Dear Portfolio Review Committee,

Ever since middle school, I got into the love of reading. I read graphic novels, comic books, and people’s original stories on the internet. I fell in love with the different kinds of stories people had made. It had gotten me inspired to write my own stories on spare pieces of loose-leaf paper. I would have a small collection of pages filled with these ridiculous kinds of stories. As I got to high school, I realized that writing essays was a bit difficult for me. 

Before this course my initial attitudes and feelings about my writing were mediocre. I thought that my writing didn’t include everything it needed or everything my teacher had wanted. I always thought that my writing needed more, but I just didn’t know what it was. I felt like I needed to be more precise with my writing and clearer to get my opinion and or point across. I think writing was difficult for me in the beginning because of my lack of comprehensive vocabulary. I thought that for my grade level, I was meant to use extensive vocabulary to get my paper to be interesting and seem well-developed. My process has changed from brainstorming, outlining, and drafting, to revising and editing because of this course by having had the opportunity to have my class peers read my work and share their thoughts and opinions about what I have drafted with me. I think it gave me a new way of writing, by having other people’s views and ideas about what could be better or what I could change or improve on with my writing. If people show that they’re interested in what I have, it can give me a sense and determination to write more and develop more into my writing and or stories. My process has changed from this course and it has helped me that planning out a good and detailed rough draft is so much better and easier than trying to cram a whole essay in two nights like I used to do in high school. This course taught me that putting effort into your writing assignments can show in the work you do. 

Some revisions that I’d still like to make in my last two assignments from this semester are the research essay and our establishment review essay. If I had the chance to rework these assignments it would be to fix and improve on my clarity and meaning. I want to be able to have my readers or audience understand what my views are and what my point is. I would like to have enough clarity so that the readers can see what I want to achieve when writing. For my research essay, if I had a chance to rework it, I wanted to better myself in the organization of the essay. I feel as though the structure of the essay didn’t show enough of my point and what the topic at hand was. I felt like I could’ve done more research and have been more clear and possibly more convincing with my views and statements. I would still like to make revisions because I felt that I could have talked about the good causes and the bad causes of how AI will affect our future. I could have compared and contrasted them, if I had then it would’ve gotten my point across more well. It would make the readers intrigued and make them question it themselves. I could have been more detailed with my research essay and had more evidence and examples to show what I was talking about. In my establishment review essay, some revisions that I would still like to make for that assignment are possibly to do more research and make the essay feel fun and exciting. I want the essay to feel like a fun but helpful review that could be direct enough for people to understand my words and possibly go to the store themselves and try it because my writing had them questioning and intrigued to go. I want my writing, let it be essays or fun stories to have at least some readers stop and question.

With my peers and teacher’s feedback, I can say that yes, there are things in my writing that I could improve on, such as clarity and details. However, I think those comments, critical or helpful, can help me feel prepared to go into “ENG170 Writing & Rhetoric” with confidence but also have a bit of nervousness. Writing academic argumentative and analysis-based research assignments was something I had done in high school. But of course, in college, the topics are going to be entirely different compared to what I wrote in high school. I can say that I do appreciate comments and constructive criticism in my writing because I believe that is exactly how someone can learn to write better. I believe that writing can always get better with a different intake of what’s written. So yes, with my teacher’s help as well as my classmates’ opinions, comments, or grammar checks, I can say that I am ready for English 170 with confidence. After completing this course, my attitude has somewhat stayed the same but there is a little drive and determination built in myself to strive to write better essays. I want to be able to improve greatly to look back on old works and immediately know that it’s bad. I think knowing and cringing at old work is a sign that you improved for the better. It makes you want to work harder than before to show yourself that you can do it and that you can because we have gotten this far, why not try harder? I can’t hide that I am a little nervous about college-level or professional writing. It does scare me to have heavier, more detailed topics to write about but then again these future assignments and topics could be something I am very interested in, so interested that I want to include everything that I know.

 Let it be smaller detailed to paragraphs of detail on a future topic. Thinking about college-level writing assignments does make me a little excited and curious about what these future essays and discussions could be about.