Chang Tang

Dr. Lynda Haas

Writing 37
6 December 2014
Final Reflection Essay
This quarter of Writing 37 has finally come to an end. Even though writing had been my least
favorite subject, this class was able changed my view of Writing classes in college. This class, taught
by Lynda Haas, has given me an opportunity to work with my peers, from simple group work to the
final RIP seminar presentation. On the first day of class, I was particularly nervous because I imagined
this class to include busy work that is not entertaining. However, when Lynda Haas began to introduce
herself and what Writing 37 is about, I felt much more relieved; the theme seemed entertaining and the
teacher was very friendly. We were told that we would be working with the detective genre by focusing
on the television series and the short Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I was curious
on how we would be studying the detective genre in a matter of ten weeks. This theme was able to keep
the class entertaining helped me persist through weekly blogs and essays. After the first day, I knew
that this class would give me an intense start to college level writing.
We started this class off by doing a brief introduction presentation with a visual. Presentations
had been the second thing I hated the most, however Dr. Haas explained to us that we would get used to
doing presenations by the end of the quarter. I briefly introduced myself in front of the class and held
my visual, which was a collage of drawings I drew that represents my character. This presentation
helped me get to know more about my peers, which was especially helpful since a majority of the class
work would be split into groups. I was never bad with working in groups because I liked to meet new
people and this was much easier in this class because of how small it is. This is just the beginning of
how I improved my communication and teamwork skills.
While we worked on our group assignments, the main focus of the class had always been

writing rhetorically. To be able to write rhetorically is to be able to express your ideas as a writer to the
readers. In order to do this, writers must know who the audience is, what is the content, and what is the
purpose. At first, we progressed slowly by doing weekly blogs in order to collect material for the essays
we would do in the future. My writing skills have definitely improved since the first day of the quarter,
but it is still not perfect. Dr. Haas spent a good amount of time outlining the essays so we are able to
have a general idea of what we should include in each paragraph. Also, we were given a good amount
of scholarly text to help us with research. In the past, I would just search for simple news articles online
to help support the my thesis in an essay, but now the articles are given to us and we are responsible for
analyzing the text as well as incorporating proper citation in our essays. When I first looked at one of
the scholarly text, I was thinking, "This is some next level work alright." Since we were not used to
how complex the texts were, we discussed them in groups during class. For example, my group was in
charge of analyzing the "Beginnings" chapter of Leroy Panek's book, An Introduction to the Detective
Story. With only reading four pages, we came up with many ideas that Panek wrote about. We were
able to engage with the class as other groups discussed their pages by recording our notes into a Google
Docs document online so we would be able to give feedback. This exercise helped us learn how to
analyze, quote, summarize, and paraphrase a scholarly text.
Our first essay was the literature review essay. This essay really tested my level of writing and
showed me what level my writing was at. For this essay, I wrote about what conventions define a
Sherlock Holmes story. The main purpose of this essay is to create a conversation between different
scholars on a certain topic. For my essay, this topic was about what conventions make up a detective
story, in particular a Sherlock Holmes story. In order to do this, I looked through the scholarly text and
pulled quotes from different scholars to create a conversation between the two scholars. However, this
element of the essay was lacking in my first draft of the essay. I stuck to the texts of one specific
scholar and did not focus much on the texts of another, thus not creating an effective conversation.
Also, Dr. Haas mentioned that my weakest point is that I have a hard time creating a strong controlling

idea with sub-points supporting it. I have tried getting rid of this weakness by outlining my essays
beforing writing them, so I will have a clear idea of what my thesis will be and what supporting ideas I
have. The outlines for each of my paragraphs would include the topic sentence, quotes, and a brief
explanation of the quotes. One part of the literature review essay that I revised was the thesis of my
introduction. My first thesis, "Although many critics have their own ideas of what conventions make up
a detective story, the detective story is only defined by having a genius-hero who can solve any case."
As I continued to revise this, I adapted my essay's main point from having a genius-hero to having a
genius-hero who can solve the case while being able to interact with the readers. After each draft of my
literature review, I received peer reviews that helped me improve each time. After doing this essay, I've
learned that in order to write a good literature review, it must have text from mutiple scholars and the
writer must keep an openness of the mind. Through the constant revisions, I've become more flexible
by being able to adapt my thesis along with supporting paragraphs after some major revisions. This
flexibility has helped me this quarter by making me able to adapt whenever I am faced with a problem.
The second essay that I worked on was the rhetorical analysis essay, which I wrote about the
mash-up of the procedural and detective genre. I faced many issues with this essay, but stuck with this
topic because I felt that it was much easier to write about the CBS Elementary series that I've started to
watch rather than the BBC Sherlock. I chose to revise the thesis and introduction paragraph again
because the first paragraph always gives me the most problems, especially when I don't have a set
direction. However, I feel that I am able to write more creatively by doing a bad introduction with
many interesting ideas. Another aspect of this topic that interested me was the noticeable differences
from Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and this procedural adaptation of CBS. In this essay, I began to
write about the cinematic elements that we learned about in class because I felt that it was really
important in showing the difference between a Doyle-like Sherlock in BBC and a new Sherlock in
CBS. After my first draft of this essay, I noticed how my weaknesses have changed. Although I am able
to create a strong main point and good supporting ideas, I had included irrelevant ideas that goes off

topic. I focused too much on BBC's Sherlock, which was less of a procedural than CBS's Elementary.
However, I was still able to correct my mistakes and persisted through this essay.
The amount of group work in this class was more than any other class I took in high school. The
first group I was put into was with Amy Gutierrez and Alyssa Sheffler and we worked on the works of
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Victorian Wiki together. My second group was with Gissel Enriquez
and Andrea Lu and we worked on the Cinematic Elements Wiki together. My third group was the same
as my first group with the addition of Vicente Flores and we worked on the RIP Presentation together.
It has been a pleasure working with all of these people because it makes me more connected with my
peers and helped me make new friends in a class I was nervous about. By working with my groups
outside of class, the pressure of being in a classroom is gone and it felt much easier communicating
with them. However, being in a group meant more responsibilities because each person in the group
was assigned a task and if one person was unable to do their part, the whole group would be damaged. I
prioritized group work first because I did not want to let me group down, but I hurt myself by not being
responsible with other work. This seemed to be my greatest problem the first quarter because I
prioritized some tasks while forgetting others. I will learn from these mistakes in order to do better in
the future.
Our class's final presentation was a rhetoric in practice seminar where our class would present
about the detective genre to a different class and the other class would present their topic to us. This
was a class contribution because although the whole class was split into groups, every group had to
work with each other in order to make the whole presentation successful. During the rhetoric in
practice seminar, I worked with Amy, Alyssa, and Vicente on a presentation that explained why the
detective genre gained popularity during the late-Victorian Era. This was very similar to our first
presentation about the Victorian Era in general. However, my part of the presentation was to discuss
about how the police force and crimes influenced the popularity of the detective genre. I talked about
how the public needed a genius-hero to solve the cases the police was unable to solve. After our

presentation was finished, the other class presented the topic of horror. One notable thing I learned
from the other class's presentation was the last female trope. I never realized that there was such thing
as a genre where the last remaining person was a female. During their presentation, I thought about
horror films I've watched and realized that there really is a lot with similar endings. Their presentation
was very similar to ours where one group talked about how the genre gained popularity, one talked
about conventions, and one presented a work created by the students. Although the other class created a
short film that showed the last girl trope, our class created a short skit that demonstrated the
conventions of the detective genre. Their presentation was able to keep me interested and curious about
their topic. Also, their presentation style was very different than ours in which their slides are filled
with words while our presentation focused on pictures and minimal words on each slide. This rhetoric
in practice seminar taught me ways of engaging an audience when presenting, such as using polls in the
presentation. Overall, this was a good experience in gaining public speaking skills and teamwork.
Another aspect of the class was our english lessons done on Connect online and outside of class.
There was a few of these lessons each week and did not take much time. It was able to help me learn
what level my grammar was at and taught me grammar that I had fogotten since middle school, such as
the differences between summaries, paraphrases, and direct quotations. In addition to these grammar
lessons, there was also help on how to avoid plagiarism and how to properly format a MLA paper. For
topics that we had trouble with, we were able to recharge ourself with it by going on the website and
doing addition practice lessons. These lessons had definitely helped my writing skills.
Writing 37 has been a great experience because it was unlike any english class I've taken so far.
I've been able to improve my presentation skills as well as gain experience in working with others. By
being able to work with my group outside of class, I am able to learn about responsibility and
collaboration. My metacognition has improved through the many peer reviews we had to do because I
was able to give feedback as well as learn from their mistakes. Lynda Haas has been a great teacher by
keeping the class full of passion and having an interesting topic that we can easily get engrossed in.

Being able to meet new people, learn from each other's mistakes, and explore rhetorical writing, I am
proud to have taken this class with my fellow peers and will continue to improve my reading and
writing skills in the future.