Benjeet Khabra

Professor Haas
Writing 39B
1 June 2014
Reflection is a Form of Learning
Famous author and American management consultant Peter Drucker suggests that we
follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more
effective action. This holds true in everything that we do especially in Writing 39B. Throughout
this class we wrote two essays, one rhetorical analysis and one critical reading response essay,
and then we fully revised one and partially revised the other. Not only did we have major project
but we had smaller projects as well in groups of three or four individuals where we collaborated
on teaching the class about the historical context behind The Sign of Four, a short story by Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, and aspects of film techniques used in many modern variants of Sherlock
Holmes. Lastly, we created an RIP seminar in which we taught another class about the
techniques and genre we learned this quarter. In doing every aspect of this list we, the class,
became well informed on the topics of writing textual and rhetorical analysis and the detective
genre with a primary focus on Doyles Sherlock Holmes.
When deciding which essay to fully revise, I didnt need to spend a second contemplating
it because I knew from the start that my rhetorical analysis essay was better and it had the most
potential for greatness. Curiosity was another factor in my decision to fully revise this essay due
to my growing appreciation and interest in the film and television industry, which we were able
to study in depth and analyze using our knowledge of film techniques. The greatest strengths of
the revised essay are located in the scenes I chose to analyze because they are similar plot-wise
however, they are from two different adaptations of Sherlock Holmes. Selecting these scenes
allowed me to show the similarities and differences in the adaptations and analyze how the
different directors used different and similar techniques to convey the same convention, which
was Holmes addiction and boredom. The weaknesses lie in the introduction because I wasnt
able to express all of my ideas about the classical phase of the convention without making the
introduction too long to the point where it deviates from the purpose of the entire essay. Through
writing this rhetorical analysis I learned how to analyze the devices used to depict the argument
of the author and when writing an essay I should focus on the analysis so it is a major part of the
essay. After fully revising this essay I was left to take responsibility for the creation of my
literature review essay and show my persistence by revising the paragraph that had the most
mistakes in structure, content, and grammar. I chose to revise the second paragraph of my essay
because it originally contained mostly weaknesses. Now the paragraph has a decent amount of
quotes from scholars and it clearly conveys a point. I was able to clear up the issue of not
introducing the scholars or the texts used by adding a introduction about Leroy Panek and Kirby
Farrell while also giving a brief and useful summary of The Final Problem which I mentioned
in my essay. Lastly, the problem with repetition has been eradicated and this paragraph is now
worthy of being considered decent. By writing a textual analysis I learned how to put the texts
into conversation in order to break down the text and analyze the concepts and conventions used
throughout the text. The process of revision has become a useful tool that helps take an
unspecific rough draft that has little potential and iron out the details to make a it a solid essay.
Flexibility and engagement are two particular traits that an individual must possess in
order to collaborate with group mates to make projects and teach the class effectively. We
needed to be able to adjust to our groups differing schedules and physically and mentally engage
ourselves in the projects we were assigned. For the small projects, we had two different groups.
My initial group consisted of Yuri Stickney, Jonathan Sullivan and myself and together we
presented to the class the history of the lower and working class depicted in the The Sign of Four
and in late Victorian England. Later in the quarter, we presented the short story The Red-
Headed League by Doyle and connected three quotes/scenes to conventions represented in the
scholarly texts we read. My second group was made up of Nick Bourgault, Tin Hong and myself
and we presented modern film techniques that were used in the modern adaptations of Sherlock
Holmes. These groups had many similarities when it came to collaboration and effectiveness.
We were all able to contribute to the projects and discuss it over a group message. If we needed
to meet, we chose a spot that would be the most convenient and we were able to collaborate
flawlessly and our presentations were executed exactly as intended. These groups taught me
what the true nature of collaboration is because effectively creating a project requires all
members to work in order to maintain a sense of originality. In order to accomplish this we
needed to adjust our original work habits to fit the needs and constraints of the project at hand.
These small projects helped relay key points in understanding how to analyze genre and its
context because in order to understand it we must look for the conventions of the genre, study the
history of the author and study the historical context behind the stories. Through doing these
small assignments, my understanding of the detective genre skyrocketed and this is a good model
of how to further understand genres of interest in future classes and readings.
The RIP seminar was essentially the key concepts of the class wrapped up in three
stages/groups where we explained the concepts, gave examples in modern day adaptations and
then created our own play using what we taught the class. Our group was not active during the
seminar except for physically putting the video on the screen for everyone to watch. However, in
preparation for the seminar I served as a research assistant/co-writer/narrator. Along with the rest
of my group, I did not need to play an active role during the seminar except for sitting back and
enjoying the seminar. As a group we were able to collaborate fairly well because we organized
the work in stages, first researching what scenes to use, then Jonathan and I wrote and recorded
the script and then we sent it off to Andrew and Kingsley to make the video. Overall, this group
worked together fairly well and this assignment wasnt too bad. I feel as if our classs
presentation went fairly well. We addressed key points of the detective genre and demonstrated
them effectively. The first group did well in mentioning key conventions and stressing the
significance of them by giving examples and actually acting a scene out. However, there were
some things that could have been omitted, e.g. the locked room mystery, it wasnt exactly
needed and it wasnt explained as well as it could have been. My groups video went fairly well
and even though there were some technical issues I feel like some points were still able to be
addressed. The sound quality should have been better but considering that we didnt have time to
test it in the room it wasnt a complete disaster. The play went off without a hitch and it kept the
audience entertained while still stressing key conventions of Sherlock Holmes and the detective
genre. In doing these tasks I learned about persistence and creativity because we had to use all of
the things we learned this quarter and add our own style to a presentation different than what we
had done before, in doing so we put on a wonderful performance.
However, this seminar was not just about teaching other students about the detective
genre but it was a two-way seminar in which the writing class with a primary focus on the horror
genre also presented us with their three self-made videos in order to teach us about the genre and
its conventions. Although the conventions were common knowledge to anyone who has watched
a horror film, this presentation was educational and explained some of the key concepts. They
certainly stressed the point about the monster being a metaphor. Similar to the detective genre,
the monster is not who always expect it to be and it is usually introduced to the audience
before it is revealed to be the monster. I also learned from their mistake which was there lack
of discussion/overview on the horror genre which could have conveyed many more conventions
and plots structures that werent blatantly obvious. Lastly, we had to open our minds and think in
terms of a novice in the field of horror in order to understand the horror genre and I feel like I
attainted a good grasp of the main essence of the horror genre.
Metacognition plays an important role in learning because it allows us to focus on what
we still need to work on. This reflection has shown me that I must prioritize working on my
writing skills because they could certainly use more improvement along with my reading skills.
When writing my essays it would be wise to critically read the associated texts more thoroughly
considering that the texts are the ones being analyzed. Throughout this class I have learned out to
analyze not only texts as difficult as works by scholars but also use historical context to gain a
better understanding of the reading. However, this does not only apply to literature but modern
media such as film and television. These skills and lessons will come in handy in my future
writing classes that involve research, critical reading and analyzing content.