Dear Valentina,

I was hoping to use this letter, not only as a means of reflecting on the concepts

taught during this course and my performance in showcasing those concepts throughout

my WPs, but to also express my gratitude for the depth of knowledge you provided

about the process of writing and discourse communities. I’ve been writing all my life and

in my entire academic career, I have never been taught the process of writing in a way

that carried over to my assignments. I really appreciate this and I’m excited to see where

this newfound process takes me in my future of writing.

During this course’s discussions and readings I learned a lot that I will be

implementing into my work for the future. The first thing I learned that completely

changed the way I think about writing was genres, and reading Dirk’s “Navigating

Genres,” really helped solidify the concept of genre analysis in writing I’ve been exposed

to all my life. I already had a sense of what genres were and was already using some of

the aspects of genre analysis and conversion in my writing, but I never understood it.

The way I looked up how to write emails for my first internship or how I took an online

course at UCLA about scriptwriting is all genre analysis. Besides academic essays, I want

to write in so many other genres and learning about the conventions of genres and how

they work was refreshing and exciting.

Another concept that proved extremely helpful in learning was the overall writing

process. I’m embarrassed to admit that up until this class I would just submit a draft for

my assignments. I hated looking at my papers after I wrote them and I’m sure the

people grading them didn’t enjoy them all that much either. Since I’ve never received
bad marks for my writing, I never thought I had to change. But I like writing, and I don’t

know why it’s very frustrating. But I want to be good at it, and using the writing process

of researching, outlining, drafting and revising has made the writing experience less

daunting.

Speaking of revision, I never knew how to do that before this course as well. I

thought revising was making sure Google docs caught all the grammar and spelling

mistakes. After reading Doug Downs “Revision is Central to Developing Writing” and

going through the revision workshops, I was shocked at how helpful and necessary

revision actually is. The steps that you gave us to ensure that every aspect of our writing

was being thought about really helped me see how much goes into writing that I

otherwise overlooked. Now, when I read something, whether it be an academic text or a

tweet, I am thinking about the writer’s goal and the techniques they used to achieve that

goal in their writing. This has proved to be great practice for my writing as well. It’s

funny how revision is one of the last steps, but where the real thinking and writing

actually begins.

Besides the many concepts I learned this quarter, there are also some things I

want to learn more about. Literacy practices are key in learning a new genre and its

conventions, and I want to learn more about the specific practices that writers do in

order to hone in on their craft. Reading “Literacy Practices” by Barton and Hamilton

helped me understand that students have to systematically and intentionally practice

the skill of writing in order to get better. I think it’s so important to be able to convey

your thoughts properly to others so that they understand and I want to look at examples

of writers who can do this and see how they practice themselves. Although I’ve learned a
lot about writing from this course, I am not immediately knowledgeable in how to

implement them all into my writing, and that’s okay. I’m taking a few concepts at a time

and trying to work on them as I practice my writing and complete my assignments.

In my WP1, I was really excited to translate the readings from this course into a

script. As a film and media studies student and scriptwriter, I was happy to challenge

myself in creating a script that reflected what I’ve learned from the writing community.

These were the writings of doctors and scholars, and I, an undergraduate film major,

was attempting to convert some of the ideas from these texts into a script that would

make for an entertaining read. I'm really proud of how it turned out, but I can definitely

see the struggles of converting to such a different genre in the WP. I thought having the

characters in my script debate about whether the responsibility of learning to read and

write academic texts was on the student or instructor, as a lack in these skills can lead to

wordiness and pretentious diction. Since the characters were debating I was allowed to

present both sides of the argument naturally into the story. However, I struggled with

adding ample analysis into these discussions as it’s a rule in scriptwriting to keep

dialogue short. Long-winded dialogue is frowned upon in scriptwriting as it keeps the

reader discouraged from finishing the script and is boring to watch characters on the

screen give monologues that dump large amounts of information. I opted for trying to

keep the dialogue short while trying to explain the evidence in the debate as well.

Another one of my struggles with WP1 was how it trailed off in the end. My

conclusion and ending of the script was barely defined in my first draft and the

characters abruptly stopped debating. This was quite a shock for some of my readers

and after they pointed this out I totally understood. This was another result in my fear of
going over the page count. Since scripts encourage white space on the pages, there is a

lot less reading to do on each of them. Once I got towards the end of the script, I realized

I had to end it and I did this in the shortest way I could. My original plan for the ending

was to have the students live-recording the debate to give their conclusions and reflect

on the debate, but this would have taken many pages to set up and execute. I had to

settle on extending the ending that I already wrote and add extra analysis for a more

well-rounded ending.

For my WP2 I had a lot of fun researching about the study of racism and what it

could do for our society. Being a black student, I not only have to deal with learning and

assignments, but the racism that is prevalent in our everyday lives. It gets overwhelming

when wherever I look, racism can be found. This is the reality of our society and I am

tired of people debating on whether Black Lives Matter and how “it’s not all about race.”

This was the motivation behind this WP’s translation and I am also proud of how it’s

turned out. I really wish a syllabus like this was for a real course that could be taken

online, because this world needs something like this. Even though I knew what I wanted

this syllabus to be about, I had very many struggles translating it from the research

article.

Initially, I drafted two syllabi. One for the collegiate level and one for primary

school students. I remember learning about slavery and racism as a young girl as my

parents tried to prepare me for the world I was to grow up in, and I remember it being

very tramatizing to see people that look like me die and suffer. This is what I absolutely

want to avoid for other young black students and the motivation behind a primary

school syllabus. However, it came to my attention that the concepts weren’t transferring
over to both syllabi and it would be more beneficial if I combined them into one. This is

where the idea of the online course accessible to anyone and any age group came from. I

saw this as a mandatory course students in school could take and a course that everyday

people could take as well.

After converting the concepts of the research article into one syllabus, I was

confronted with how to present the study of racism in a way that’s specific and defined

in order to teach people what they need to know and simple enough that younger people

could understand it as well. The course goals and objectives show how I try to reduce

complex information into a few bullet points that the students would delve deeper into

once in the course. The way the class would run, assignments, discussions, and lectures,

is also a reflection of me trying to make the course simple yet effective in spreading the

knowledge of racism.

I’m happy to say that I am proud of my work in the WPs, but I have to say my

WP2 is my favorite piece. The content and subject material of the research article and

syllabus are close to my heart and experience as a student and person in this society,

and I have always wondered what the world could be like if people just understood more

about racism instead of acting like it doesn’t exist and to the degree of its current

severity. I lived working with the other students and hearing their feedback as to how to

make my message more clear and presentable to my target audience. This course has

taught me a lot about the process of writing, and I’ll never submit my first draft for an

assignment ever again! Again, thank you so much for being such a wonderful instructor.

You always encouraged participation and questions which really helped create a safe
and informative learning environment, and I do not take these spaces lightly. Thank

you.

Best,

Daijah Williams
 References

Barton, D., & Hamilton, M. (2000). Literacy Practices. In Situated Literacies: Reading

and Writing in Context (pp. 7–15). essay, Routledge.

Dirk, K. (2010). Navigating Genres. In Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing (Vol. 1, pp.

249–262). essay, Parlor Press.

Downs, D. (year). Revision is Central to Developing Writing. (pp. 66-67).