investigate something that I was truly intrigued by without worrying about getting a good grade on every single response was so beneficial for me as a student and writer, and actually inspired me to write every piece with thoughtfulness and insight.
When looking at the topics we covered in class, I think my biggest takeaway was learning how crucial audience reception is, and how if your piece of creative production, no matter the genre, can’t reach a specific audience, it essentially has no purpose. I tend to forget that people actually read my essays and responses, and I go on this stream of consciousness rant that makes perfect sense to me, but maybe not perfect sense in someone else’s head. This applies not only to my writings in this class, but to future writings as well in the professional world in which I have to keep in mind who I’m addressing at all times in order to prove a point, make a deal, or get a job. Or maybe i’ll end up owning a fruit stand in Kauai and my only means of communication will be writing on the side of cardboard box asking people to pull over on the highway and buy my fruit. …But maybe I should dream a little bit bigger. Ten years from now I hope you all remember my sarcasm. I know ten years from now the only thing I’ll remember is watching that short film, “A Reasonable Request” in class. And on that note, peace out suckas!
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As the RIP process comes to a close, I’m able to reflect back on this process with newfound confidence in my abilities as a writer. The RIP required me to not only present what I have learned about horror genre expectations and rhetorical techniques, but how to effectively manipulate them to create a specific reception and get a message across. Our RIP project was a major trial and error process, and it took an entire day of filming and starting completely from scratch in order to finally create something that we were proud of. Although I wasn’t able to make it to the presentations of my classmates’ projects, I will still reflect on my project and discuss what succeeded, what could have been better, and how the process as a whole effected me as a writer and rhetor.
Starting off, we didn’t really have a clear idea of what we wanted our main message to be. We knew we wanted it to deal with the dangers of self isolation, but we had yet to find a purpose in conveying that message and were seriously lacking in the rhetorical reception department. We didn’t understand the importance of determining who our audience was and how to effectively communicate in order to bring meaning and purpose to our project. At first we created our “monster” to be a physical ghost like character that would have been great with the right camera and editing tools, however our means of filming and editing were through iPhones and iMovie. In addition, the “monster” didn’t do a lot for our reception as it wasn’t interesting or relevant to a college-aged scholarly audience. Once we realized the problem, we revised our film and instead created the monster to be a ghost like figment of the protagonist’s imagination. Throughout the film we never really see this ghost, and this insinuates that the protagonist is slowly losing her mind and highlights our overall message. Changing the monster to have a more symbolic role in the film proved to work well to our film’s advantage, as it created a stronger rhetorical reception and thus gave our work purpose again. Overall I think we did various things in our film right. We created a relatable main character, an applicable and relevant message, and still stuck to horror genre expectations in order to terrify the audience. Ultimately it’s how the audience receives the film that gives it importance and purpose, so if we were able to do this then we succeeded not only as students in Writing 39B but also as rhetors and communicators in a scholarly context. The start of this RIP process has been nothing short of challenging. I am much stronger writing and creating on the basis of rhetorical analysis, so when it comes to creativity I tend to fall short. However, horror is something I have become increasingly interested in since being in this class and I am anxious to begin filming, as I already have a few ideas thanks to support from my group members. My role as director is something I am extremely comfortable with and I see myself as an extremely able leader and critic. Although film is something totally out of my comfort zone, I plan on utilizing my leadership skills, rhetorical techniques, and horror genre expectations and tropes that we’ve studied in class in an attempt to produce a truly horrifying short film.
The only thing that was really difficult about week 4 was starting my RA paper. Before this week, it was mainly just spitting out ideas and trying to figure out what to write and how to write it. When it came time to write my first draft for the RA paper, I had major writer’s block. The prompt threw me for a whirlwind and I actually spent a few days just trying to find a passage to even write about. I was devastated, frustrated, and really felt like I wasn’t going to be able to write a solid paper. It wasn’t until I went into office hours that I got the clarity I had been looking for. Professor McClure provided insight and tips that helped me figure out where to start, how to start, and ultimately gave me the inspiration to begin writing.
Tying in genre with cultural context didn’t really make much sense to me until Professor McClure explained how these two components of literature truly make up every novel, speech, and article that we will ever read. One can not exist without the other, and that is what helped me figure out where to start. Ruth’s characterization as the empathetic and compassionate character towards Neville’s monster-like character is what backs up the cultural context. Matheson creates an unassuming kind character to be compassionate towards a monster to teach us the timeless lesson to be empathetic to those who seem least deserving. This lesson was relevant when the book was published, as the Cold War had just begun, and it is still relevant now as the United States still has hostile relations with various countries, including North Korea and the Middle East. It wasn’t until I started writing and putting this idea out there on paper that I realized the relevance of the topic. It didn’t make sense to me at first to write about why genre relates to cultural context until I came to understand that that’s the entire point of why we read and why authors construct their pieces in the way they do; it’s to teach a lesson, make a point, not just to tell a story. Once I realized this, I began to show immense interest in the topic and I believe it showed well throughout my piece and honestly made my writing better in comparison to if I hadn’t had this epiphany. Reading through this response a few days later, I see so many mistakes and things to improve on. It’s nice coming back to something you thought was so incredible and couldn’t be touched, only to realize that you have so many new and fresh ideas to bring to the piece to improve it. I’m so excited to edit this for my next draft, and even more excited to see how it will evolve into my first large scale essay for this class. I can easily say that week 3 was a lot less stressful than weeks 1 and 2. This is probably because I’m getting into the swing of things and really figuring out how this class works. Week 3 consisted of a lot of group work, which I am really not used to at all. Personally, I work better alone, so working with a group is a bit of an adjustment to me. Everybody has different ways of communicating, learning, and writing, and putting 4 completely different people together for an assignment really doesn’t seem that effective to me. I understand that it’s a great way to learn the skills to successfully work in a group setting, but honestly for a writing class I feel like it’s not very helpful. Everyone has different ideas and the end product with a group might not be something that everybody is proud of and in fact could hinder a writer’s growth in not allowing them to format their writing in their own unique, creative way. However, I am keeping an open mind and staying positive throughout this time. I understand that group work is an essential component to this class, I just prefer to write and present on my own. Peer review is plenty helpful when it comes to getting different opinions and perspectives on my writing, so it’s been extremely difficult for me to write an entire passage with a group, for the reasons listed above.
As for our presentations this week, it was fairly easy considering we were covering vampires as our monster. I had a difficult time seeing the point in the assignment; as much as I loved comparing Twilight and Dracula, I didn’t understand how the assignment itself would be able to help me with my writing in the future. On a lighter note, I really enjoyed analyzing and discussing “The Other Place” this week in class. I have a hard time showing interest in a story unless it’s truly captivating and, ultimately, interesting. I personally liked the content of this story better than “I am Legend”, as the novel became extremely repetitive and hard to continue reading at some points. My favorite part of this class has to be the discussions that are had. Sometimes they are planned, sometimes spontaneous, but I feel like it’s a great way for us to practice our argument skills and rhetorical persuasion. Professor McClure challenges us and almost forces us to back up our claims about everything we discuss, and this small aspect of the class is definitely something that I can utilize to my advantage and think about when writing. After not writing a single thing for the entirety of my summer, getting thrown back into school and especially into this class was definitely a wake up call for me. I really didn’t know whether or not I would be able to handle a college writing class, but so far things seem to be going smooth. I have a genuine interest in the topic of Horror because it is something that I have generally avoided throughout my life. I never liked scary movies, never read a scary book, but looking at the Horror genre from a different perspective and writing about its rhetorical effect has really sparked my interest in the subject.
I started off the week on a high note with the Reznor and Cash video responses. Although it took me some time to write, I had a lot of ideas and points that I wanted to make so I thoroughly enjoyed writing that response. What I (surprisingly) enjoyed the most about this assignment was the peer review. I never really did any sort of peer review in high school; normally the only other set of eyes looking at my paper were my teacher’s. The insight given to me from my peer was really valuable to me and definitely helped my piece. I’m not the best at receiving critique so I feel that doing a lot of peer review in the upcoming weeks will help me not only as a writer but as a student overall. The assignments that I really struggled with this week were the two sentence horror stories, as well as “My Own Monstrosity”. I am definitely not much of a creative writer, and sometimes I feel like my creative writing turns out extremely cliche or cheesy. It took me SO long to figure out how to write about my own monstrosity, and at one point I honestly felt like giving up. This same thing happened when writing the two sentence horror stories, but since they were a bit shorter I wasn’t as overwhelmed. I DEFINITELY know that I am much better at rhetorical analysis and argument writing than I am with creative writing. I’m very excited to continue improving in every aspect of my writing in this class. Although the creative writing isn’t necessarily my best, I do love a challenge once in a while. I’m also looking forward to more peer review and reading engaging novels and articles, which I have really been loving. I appreciate things that make me think and step out of my comfort zone, and that’s exactly what this class has done for me thus far. Hello! My name is Jade DeBarry, I am an Anthropology major and am hoping to minor in Management eventually. I’m from a town called Glendora, which is about an hour north of Irvine, but I grew up coming to Newport Beach constantly, so it’s easy to say that I felt extremely comfortable moving here.
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AuthorJade DeBarry Archives
December 2016
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