Dear Professor Campbell,

My first semester here at UNC Charlotte has definitely been a great one. I believe Im
starting to find myself here on campus and cannot wait to see where the rest of my time at the
University takes me. Your writing class was most definitely one of my favorites, due to the
element of writing itself, the assignments, and you as a professor. Each class was filled with
upbeat energy in conjunction with quality work and learning.
As a writer, I feel like I have grown for sure. At the beginning of the semester, as I was
repetitively taught in high school, I had a certain process of writing that I tended to follow to a
tee: introduction, body paragraphs, conclusion. However, in this class, this mold was broken a
little bit; instead, more free-writing appeared to take placewhich I loved very much!
Exploring your own writing style was encouraged throughout the class by you and my
classmates, and I appreciated how we could all develop and implement our own personal touch
to our writing.
In high school and prior to this semester, my biggest writing weakness was breaking from
a more formal style and letting myself loose. Throughout this semester, I aimed to be more
informal and not be so strict in my writing. To a degree, I definitely believe that I improved on
this some. For example, in my Extended Inquiry Project, while my style was still more formal
than informal, I likely would have been a lot more scientific in my writing in high school than I
was for this essay. In the future, I plan on continuing to learn to loosen up the way I come across
in writing and hope I can improve even more.
On the contrary, I feel like one of my strengths is my diversified writing style, as far as
the technical aspects go. I like to use elements such as parentheses, dashed, semicolons, and

colons in my writing. In this class, I feel like I have grown to use these more appropriately and
more effectively. Beforehand, there were times I would use them just because I could. Now, I
strive to use them in situations where it is deemed fit. While I continue my academic career as a
writer, I hope to build upon this more and work on my usage of these literary components.
Regarding my mindset as a thinker in this class, I believe that I grew as a questioner
throughout the class. We often read material and watched videos on education, for example, in
which I gradually began to question as the semester moved along. At first, I was more timid in
speaking up in class and really questioning the educational system that much. However, as I got
more comfortable with the class and let my opinions formulate more freely, I began to more
actively participate in the discussions and let my mind think more. In my opinion, questioning
life in every aspect is crucial in maturing and becoming a true thinker. I loved how this was
openly encouraged in this class, and how everyone got a chance to share their opinions.
Moving along, one of the first main assignments, the Literacy Narrative, proved to be the
most challenging for me out of everything we did this semester. As aforementioned, being
informal has often been a challenge of mine. I am typically better at formal writingnot
narratives. Nonetheless, I ended up really enjoying this assignment because I found a way to
make it unique and personal with writing about my sister. As expected, I found the scene-based
parts to be most difficult because of the needed vivid detail and flowy writing that is necessary
for these components to be effective. If I could change anything, I would definitely let myself be
more free in my writing and open up as much as I could about the subject matter.
The Topic Proposal and Annotated Bibliography were two assignments I enjoyed more
because of their more straightforward nature. In regards to difficulties, I found the Topic

Proposal hard in deciding on a topic first and foremost, and then narrowing it down to something
specific. I was nervous in delving into stem cells because of their controversial nature in society.
I ended up choosing an initial topic around the concept of aging, and using stem cells as a means
to stopping aging altogether. But, this topic proved to be too complex, which my final Topic
Proposal ultimately helped me determine. With the Annotated Bibliography, I found it to be a lot
more easier with limited challenges because of my new topic. By this assignment, I had already
changed my topic to revolving around animal testing, which is a lot easier to comprehend and is
discussed frequently in society. Thus, the Annotated Bibliography assignment ended up being
easier to conduct because there are so many, and a lot of different, sources about stem cells and
animal testing. Looking back, I wish I would have known my final topic to begin with before
doing the entire Topic Proposal because it would have proved useful in future assignments;
however, doing to the Topic Proposal also helped me pick my topic so I cannot complain about it
whatsoever.
The Extended Inquiry Project drafts were one of my favorite assignments for sure. For
the first draft, I created an outlinenoted in my Analytic Thinker portion of my ePortfolio
that greatly helped me write the essay. This outline was derived from previous assignments,
DayBook work, and readings on essay writing. The hardest part of the first draft was creating an
equal mix between the two essay types (argumentative and explanatory). Looking back on the
feedback I received from you, I wish that I would have realized a lot of the errors/improvement
areas beforehand (such as not having hardly any mentions of my sources other than
parenthetical). But, this definitely gave me a good foundation to move onto for my final draft.
Editing papers is actually a liking of mine; as such, creating my final paper was enjoyable for

me. I liked going through my first draft and finding places of improvement and collecting your
feedback as well. This process proved helpful in shifting my first draft into a much better final
product.
The last major assignment, the ePortfolio, was my all-time favorite part of the class for
sure. I love working with computers in doing schoolwork, and the ePortfolio was all done via
technology. The hardest part was definitely the meticulous nature of getting each and every
component where I wanted it, how I wanted it, and giving it the overall look I was yearning for.
But, this also made it fun and made me realize how OCD I can be! I found myself commonly
messing with something for many minutes until it was exactly how I wanted it. Overall, it was a
great project that encompassed every major assignment we have completed through the course of
the semester.
All in all, I am very glad I took this class. I grew as not only a writer, but a student as
well. This class consisted of work mostly outside of the classroom, which was the perfect
environment for helping me transition into college. From this class, I will take new ways to write
and think that I can apply to essentially any class I take at UNC Charlotte. The tips I have
learned from you, my peers, and my own inner self will likely prove beneficial moving forward.
I appreciate everything you have done for me and my peers this semester. I thoroughly enjoyed
every minute of it!
Have a great winter break and thank you so much for everything you have done,
Tyler