Dear Professor Gregory John McClure,

This class has been the best wake up call in my writing career. I am not
the best writer by any means, but I embody it and own it. I feel that I have an
admirable strength of owning up to my flaws and being happy that I
acknowledge them. In high school, I took a dual credit college writing course
my senior year. Before then, I was in AP English, which made me believe that
I was very far ahead of the curve. My credits did not transfer over from the
community college in Texas that gave me the ability to do dual credit in high
school, which made me think, Wow UCI, you are a special kind of evil. I
know how to write so I shouldnt have to take this class. I am thoroughly
thankful that I did. Not only did I learn what I was, I learned what I wasnt as
a writer. To me, that is a gift that I will be able to use for the rest of my life.
When the first week of classes rolled by, I remembered having so much
drive, ambition, confidence, and interest. Not to say that this class
diminished any of that, I just got into the quarter and started going through
the motions. I drifted on through the class doing the bare minimum until in
the midst of my hectic schedule; I forgot to finish my rhetorical analysis
essay. With you being the graceful, understanding person you are, you let me
turn it in late. Having only the time from 10:00pm to however long I could
stay awake for a couple days, I had to frantically piece together a rhetorical
analysis. It was a huge wake up call when you told me I had to completely
rewrite my essay. It wasnt even on rhetoric, or the book we were reading. At
that moment, I realized that I wasnt the good writer I thought I was, not

even close. Ill proudly admit that the whole essay was a mess. There is
absolutely no shame in that. It showed me everything I had to work on to
become a Writing 39B certified writer. I buckled down, and rewrote the whole
essay.
In my first draft of the new RA, it was evident that I had a huge
problem with structuring essays in the right format. To start it off, I had very
weak topic sentences. In the first draft of the RA, I had a topic sentence
stating, When a human is deprived of basic social necessities, they have no
choice but to strengthen the ideas that only bare negative connotations
which shows the amount of work I need in writing topic sentences. This was
an assertive statement, but was not quite an argumentative statement that
had to be proven. It failed to set up an argumentative point and indicate how
its relating to the thesis statement. You always told us that our topic
sentences had to pass the so what? test. To be completely honest, I dont
even think I stopped to ask it myself. With the use of the topic sentence
checklist, I could have changed this to actually be more than just an
assertion.
For future writing endeavors, Ill know to use the topic sentence checklist
instead of just assuming what I did was right. So the lesson learned here is, it
never hurts to double check.
To elaborate more on the structural problems, I also had a problem
with how to adduce evidence correctly. Yes, I used evidence in a scholarly
way, but I put them in places that any skilled writer would not appreciate. I

put the evidence after making reasoning which you should obviously do the
opposite of. At the time of writing it, it sounded awesome in my head. After
getting your peer review, it was more than clear to me how illogical it was to
format it that way. In the first draft, I elaborate on two theoretical models
that one of my outside sources uses before I even adduce any evidence at
all. I start talking about it before using the quote that I felt fit the essay. In
the process of revision, I kicked the whole idea of prisonization and made
sure not include this problem in my final draft. I also noticed that I did not
smoothly incorporate the quotes I used throughout the first two drafts. If you
refer to the early drafts, you will find that I dont insert quotes within a
sentence. I say things like Matheson says this quote, *insert quote* and
ending the sentence right there. The sense of fluidity was non-existent and
was clearly revised in the final draft of the essay. I am happy that I made
those mistakes, though. It showed me what I needed to improve on in
regards to evidence adduction. I referred to the sources on evidence
adduction you had available for us and properly structured every quote to
flow easily in the sentences they were a part of.
A very prominent problem in my writing is my ability to stay focused
and narrow with my thought process. My wonderful RA paper illustrated
this weakness as well. In your peer review, you referred to the essay as just
floating around. The point of an essay is to focus on the topic explained in
your thesis in a narrow playing field. In this paper, I was pretty far from a
narrow playing field. The things I tried to elaborate on ended up jumping

from place to place with no sense of foundation. It almost sounded like a

rant. In the first draft of the essay, I talk about prison subcultures and I
basically just jump around with random ideas from the article mixed with my
own with little to no sense of organization. In the second draft after I ditched
the idea of prisonization and Neville, I created more clearly organized essay.
Im not going to completely beat myself up here, because there were some
great elements in the play. The direction of the ideas I wanted to discuss
were exemplary, they just needed lots of refinement in regards to structure. I
see this floating essay as a great learning experience on what not to do. I
am confident in the way that I revised my RA to have the proper focus
necessary for a well-written rhetorical analysis. The final draft in the RA tab
will easily give you a first hand view of my work in keeping the focus narrow.
Ill have something to reference to if I ever need to question the structure of
any future essays.
In this class I have discovered that I am not the sharpest tool in the
shed when it comes to revision. My RA first draft never fails to show my
writing weaknesses, this being included. When I made my first draft and had
you peer review it, I missed a huge revision comment. Essentially, this was
probably the most important revision I should have focused on. My first draft
was not on rhetoric whatsoever. I included literally everything you told us not
to do in class. First off, I treated Robert Neville as a real person. I included
things like Nevilles inner struggle caused him to lose his humanity The
character does not exist and that is something I really needed to get past my

thick skull. The characters are just words on a page. I made sure to take out
every single part of my essay that referred to Neville as real. You can find
this in the final draft of the RA in the Rhetorical Analysis tab. Second, I had
little to no input about audience reception, which is really all that rhetoric
has an emphasis in. Its literally like I had no concept of what a rhetorical
analysis should be. Something that could have helped me a lot is if I asked
my self, What message is the author sending and how is he making that
message real for the reader? If you reference the first two drafts in the
rhetorical analysis tab, youll find that this problem stayed strong
throughout. Not until the final draft did the revisions show clear changes. In
the final draft, the focus is now primarily on audience reception and the tools
used for audience reception. Ill admit, I should have paid more attention in
class, but the lesson I have learned from this stressful experience is priceless
so I dont regret my laziness. Ultimately, I did learn rhetoric and how to
analyze it and thats all that matters.
Throughout the quarter, I felt I did the strongest with the RIP
project/presentations. Naturally, I am a good speaker and I do well in
public/social situations so as expected, this assignment came naturally to
me. My group had a presentation on generational horror and the
generational anxieties hidden within them. I felt that we had a strong topic
and had no problems finding the information necessary to dive into the ideas
we brainstormed. Our presentation went well in regards to message,
reception, and flow, but did not do anything that an audience member would

be amazed by. You also commented that at times, you were left wanting
more depth. At first, I thought that we had the depth to make an outstanding
impression, but after more thought I sided with you. It did need more depth.
In the slide about new age generational horror, we only did what was
necessary to the presentation. We talked about movies and the fears hidden
within the movies, but we lacked heavily in the elaboration. This part of the
presentation was very basic in a sense, and was almost obvious to the
audience. There wasnt any part that could make someone think, Oo, that is
interesting, or I never thought about it that way. We simply stated two
movies from the modern era and then horrors hidden within. Unlike the old
age slide, we gave a little historical context, we used examples from the
movies, and we explained how they played together to prove the message
our presentation was ultimately trying to communicate. Diving in a little
deeper into this slide could have made a noticeable difference in our
presentation.
This quarter has been an experience to say the least. I have gained a
lot of skills that I will be able to not only carry into writing 39C, but into
everyday life. Studying rhetoric isnt just a class that prepares you for
writing; it prepares you for tasks that require critical thinking. As a musician,
it is especially valuable because an interpretation of music is just like
rhetoric. You have your own message that you feel the composer is sending,
and you prove it through the way you perform. I want to do music for the rest
of my life and Writing 39B has given me more useful tools to make that

dream more plausible. Even though I had my ups and downs this quarter, I
have learned a lot about the writer I am, and the writer I am becoming.
Thank you for the good times, sir. This quarter has been a journey.
Sincerely
-Jake Tulley