Portfolio: Reflective Letter

Les Brown said, "Shoot for the moon-even if you miss, you'll land amongst the stars". I can relate to this quote with my progression as a writer. At the start of my first essay, it was difficult for me to transition from high school to college writing. I did well in writing essays in high school since I aced mostly all of them. When I attended Writing 101, I ended up having trouble writing with the standards of college. The more I learned of my weaknesses, I was able to improve and modify my writing. In this portfolio, I included the essays "Bacon's Rebellion and Class," "The Whig versus the Tory," and the final. From my first essay to the final, changing my writing philosophy and my writing process has shown that I improved greatly.

My writing philosophy then was that I follow templates. The templates I learned were for the thesis, outlines, and the “They Say/I Say” (which I learned during the first quarter of Writing 101). For example, a thesis template has to have a statement and lists of reasons why. Also, I learned how to organize information into an outline provided. My writing process involved using outlines, drafting, revising, and editing. Sometimes at the last minute, I skip my writing process and go with the flow by "throwing up" jumbled facts. Writing then was a complete mess.
In collaboration of Writing 101 and History 121, the first essay I wrote was about Bacon’s Rebellion. The shift from high school to college awfully affected this essay that it was easy to identify what weaknesses I need to work on. The essay didn't represent as the "argumentative essay" because it was more of a block of bland information. The thesis was vague and it wasn't arguable. I did well in structuring main points of the argument, but the transitions in between the paragraphs were confusing. I did present supporting evidence, but I wrote too much of it that it became informational and the excessive information didn't focus on much of the arguments. Also, the lack of opposing arguments should have been incorporated into the essay. I made strong relations, but the word choice throws off the whole connection that it made no sense. For example, Bob Marley’s quote “targets the gap between social classes in the Chesapeake colonies especially the lower class.” Marley didn’t target the social classes, he targeted the “Jah people’s” opposition of the Babylon establishment. What I meant to say for that misconception was that his situation was related to the Chesapeake’s. Learning from these weaknesses, I made critical improvements into the following academic papers.

One of the following academic papers presenting in the portfolio is "The Whig versus the Tory." The advantage of writing this paper was that it was with a partner. On this essay, I worked with Naomi. We were able to review each other's parts and made some points on what we can further improve on. For this essay, we wrote about the conflicting views of the loyalists and the patriots. This essay was no “ordinary essay,” this was creatively done into a rap battle. It was my first time writing rap lyrics for a project and I was interested and motivated in doing this project that I was able to break away from the templates like ‘They Say/I Say.” We wrote rap lyrics on the view of the loyalist and the patriot. On my part of the essay, I wrote or rapped as Barton Albert, known as the loyalist. The weaknesses I learned from the previous essays shows that it turned into strengths for this essay. For instance, the thesis was clear that the loyalist can be able to argue against it. Also, I included supporting evidence or historical context that backs up my arguments. In the other hand, our organization was here and there, but since it was a “rap battle,” the arguments followed each other very well .After getting a pass on the essay, I was amazed that I improved so much in writing. From the most weaknesses to the most strengths, I am able to determine that I had improved significantly in to writing effective essays.

Also I included the final exam of Writing 101 in my portfolio. My progress on the essays was from low to high, but for this essay, my progress went back to low. The organization of the essay was poor because I had skipped the first step of my writing process, which was to outline the essay. I sat in class writing from the top of my mind and I inserted facts that it did not go well together. Though, I was able to write down all of the requirements given for the final. I knew that I didn’t apply all of the strengths I learned from the previous essays into the final.

Entering into a college setting of writing, I knew that being dependent on templates limited my creativity. Though I know that when I get used to the templates, I can be able to support topics while using the structure. My writing process now changed than before. Two of the important elements of my process I had left out from writing the essay were outlining and revision. Knowing my weaknesses from the essays, I spent more time to go back and revise than before and I am willing to outline before writing right away. Also, I would like to work on organization which is the number one weakness on all three essays provided in the portfolio. Overall, I think I did well as a writer, progress-wise. My progress was “missing the moon” to “aiming for the stars” to “missing the moon” again. Though I know that practicing more on my weaknesses, I can be able to achieve and reach for the “stars.”