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Dear Matt,
When I walked into class that first day, I did not know what to expect. Would we learn a
new way of formatting our given information? How to improve on our grammar and sentence
structure? Yes, I did learn some of that, but where I benefited the most from this class is that I am
leaving as a more aware reader and writer. I learned to analyze the choices that an author makes
and why they chose to do so. Before, I never thought to think who an author was writing for and
how drastically that changes the way they chose to write. The revising processes we did in class
were eye opening, but the one that affected me the most was the read aloud one. I cringed every
time my partner had to reread a sentence because it was either too wordy or just did not flow
properly. This activity effected the way I wrote the rest of my WPs, because I became more
conscious of how my writing would benefit if I read it out loud every time I created a new draft.
The first official piece of writing we submitted this quarter was WP1 and I chose to
revise it, because I wanted to see how much I have improved as a writer in the span of ten weeks.
I knew what a genre was, but I never really thought what makes it up and how each have their
own conventions that define them. With my original draft, I had a lot of trouble trying to come
up with a thesis that was both argumentative and doubtable. The feedback you gave me on that
draft to argue how two different writing genres have an influential impact on whether or not
people watch something was extremely helpful with my overall analysis of the two genres. That
was in fact the argument I was trying to make, but I never explicitly said it and with this revision
I think I made that clear. This final draft also allowed me to polish up some awkward sentences
and take out a handful of useless signposts that helped me with the overall concision of my
paper.

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I actually intended to revise my WP3, because that was the one I thought I had the most
trouble with, but the bad student in me forgot to go pick it up. As a result, I had no choice but to
revise my WP2. Once again, the feedback I received demonstrated the troubles I have with
creating thesis statements. This revision is what allowed me to strike a claim that I could turn
into an analysis rather than just describing how the two communities were different. I polished
up how each discourse community uses their unique conventions to approach the way they
conduct research differently.
The feedback I received from my classmates turned out to be influential in both my WP1
and WP2 final drafts. With the revision of WP1, I tried to argue that Netflix could be considered
its own genre, but I really struggled with this argument. If it was not for the partner edit we did in
our last class session, I would have continued to try and force Netflix into its own genre and my
paper would have stayed complicated and I do not think I would have convinced you, my
audience, that what I was trying to argue was true. This same activity also benefited my WP2s
thesis statement, because my partner informed me that my argument will be stronger if I included
the purpose of both Psychology and Neurology directly in my thesis statement.
Personally, I believe my portfolio demonstrates how far I have come since writing my
original WP drafts. Any feedback regarding my thesis statements were the single most helpful
thing during any revision process. By being more specific and careful with my thesis statements,
I was able to argue my point more convincingly and my analysis improved as a result of it. My
favorite part of my portfolio is my final WP2, because I struggled to explain my interpretation of
my two chosen discourse communities. It was not until this revision that I was successfully able
to say why they each do what they do. No matter what draft I am working on, they each have

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room for improvement. In this case, I would definitely improve on making my argument even
stronger by directly quoting the authors from our reader.
This course taught me how important it is to pay attention to the conventions that make
up a genre, and this realization allowed me to see the differences between the rhetorical features
of both scholarly and non-academic writing. Any new writing project that I will participate in
from now on will take into account my audience, and I will pay close attention to the evidence I
use from my texts. Being a freshman, and I have not written many research based papers, but I
know my future will contain many of these. Therefore, when I approach this type of paper, I will
surely use the databases provided from the library that we were taught to use in class. I always
knew that databases hold an enormous amount of beneficial information, I just never had the
knowledge on how to access them until now. As a writer I have changed by becoming more
aware of the choices I make. I am now more conscious of who my audience is and I will pay
more attention to organizing my paper in a way that not only flows but also makes sense. Thank
you for a great quarter, I can honestly say I learned a lot from your class!

Sincerely,
Sarah McGarry