Milena Baquerizo
Professor Toohey
ENG170:13
Portfolio Cover Letter
1 December 2021
Writing and Rhetoric
I consider my time in the writing and rhetoric class, to have had a major impact in my writing as well as have been an effective use of my time. As it has allowed me to explore my abilities not just as a writer but a creative and a searcher as well.
When I first started this class, I had a very confusing and conflicted reaction about writing. I always liked it, but I didn’t love it. It helped me express myself from time to time when I felt like nobody was hearing me. However, when I heard that I had to take a class I was conflicted and confused as well as thinking that because they taught me writing in high school and took a college class prior to this class, I already knew everything I was supposed to know and that I wasn’t going to learn anything new or probably a thing or two. I thought the class was going to be ‘easy’ and not that serious. But coming to class this first semester and looking at the syllabus I see that is the class that I have the most work to do, I saw the essays and papers and I felt frustrated at first, specially being someone disorganized and ADHD.
One thing that I improved on with writing, happened to be my researching abilities as well as my style of writing. For both my argumentative and research paper I needed to have proper sources that I could actually use and not put any thing that would pop because of the topic name, and for once I would research not just online sources but physical and I would compare both educational and non-educational sources and as far as watching documentaries so I have more knowledge about the topic not just for my paper but for myself. And as for my style of writing I learnt how to have a more formal style of writing, in every assignment I would do, which I recently learned because back home in my school they would teach us the formal style of writing but because of this class I learnt that is not the correct way.
One skill that I learnt from this class is organization as well as time management. Since a very early age, I have always been very disorganized in every aspect not just academic but persona wise too, and in this class, I learnt the hard way to never throw any graded paper no matter how long it has or if it was graded the first week of school, it doesn’t matter. Another thing that has to do with organization is my note taking and how to have everything neat and in place in one notebook for me to be able to understand when I am studying or just want to check my notes. Time management I learnt because of the visual memoirs, especially when the professor told the class that she was not going to remind us about the visual memoirs, and it taught me to be organized with my assignments in the rest of my classes as well.
One piece of analytical thinking that helped me grow my skills as an effective writer was my visual memoir about the birds flying to the same direction. This visual memoir taught me to see through art, to look for a deeper meaning in art, that an art piece doesn’t need a lot of things happening at the same time, or to be very complex to have a message. Another example from my portfolio that helped develop my skills is the work that I did for my research paper. I had to be able to find CEOs, presidents, and programmers who talked negatively about what they did wrong creating internet platforms. While also backing it up with medical-neurological information about the effect it could have on the brain and more specifically, mental health. This will be valuable for my future studies because it will help me effectively pick and choose good sources for research in future classes. This also allows me to find better sources in an effective manner.
Throughout the course of the semester, I found myself changing my views about the workload I received in college. At first, I thought that it was going to be a lot and I wouldn’t have time for myself, however as the semester passed, I realized that everything is about time management. And even though I learnt this through the end of the semester, I know that is going to be useful in my academic years to come.
One thing that I have learned about the writing process this semester is that as most assignments in other subjects, I seem to work better if I have noise, which for me is very weird because I thought that happened to me with everything else except writing because it needed my full attention. But once I tried doing visual memoirs and the research paper with complete silent, I realized that it would make me feel anxious, stressed out and I wasn’t able to focus or put my attention into what I was doing. Another thing I learned is to always have a clear idea of what I wanted my point across to be perceived as and how to have sources beforehand I start doing any assignment. Before I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted my point to be perceived as and I would just ‘go with the flow’ and see if it made sense, same with my sources before I would never read an article completely I would just read a quote that had the word of the topic I was talking about whereas now actually taking my time to know what I am going to talk about and have read or have understood at least 80% of what the source said. These two things allowed me to not hope for my research to be the best. But be confident in it and what I had to say in my paper.
I believe one of my writing strengths is that I am strong when it comes to creative writing and analyzing things. I believe that I can explain my point across while relating it to my personal life. And doing it in a way where people understand where I am coming from with my opinions. One factor of writing that I believe I could improve would be my formal writing. As, stated before I am improving on my formal style of writing, but I still need a long way through till I am completely happy with where my formal writing is at. I believe that as I get more practice It will get better.
Overall, I think my time as student, writer and creative in this class have helped me develop many different skills not just writing, that are going to be useful in both my academic and professional life.