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Ellen Uyeda
Dr. Lynda Haas
Writing 39C
June 7, 2015
Reflection Essay
Writing 39C has been an intensive writing course that has improved my writing and
communication skills through challenging my ability to manage social media, research, and
writing. Throughout this course I have been working towards creating a persuasive argument to
implement a solution in my Advocacy Project (AP) by supporting it with scientific research in
my Historical Conversations Project (HCP). Early in the course we focused on using online
databases and the library to find research articles to use in our essay and achieve achieve
credibility and appeal to logos within our arguments. Researching helped us improve our ability
to evaluate the value of an article and how to properly use citing methods. This process lead us to
planning, drafting, and revising our essays into a clear and coherent argument; we often would
collaborate and receive feedback from our peers, further helping us understand the reiterative
process of rhetoric writing. Furthermore we practiced presenting to our classmates about our
progress within our advocacy project and what we have learned from our research. This helped
us improve our ability to deliver an argument not only in written form, but orally with visual
aides in a multimodal composition. We also created social campaign with a group which tested
our social media and digital rhetoric skills. Overall, this course challenged our ability to make an
effective argument using a multimodal composition and scholarly evidence.

Throughout this course the reiterative process of research, writing, and revision has been
fully embodied through the assignments activities. To begin with, this quarter was the first time I

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utilized the library. Dr. Haas guided our goals in research, not only in our ideas and topics, but
also in our skills as researchers. We dedicated a whole class to a session with the librarian at the
Langston Library who walked us through how to use the library database. From there I found it
simple and easy to find articles for my HCP. I found such articles as the research paper by
Donald M. Broom called, Pigs learn what a mirror image represents and use it to obtain
information. This article was useful to support my claim that farm animals, such as pigs pass
well proven cognitive tests (HCP). In the midst of drafting my HCP I felt I did not have enough
research to support my claims within my essay so I met with another librarian at the Ayala
Library who guided me through the process of checking out books. I returned home with four
animal welfare novels, one of which I was very fond of called, Critical Animal Studies by
McCane, which exemplified the processes of factory farms while referencing many other
philosophers and animal advocates I could potentially quote. I found that McCane and other
authors were great sources for the philosophy of cognition. I wanted to tie this into my HCP, but
further elaborate my findings within these books in my AP by addressing the ethical problems
with factory farming and potential solutions. Overall, the library was a valuable aspect of my
research in both creating the HCP and AP. In future work I will always turn to the library for
reliable sources, because the extra work has proven to make my essays unique and stronger.
Furthermore, I ran into multiple problems when writing the HCP. After receiving
feedback from Dr. Haas and my peers I learned I had to focus on three main components when
revising my essay: 1) Add more transitions and flow from one paragraph to the next to better
signify the connection between sub-points through the essay. 2) Improve sentence structure and
coherency by restructuring sentences to be more direct, and adding more information to explain
unclear vocabulary of references. 3) Add more historical information by adding the dates of the

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different research experiments to add a chronological time line to the essay. The first two goals in
my revisions were easily fixable; however, adding historical content required more thinking. At
the beginning, I didnt know how to input the historical content of farm animal cognition, but
after further revising and researching I found creating a timeline of the progression of animal
cognition as a science gave my essay historical content with structure. I used multiple articles
from different disciplines within the nonhuman animal cognition field to depict: first, how
cognition is measured and the different tests associated with intelligence; secondly, primate
cognition, one of the first animals to be deemed conscious; and lastly, farm animals abilities to
pass tests that are similar to those tested on primates. I felt this timeline structure demonstrated
the progression of accepting animal consciousness within the scientific community, and
incorporated it into my revision. Through this process I found that engaging myself in this
process was the most helpful, because I was efficient with my time and was able to take all
aspects of the class and apply it to my own work. Other peoples work that may not have had that
much relation to my own was useful to incorporate into my own work, because i found
connections within them that I would not have otherwise. For instance the skim-reading article
my jolly was not about farm animals but I incorporated it into my own work to add historical
context. If I didnt stay open, engaged, and creative my essay would not have had the same
structure or support.
Rhetoric, Argumentation, and Multi-modal communication were all objectives to our learning
outcome at the end of class. Through my experience with our social media campaign, Students
for Farm Animal Welfare I learned that rhetoric within social media is first about getting peoples
attention. This can be obtained by catchy click bates or using the follow for a follow method.
To convince people to listen to your cause I found that an making your posts about local events

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was the most effective, because people were more inclined to click on something that directly
affects their community. For instance, I posted an event and video description on FaceBook of I,
Chicken Virtual Reality. This post received the highest number of reaches out of all of our posts
with 70 reaches. Making content that is more relatable and directly affects your audience is a
good way of getting them to care about your message. Furthermore, I added multi-modal
composition, such as videos and photos into my essay to be more impactful in certain ways than
written texts. Since my essay already has an appeal to logos through my logical arguments
supported by scholarly sources, and an appeal to ethos through my questioning the morality of
factory farms, I was lacking an appeal to pathos. Although, scholarly essays do not depend on an
appeal to pathos because it has less merit than the other appeals, I found that adding my video of
pigs in gestation crates to signify the atrocities within factory farms created a more impactful
argument. Utilizing pictures and videos allowed me to appeal to my readers through pathos,
making my argument stronger.
Also, and effective audience comes with knowing your audience. When faced with two
different audiences: UCI students through my social media campaign, and. scholars in my HCP
and AP I had to adapt to different approaches. UCI students have a higher tendency to listen to
facts that are interesting and catchy, while scholars look for substance and evidence of your
claims to be convinced. Being given two very different audiences helped me see the malleability
of rhetoric. Rhetoric does not have a strict formula. There are methods and appeals, but it mostly
depends on the audience. Through this course I finally understood why rhetoric is an artform and
not a science.
Within my AP finding a solution to my problem included an economic change to change
the farm bill, which is a strong supporter of the livestock industry. I came to this solution after I

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researched different organizations and their advocacy for solutions. I thought that supporting
local laws and protests would be my macro solution; but, after some contemplation the size of
this change was not sufficient. There needed to be a call for large action, something that would
change our meat eating culture. I decided to call for a federal law for the protection of farm
animals during the time they are raise, and incorporate my old macro solution to be part of my
micro solution, utilizing social media to educate and sway public opinion. Social media is the
driving force of many advocacy groups who have made large changes to state and local laws. My
counter solution was the progression of animal welfare laws in states, but I pointed out the flaw
in this tactic. States that run the majority of factory farms are not within these states who have
passed humane laws, and they have no inclination too because of their economic interests. I
added a map of the density of factory farms throughout the nation to demonstrated that states
who have the majority of factory farms do not have laws to protect farm animals. Therefore, a
federal law would have more of an impact on the way farm animals are raised. When advocating
for a solution it is effective to also discuss alternative solutions and why those would not be as
effective. My essay became more persuasive by discussing the flaws within an alternative
solution.
After writing the AP I have been practicing metacognition. There are many more
revisions and improvements I can think of, I did my best at the time, but it is good to keep
revising and trying to make it better. Although, a revision of the AP is not required I decided to
revise the federal law solution paragraph because I was unclear in my statement in how a federal
law is more effective than state laws. I find myself to be persistent in making a good final draft. I
also, wanted to show my progress throughout my profile but I did not save my first draft of the

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AP and have nothing to show for it. The revision of this particular paragraph shows my revision
in grammar and adding information and support where it is lacking.
Revision plays a huge role in discovering arguments and counter arguments. When
reading over your essay after some space you can look at it with new eyes and can see some
weaknesses in your argument or flaws in your solutions. This is important to the strengthening of
your essay because it will make it more effective. Getting and receiving peer review is incredibly
important as well, because it allows for you to see the flaws in your own work through another
persons work. For example, when reviewing the three page problem assignment all my peers
agreed that how I framed by problem was vague and undetailed. Through that comment I came
to realize that it also did not incorporate my scientific research in my HCP. I then went on to
revising this and adding more issues within factory farms than just environmental and health
issues caused by such farms. Through my revisions I mostly focus on the structure first, then
transitions, then sentence structure and consciousness.
My progress from beginning of college to now has over succeeded my expectations.
Through my first year of college I have taken Writing 37 and Writing 39C with Dr. Haas. I have
improved my skills in rhetoric, argumentation, and research skills. One of my most valuable
skills I will take with me into my future classes will be my ability to skim read. I used to fall
behind in courses because I would want to read every letter of every sentence. I couldnt
understand why I was such a slow reader than my peers. The skim reading Connect modules
helped me understand that I do not have to read every word, but only the most important ones. I
have already found that my writing and rhetoric skills has improved my performance in my other
courses and applications. I approach writing very differently now. For instance, before this
course I would have panic attacks before writing an essay, because I could not eloquently form a

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perfect essay I felt my teachers expected of me; however, after reading First Shitty Drafts by
Anne Lamott from Bird By Bird I became a better writer because I didnt pressure myself to
write a perfect first draft; I just let my thoughts flow out of me and build off of that. Overall, this
course has left me with multiple transitional skills that I have already implemented in my daily
life.
Dr. Haas has not only improved my grammar, conciseness, and effective writing she has
also opened my eyes to a population of beings that are unrecognized by our economy and
deemed things by our legal system. Ethics within how we treat animals go beyond how we
treat our pets. The world is filled with beings who think and feel and are treated unjustly because
they are different. My writing classes have opened my perspective and ignited a passion to lead a
more informed, moral life, and I thank Dr. Haas for these past two quarters and the skills that
will last me the rest of my academic career.