Andrew Avella
Kurt Karlson
ENG 160
10 December 2019
Composition I: Reflective Cover Letter
English courses have never been a forte of mine. I’ve never found myself clawing at the pages of a good book, I’ve never been particularly great at writing about anything, and I’ve always had trouble on picking up on the nuances of writing. I can even recall one time in high school when I spent an entire forty minute class period staring at a chapter in The Catcher in the Rye trying to find something to write about for an in-class essay we were assigned. I hadn’t read the chapter because I had no interest in reading, I couldn’t understand what was happening after reading it several times, and I didn’t even have the mental fortitude to jot down anything even if it was wrong. In an extreme sense, that was the relationship I had with English classes. Mathematics and the sciences were more my speed. I could even get behind my history courses sometimes, just because they were so grounded in the facts of what did and didn’t happen.
I can’t honestly say I’m excited for ENG 170 after taking ENG 160. Actually, I don’t think many people are, but I’d say that I’m not dreading the course as much as I once did. I was quite surprised to get straight ‘A’s on the three of four papers I’ve gotten back at the time of writing. The open ended prompts were way more of a blessing than I thought originally. I was allowed to choose topics that were genuinely interesting to me, and that benefit of having a mental stake in what I was writing for once was much more helpful than prompt that told me exactly what I should write, in what order, and so on. I knew that even the most open minded readers would find my writing boring; no one wrote that way. My work got good enough grades so I wasn’t fussed about it.
It’s a little hard to assess what it is that I learned in this course. I don’t think my writing process has changed all that much. I’ve never been a fan of making an outline before I write. Only two of the papers I wrote this semester had some form of outline, but they were so simple that they could fit on one post-it note combined. I’ve just always taken the time to write out exactly what I want to say the first time while ideas are fresh in my head. As an example, explaining that outline idea took ten minutes, and the entire first page of this letter took fifty-four minutes (I listen to music while I write, Chet is Back is a fifty-four minute album). It’s hard for me to bullshit and assignment and it’s equally hard to go back and revise my writing unless I find a mechanical fault in what I put down or I decide to completely trash whatever I wrote. The first assignment is an example of a final draft that isn’t so different from the rough draft, and the second assignment is an example of a rough draft I mostly threw away. That rough draft also has one of the two outlines I used this semester. It’s just a collection of albums from the artist I was writing to and a couple other topics to speak on.
Other than the first paper I handed in, I would say that I was proud and content with the writing I handed in. I didn’t jive with writing a narrative. I didn’t have any story I felt I could write about for 1,500 words. For the second research essay, I wrote on a subject I already knew a decent amount about, but I had trouble finding citations of what I knew so the paper could be taken seriously in an academic setting. And my letter was just awkward to write. I also ended up coming up short on the length requirement on all of those papers. The final assignment was the complete opposite of all of that. I cared deeply for what I was discussing, was able to write about my own interpretations without citing an academic journal, and I ended up having too much to write about. I think it’s my best work even if I had to abridge some of my discussion, but the writing is solid. Anyway, I’m not really sure who will be reading this but I hope this letter and the following two essays are at least slightly interesting to read through.