Dear ePortfolio evaluator,

As getting into College, I always described my writing skills as something that I always had to work on and that bothered me a lot, I thought that I was not good enough at writing and that my skills would never meet the needed criteria since I never had a single clue of how to express myself and what I wanted to write. However, getting into this class made me realize that all my classmates have or even had the same concerns as me most of the time; we are still learning and that’s totally acceptable. We are here to help each other out and make each other improve little by little. 

I would always get some compliments on my writing by the time we were getting deep into our new assignments and that made me realize that changes were being visible for the good. On the other hand, my voice as a writer lacked presence and  I was having a hard time trying to reflect my voice and my personality in my projects. I wanted to make others like my work without considering even if I did like what I was giving to the public.

The practices that I’ve learned in this class not only helped me present better myself to the public and my classmates but also my improvement was visible in my other classes. A demonstration would be in my psychology class. It is important to write report papers regarding the different types of definitions learned in class (group thinking, obedience, different mental disorders…), most of these report essays required research and a good understanding of the topic being discussed which I can certainly report that because of this rhetoric and writing class I was able to strengthen my abilities on reporting and stating new concepts.

I have noticed that college-level writing does not compare not even to a molecular level to high school writing. When we get to college, the importance of ownership of our work is taken more seriously than in school and this is due because High School is the time where we all are trying to develop and improve our writing styles and skills. For example, in high school it is normal that some teachers do not expect you to know the current formats or know how to cite the information that you used for that specific work that you completed, mistakes are more likely to be welcomed and be corrected by the teachers themselves. Though this might be the case in high school, college does not take mistakes so lightly, and not citing a quote on your research paper by mistake can bring consequences reflected not only on your grades but with the institution itself. 

Some skills like brainstorming, drafting, outlining and others help not only in classes like this one but in future activities that might be assigned or just in a regular life situation. One example could be when working in groups, it is important to be settled on the idea that you and your classmates want to present to the class. Brainstorming can help you and your group members gather everybody’s ideas as well as opinions with the purpose to get into an agreement as well as contribute to each other. Drafting can also help us gather information and ideas spontaneously. By just writing freely, we can take out the ideas that we might like or change things within our unofficial final work.

By this, I could possibly say that my writing skills have been improving since day one. By no means I’m an expert, but I’m confident to say that I can defend myself in future classes and throughout my college career. Something that I could improve at is my citation of sources and my organization since I tend to not cite my sources correctly and I tend to mix the order of my paper depending on how extended is my paper and my topic. This is why these two criteria should be implied more in students since students starting their college careers suffer more when organizing their ideas and citing their sources. Nonetheless, I feel prepared enough to take a step forward on my writing journal despite my lack of motivation at first and not used to being confident enough in my work. I’ve grown as a writer and as a student due to the fact that I’ve learned that portraying your work and ideas correctly can bring more pleasant experiences not only in an English class but in other areas whether you are a journalist, biologist, or any other type of person majoring in other areas.

-Sincerely written by Aimee Rosario

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WRZ6Z4G09mDSNb8I68E8_gbc5Tn4HaujCxwmgwnJzro/edit