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Multi-Modal Self-Assessment (800-1200 words)
In Writing 39B, you probably did some of what we call meta-cognitive thinking — this is what we call reflection on your own writing process, and it’s something we’ll do even more of in Writing 39C. Our weekly “discussion” boards will provide the space to do this thinking. They will also become a place for you to respond to your peers’ work and bounce ideas off of each other, but our first discussion is to help me get to know you better as a writer, student, and thinker.
Utilizing any rhetorical strategies you learned in WR 39B (or elsewhere), respond to the following series of questions. You can respond however you like — a self-reflective essay, a video, whatever. The important thing is that you provide me with a sense of your writing life (try to write as an interesting and interested subject). Feel free to include images/multi-modal elements.
Who are you? What do you want for us, your class, to know about you?
How do you plan and prepare for a writing assignment? Did someone teach you this approach? Do you think it works? Can you see any pros and cons to this method? 
How would you characterize your current relationship to time? How does this relationship impact your relationship to writing?
How have your previous courses (WR39B, for example) contributed to your sense of yourself as a writer? Describe two or three tools you picked up from other courses that you feel will help you most in this course and explain. Be specific. 
Describe any practices and habits of researching, rhetoric, arguing, writing, thinking, communicating, and organizing that you can articulate about yourself (these qualities need not be explored merely in terms of course work). 
Where do you consider that you need the most improvement? Use examples from past writing and c

ommunication projects. How would you like to evolve as a writer and researcher? What goals have you set for yourself in this class?
What have you heard about this course and what do you expect to find as a result? Do you have any anxieties about this course so far? Do you feel adequately prepared for this course? What about your past or current experiences contributes to this feeling?
How do you think I can best help you meet your goals and alleviate your concerns? 
Week 2 reading questions
Reading Questions: Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Each week, we will write short free-responses to questions on the assigned reading that will be helpful in developing your project topics. If you are struggling to respond to these questions, first review the lecture videos.
There is no required word count to hit in your responses, but a good rule of thumb is to write enough that you feel you have developed an argument — a claim backed up by evidence and analysis.
Please be sure to number your responses, and paste them as a text response — do not embed/link to Google docs or upload files.
There is a lot of introductory material leading up to Part One of this book: “A Few Words About This Book”; an epilogue from Nobel laureate, writer and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel; a Prologue; and two pages of introductory contextualizing of the book expressed in “Deborah’s voice,” the daughter of Henrietta Lacks.
Why, for example, is the first line of this book “This is a work of nonfiction.” Why don’t other works of nonfiction announce that they are nonfiction? Why is Elie Wiesel’s an appropriate epigraph to this book? Why is the inclusion of “Deborah’s voice” appropriate, moreover, to a course about the conventions of research and argumentation?