Reflective Cover Letter

Dear ePortfolio Readers,

As a writer, I have always felt confident in my writing abilities. Throughout high school, I have always taken advanced English courses and in my senior year of high school, I took AP Research which was a course that focused on writing a research paper for the whole schoolyear. This course helped prepare me, not only the writing aspect of ENG-170, but the preparation of time management. Because of my prior experience, I felt excited and prepared to take this English course.

One thing I was able to improve on for later papers for class was my ability to time manage. In the beginning, it was hard for me to get a schedule when each assignment would be completed. Towards the end, I was able to have a concrete schedule of when everything should be completed so that way, I would be stress free when the deadline approached. I was able to utilize some skills from this course in my other classes. In my Principles of Marketing class, I was able to use two skills that I did previously in ENG-170. For my marketing class, in the beginning of the year we were spit into groups to run an online coffee cafe. After fourteen weeks of running the company, we had to create a slide show presentation and present our results to the class. In the slideshow presentation, the two slides I had to complete were the executive summary and business description. Luckily, I had experience writing these from the Business Plan, created in class. I was also able to use my experience presenting in front of the class about our businesses. In addition to this, I was able to enhance the visuals of my slides for my marketing class after completing the lesson of how to make our slides look visually appealing and how to be a good presenter.

In order to complete the annotated bibliography, I had to be prepared to use critical reading and thinking skills. Because the annotated bibliography requires multiple sources that relate to my business I had to strategically read and analyze articles to figure out which ones would be most effective for my business plan. Using these skills, I found it was very valuable an helped me narrow down which articles to use. I also used critical reading and thinking skills when I was drafting my business plan. Through the process of writing the essay I had to use critical thinking to figure out the exact words to say and make sure what I was saying made sense. After I finished writing my business plan, I used critical reading skills to revise and make sure I included everything that was necessary.

Before coming to college, I wasn’t sure what to expect with the level of difficulty that all my courses would be. After almost completing a full semester, I realized that all of my academic preparation in high school and challenging myself in honor/ college level courses, that I was more than prepared for a college English course. Throughout this course, I have learned many valuable things about the writing process. Typically, I was never a big fan of drafting so many different parts of an essay and thought they were a waste of time. Now, I think that drafting is a totally necessary process for the evolution of an essay and provides me the ability to time manage. If I was not forced to draft the different sections of the business plan, I don’t think it would’ve come out nearly as cohesive as it did. Additionally, sometimes writing a huge essay can be overwhelming when writing it all at once. With that being said, it is even harder sometimes to revise your entire essay without losing focus. Writing the business plan, I made sure to prioritize revising. I did this by revising each subheading for each section directly after finding it. By doing this, I guaranteed not being stressed when I would finally finish my paper and then realize I have to edit all thirteen pages. This strategy helped develop my writing by not rushing through the editing process and making sure each section got the same amount of attention.

I would consider one of my strengths to be writing for public presentations. I have presented a lot in school over the years, and I definitely have gotten the hang of preparing what to say for my presentation. Especially, because it was made important that we shouldn’t have lots of words on our slides it was important to include lots of material that may not be stated on my slides. Usually, I am good at including just the right amount of information without my presentation being too long and keeping my audience engaged. One thing that I need to improve on in my writing is conventions, like grammar and spelling. Even though I have access to spell check, I tend to still make lots of grammatical and vocabulary errors. When we would peer edit in class this would help me improve my conventions.

After completing this course, I can confidently say that I feel prepared writing up to college expectations and feel prepared for future endeavors with writing. Considering I spent nine months writing a research paper last year, there are a numerous number of things that I have improved on this time around. And because of that my attitude towards writing has also changed. I used to dread writing each section of my essay, but now I weirdly enjoy it, especially when it’s about something that I have creative control over.

Sincerely,
Katie Singleton
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