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Shea Stanley
Ms. Douglas
UWRT 1101
3 December 2014

Dear Ms. Douglas,

Throughout the semester, we have been assigned many writing assignments
that were answered and recorded in our daybooks. The entries that I used in my
final portfolio were carefully selected to reflect my personal opinions, aspects that
show my writing style, and my progression throughout the course. These entries
can be found on my first tab of my portfolio, the tab that titles Daybook Entries that
is to the right of the Home tab. All of the entries I chose to include were revised to fix
spelling and grammatical errors to help get my point across and to obtain a better
understanding for the reader. They are arranged from the earliest entries to the
most recent ones I have recorded for this semester. At the end of the page, I have
entered my revised version of my Oral History Report. In this new edition of the
report, I rewrote a new introduction to the paper due to the feedback I received
from you. As seen in the scanned copy of my Oral History Report, the feedback I
received from you stated that I had written a weak intro, so therefore leading me to
recreate a more interesting and organized introduction to my paper. I really
appreciate the ability to work on daybooks in our class because it really helped me
get to my goal as a writer. Having the daybook as a requirement to our course
helped me towards my goals by giving me more practice of obtaining ideas on the

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spot to write short assignments in a short amount of time. With this practice, it
began to help me in my drafting of my major assignments that required more time
and thought in order to be a successful paper.
Moving on through my portfolio, you will come upon my next tab that is to
the right of Daybook Entries, titled Process Work. When selecting my pieces for my
Process Work, I chose a total of three pieces. These three pieces were my first and
second drafts of my This I Believe Proclamation following my review from my
Student Union Ethnography Observations. Justin Hall revised the This I Believe
Proclamation drafts and Jennifer Molen revised the Student Union Ethnography
Observations. My reasoning for choosing both of the drafts came from the idea of
wanting to show how my writing started out in the beginning of the course. As you
can see from the many comments and tips left from Justin, my writing needed a lot
of work in order for a reader to fully understand the points I try to get across. This
helped me gain a better understanding of not only the requirements it takes to write
a successful paper for not only a good grade but for an audience to comprehend. For
my Student Union Ethnography Observations, I chose to include it in my Process
Work because it reflects my first understand of the Oral History Report project as a
whole. This short list of observations helped me get on track for the big project that
consisted of an hours worth of observations and an accurate ethnography report.
Now, moving on to the next tab of my portfolio, Feedback, you can now see
the feedback I received on my major projects from Ms. Douglas. The documents that
I have included in this tab are my Oral History Report, This I Believe Proclamation,
my Midterm Reflection, and my Ethnography. Receiving this feedback really helped

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me be able to find out my strengths and weaknesses from a professional standpoint.
Having these corrections in my This I Believe Proclamation for example especially
helped the most because it helped me see where I stood in the beginning of the class
and where I needed to be for the rest of my future projects. This was then later
shown in my progression within my Oral History Report. The feedback I received
with the Oral History Report helped me to focus more on my introduction within my
papers. My weaknesses that were shown in my feedbacks were that I needed to
work on not ending with prepositions, to watch out for run on sentences, and to
watch my word choice for the beginning of my sentences. Having these errors is not
a bad thing though, because discovering them leads to a better and more successful
paper.
Directing towards the final tab of my portfolio, we move on to my Polished
work of this semester. In this tab it includes my Zine Project, my final This I Believe
Proclamation, and my final Ethnography. For my Zine Project, I was in a group of
three people with Kimberly Finnel, Jennifer Molen, and myself. Our Zine, The
Holiday Spot, is consisted of two articles, an ad, and a book review that I had
written. My articles were The Tale of Mistletoe, The Christmas Truce, Favorite
Christmas Movies For the Family, and Mr. Willowbys Christmas Tree Review. My
next project included in this tab is my This I Believe Proclamation. In this project I
chose to make some revisions concerning my grammatical errors and wording. I
revised many sentences that were once run-ons into more practical and
appropriately lengthened. Then moving on to my Ethnography project, I also made
revisions in order to improve the writing. In my Ethnography revision, changes

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were made to improve the quality of the paper in order to expose my discourse
group. I completely re-wrote the paper by adding factual information along with
citations to follow them and using my observations to incorporate into the discourse
group issue. The Ethnography is a brand new paper, nothing like original copy I had
turned in. The original copy was not a ready to turn in paper and had too many
errors that separated the paper from being a true ethnography versus a personal
narrative. The feedback from you really helped me open my eyes to the potential
that my papers could have and the real opportunities that can come with the chance
of revision in making them more presentable.
As this course now comes to the end, I really appreciate what it has done for
me as a person and as a writer. This class has helped me find ways to express my
opinions and thoughts into the writing topics of my choice, an opportunity that Ive
never had previously. Now as a writer and researcher, I am able to identify what are
important points to get across in order to write a successful paper. In this course,
thinking of topics and ideas all on my own was probably the most challenging part
for me. The ability to have free will in my writing was given to me in high school, so
that is what made being able to finish these papers proudly such an
accomplishment. Finishing these papers or even a short daybook entry was such a
feeling of self-accomplishment because I was able to come up with all of it on my
own, no guidance at all. After submitting my papers, that is where I learned that
change and improvement is always an option because of the help of my peers or
even you Ms. Douglas. Receiving feedback helped me learn that my paper will never
be perfect the first time I write it, but even better after I receive the help from others

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and their opinions. Thank you so much for a great semester Ms. Douglas, you truly
made my first semester of college a great experience and created a reassurance that
I chose the right school to attend. I wish the best of luck for you with your future
classes and learning everyones names just like you did with our class. That was
definitely my favorite part, trying to see if you would get our names right that day,
you did a great job of learning them very fast! Thank you again and I hope to see you
around on campus in the future!
Your Student,
Shea Stanley