Cover Letter

 

Name: Anthony Stanley

 

Instructor Skylar Couch-Tellefsen

 

ENG 160-22

 

22 November 2022

 

My Writing as a First Semester College Student

Throughout all my years of school, writing has never been my strong suit. I struggled with following the rules when I just wanted to write for my own rubric, not one the school required for a grade. Writing and me, never got along well. But, during these past few months of taking this English course, I have definitely noticed changes in my writing ranging from how I write, for instance how I start an approach to a paper, my transitions to my endings. I have also noticed new weaknesses in my writing that I hope to improve as I progress through my classes. One place I found myself struggling was in my second essay, “True Love?” . I found myself being very disorganized and informal focusing on many topics instead of one. Through this essay I hope to share with you my experience in my English class this semester and my future goals and plans in the upcoming semesters here at Suny New Paltz.

Over the summer when I realized I was taking another English class, my initial attitude was a very negative approach. My previous English classes were very uninteresting, and unengaging to me, causing me to show a lack of interest in the class whenever it came to essays or participating in readings in class. I often struggled with the essays in high school as well, especially research papers. I would compile all of my research and put hours into it and then when it came to finally starting the essay my mind went blank and always led me to procrastinating. For me, procrastinating was always a huge problem, I have ADHD, ADD, and low spectrum autism. With all of these combined, procrastinating becomes your best friend. When I started this course, I started to focus on my weaknesses as a writer and started to change the way I write my essays. I first started with actually doing my essays when they were assigned instead of at the last minute, secondly I started actually making drafts whereas in highschool I would just start working on the essay without working on a draft first. I would also instead of starting right into the writing part I would start brainstorming and have a little plan in my head of how I wanted my essay to go when I began writing it. Doing all of these helped me improve the way I wrote during the semester compared to my years in high school. Another thing I have changed about writing is going back to revise my writing whereas in high school I once again procrastinated this step to the point where I eventually didn’t do it because I was lazy and unmotivated. I changed a lot about the way I write and the way I approach writing but taking this course has also made me strengthen certain aspects of my writing. 

These past few months of taking this course gave me the chance to really start focusing on my weak points in writing and allowed me to try turning them into my strong suits of writing. 

One point I specifically focused on strengthening was my research process, and just accepting the fact I have to research in general. Even with this essay it made me procrastinate a bit because of the fact I’d have to research my previous work to find strengths and weaknesses as well as changes in my writing patterns. Another strength I noticed I improved was my citations in my essays. I still struggle with them but I’m now confident enough where I can at least try to cite something and get somewhat remotely close to the proper citation. I specifically used this in my third essay, “A Closer Look at Alice In Wonderland”, when I had to cite a source within it. I was confident enough to try and cite it and when I asked my professor to see if it was right I added an extra piece of information I didn’t need and I had it right already. This definitely made me improve my citing skills getting it right but I overthinked it and added something extra when I didn’t need to. Strengthening these weak points in writing was quite a relief but with that I also discovered new weaknesses in my writing.

With the whole new writing style I had to get used to compared to my high school, organization of my essays became my greatest enemy. In all of my essays I greatly struggled with my organization skills and the formatting of my essay as well as the flow of it. The main part of my organization in my essays that I struggled with was where I put things in my essay. For instance, in my second essay, “True Love?”I struggled with focusing on one main point and instead focused on many all spread out across my essay in a way that didn’t make sense and couldn’t reach the audience effectively. Having all these points spread out and making it hard to understand for the reader made my next weakness the clarity of my essays. It became so disorganized to the point where I got off topic in my essays trying to convey a point in my essay. Even in my short writing assignments I found myself rewriting some of them due to them being off topic too much and it began to not focus on the topic that was assigned. The stress of trying to make my point very clear caused me to focus on one thing so much that I’d eventually trail off and begin talking about a whole different topic or point irrelevant to the topic or questions assigned. The online portfolio also contributed to this stress.

In high school, we would be assigned an essay every quarter, research it if necessary, write it by hand, and turn it into the teacher to only be seen by the teacher. Now coming to college, a lot of people, especially the English department, are looking at your work through an online portfolio, which also added to this stress of writing greatly. Considering the fact that I would now be writing online and turning in everything online for everyone to look at including discussion boards added to this overall stress. It made me be more cautious and considerate of my writing process because I didn’t want to embarrass myself in my writing where I could be made fun of or criticized for my work. All of these factors made it a very stressful part of my writing knowing anyone could look at it.

Overall. I personally feel prepared enough to go onto ENG170, and used ENG160 to prepare myself for what’s to come. Taking this course is helping learn to write more clear, to the point essays while still being informative and clear to my audience or reader. Writing in discussion boards where I can see my peers’ work has also made me more confident in my writing and has made me more prepared to take the next course confidently without any hesitation in my work being criticized harshly by them.

As this class comes to an end, my attitude and approach towards writing has changed very dramatically, especially mentally. I now realize that even for my major of computer science, writing is a very important aspect of it that I have to learn to like. I don’t necessarily feel one hundred percent ready for the full college level writing experience but taking this course has definitely made me more confident to approach this. I don’t feel 100% ready due to my weaknesses expressed earlier, and how college is a whole different style of writing than I was used to at high school. By using the materials given to me by my professor I have gotten better at aspects I wasn’t so comfortable in in high school. Specifically the videos and websites on how to cite sources correctly helped me out with my biggest fear of unintentionally plagiarizing someone’s work. The workload of this class has definitely helped me apply time management to my other classes and myself, and helped me explore the right amount of time to take for each class. I would like to thank my professor for being super helpful during this semester and helping me feel well prepared for ENG170.