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Hannah Tran
Professor Lynda Haas
Writing 37
7 November 2015
Mid-Term Reflection Essay
I have never written so much in my life than I have in this class. For me personally, to be,
in a way, forced to write is a good thing. Before in middle and high school, I was forced to write
as well, but not to the extent as I am in this class. By being able to constantly practice this skill
and reviewing others work, as well as my own, I feel that my writing is improving. For the most
part, I think my writing is becoming more organized, something I struggled with before. I still
have a lot of issues though, such as using simplistic language and using too many commas. So
far in the class, I think I am learning how to analyze other texts in a scholarly way, while also
learning how to write in a scholarly way myself.
Every week for the reflection blog, I have a hard time thinking of what to write. As a
blog, it seems like it should be informal, but I know it should contain important ideas and key
concepts of what we learned that week. In my blogs, my tendencies to write disjointed
paragraphs can be seen, and for me, so much was covered in whatever week of class that I dont
know what to focus on. The same can probably be said of this reflection essay, but hopefully, its
more organized. As the weeks go by, I think I am getting more of a feel on how I should write,
so Im glad thats happening.
In class, I dont participate a lot, or I dont participate verbally. However, by listening to
the content in class, I feel like I am learning a lot, and I also form my own thoughts through this.
In class, we have been focusing on the Grimm Brothers, and at first, I didnt like the Grimm

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Brothers and the fairy tales they collected. I, personally, dont like fairy tales as a genre either, so
because of this, I was being biased as well. As the class went on though, I found that I was
starting to gain an appreciation for fairy tales. The more we analyzed different fairy tales
throughout time and cultures, I could see why they have remained such an important part of
society. Through these fairy tales, we are able to gain some insight into the world around which
the author lived in. Besides being literary works, these stories are also historical works. The fact
that these stories have been able to transcended through time, through oceans and continents, and
now exist for me to read on my computer, is amazing to me.
By gaining this appreciation, I think I became a better writer. I was able to let go my own
previously held biases and look at the text objectively. In general, this is another aspect of
writing I have trouble with. Its difficult for me to remove my opinions from my writing,
especially if its about something I feel strongly about. The best way to get me to write is if Im
writing about my opinion but to just write simply informatively on a subject usually takes me a
lot longer to do.
When writing the first draft of my Rhetorical Analysis paper, this was something I
struggled with. I am certain that parts of that paper are not subjective. I had wanted to write a
shitty first draft, so I mostly wrote whatever came to mind and wrote it in whatever way I had
wanted to. The conventions I had focused on were the role of women and the idea of love
throughout time. I had specifically picked these two conventions because these were topics that
interested me and that were also extremely evident in many of the stories we read in class.
Because these were topics I was, and still am, interested in, I had some opinions that I was trying
to keep under wraps. This can probably be seen in the first half of my essay where I discuss the
role of women throughout time in these stories. I think its a fact that women were regarded as

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just objects in the earlier stories I analyzed, and I was trying to find a way to phrase this without
sounding like an obvious feminist. I think I did a decent enough job at this, and Im proud of
what that first draft became, because it could have been a lot worse, Its important to care about
what youre writing, and it certainly makes writing easier when you do.
When I was working with my group to create our video for our cultural fairy tale, the
experience was a lot different than writing an essay. I felt like I had more leeway to be
unorganized, and the lack of flow that may have existed between transitions wasnt as apparent.
When people are reading your essay, theyre focusing on every detail and every word and every
comma thats not where its supposed to be. When people are watching a video, a lot of details
go over peoples heads because theyre trying to focus on the visuals and the words and how
those words go with the visual. By working with a different medium, I learned other ways of
ensuring that my point was getting across to the audience. I tried to use humor in my video
through visuals, but the voiceover itself was just me reading a kind of boring essay. I did this
because I knew the humor would have been lost to most of the audience if I had said it because
most of their attention was probably on the visuals. Contrary to this, if I had been writing an
essay on the same subject, I would have mostly made sure that the essay was written well and
then add some humor. For my video, I would still like to make the voiceover more entertaining
to enhance the video. I think its important to understand how to communicate your message
through different mediums because by being able to do that, you can reach a wider audience, and
it shows that you really understand your material.
Overall, the e-portfolio is helping me understand the material in the class. Rather than
just reading the stories and writing about them, I can also reflect on what everything means and
why I wrote what I wrote. It gives me a chance to think about my writing and reflect on what I

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could do better. The comments on my paper from my peer review havent really helped me
because they are, for the most part, things I already know or unhelpful comments such as I liked
how you did such and such. However, I think reviewing other peoples work is really helpful.
The article we read in class, To Give Is Better Than to Receive was very interesting and
something I had not thought about before. This is another method that helps me understand my
writing because it shows me what to do or not to do. Despite all the work required from this
course, I can honestly say that this class is probably my favorite class of the quarter. I still think
my writing could be improved, but with this class, I think its getting there.