Dear Masha,

First, welcome to my portfolio from Writing 2, I have worked extremely hard on each
aspect of this final portfolio and I hope that it shows through my website. Second, thank you for
a great quarter, I have definitely learned a great deal over the course of these ten weeks, and I
appreciate it very much.

The first writing project was based on discourse communities where we learned the
conventions of genres and how they applied to our daily lives. I wrote about my friend-group,
Huji, and how, although unconventional, we could be categorized as a discourse community. I
went through this essay and added citations where I was lacking, implemented transitions
between paragraphs, but, most importantly, I scrapped and re-wrote my conclusion paragraph.
Before, it only corresponded to specific aspects of the essay rather than summing up the essay in
its’ entirety. Now, I feel much more confident about this essay and am pleased to put it in my
portfolio in its final state.

The third writing project was focused on translating genres and changing the audience
while maintaining the central message. I will admit that looking back on my analytical essay, I
feel as though it was obvious that I was floundering in the original draft. Yet, I am more
confident now about this final draft due to all of the edits I made. First, I added a few sentences
and changed some of the language from the first paragraph so that it actually read as an
introductory paragraph. Then, I wrote my conclusion, which was a necessity because I neglected
to write one before. Yet, the part that I am most proud of is going through the essay as a whole
and restructuring, organizing, and deleting paragraphs. After re-reading my essay slowly with the
intent of “one paragraph is one idea”, I feel as though I was able to break up some of my longer,
more confusing paragraphs to create a flow that did not previously exist. In addition, by moving
specific sentences around, I was able to accurately define what each paragraph was arguing. I am
very proud of what I was able to accomplish by revising this essay.

This writing class has taught me a great deal and reminded me what it was like to work
toward higher goals within my essays. Before taking this Writing 2 course, essays were
something that I dreaded and would generally avoid, yet, being a Communication and Art
History double major, I knew that I would be doing a lot of writing in the years to come. This is
why I am thankful that I have significantly improved my writing skills so that these essays do not
feel quite so burdensome. Some things that aided me in becoming a stronger writer were
watching the Master Class videos and hearing from successful writers who have been in our
place before. In addition, learning “How to Read Like a Writer” helped me to properly analyze
any outside sources we used and forced me to look “at the writerly techniques in the text in order
to decide if you might want to adopt similar (or the same) techniques in your writing” (Bunn 72).
This advice was useful and important to know for projects like WP3 in which we had to create
our own translation of a story in a new genre.

Before I took this class, I believed writing was something that was a finite process, one
where you sat down, wrote your essay based off the prompt, edited it a couple times, then
submitted it. Throughout the course of this class, I learned that writing is a significantly longer
process, one that can continue for as long as you would like. The first step to writing an essay is
that dreaded first draft, but according to Anne Lamott, if you are writing an essay, there will
always be “shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good
second drafts and terrific third drafts” (Lamott 1). Essays take time to cultivate, and it is nice to
know that you are not alone when thinking that your first draft is the worst piece of writing you
will ever produce. An essay will never truly be “perfect” by any standard as it is an unachievable
ideal. Therefore, this revision process is a long road to achieving your most “perfect” essay in
your own eyes. I have continued to work on how to accurately revise my essay so that I can
create a paper that I feel is worth reading. So, as I have gone through and written each of my
project builders throughout the course, I have slowly gotten used to editing them more, as well as
recruiting others to read my work to make sure that it is understandable outside of the context of
my own mind. We read about how to respond to other students’ writing by Richard Straub,
which can also be applied by ourselves to our own papers such asking yourself “What kind of
writing does the assignment call for?” or “What is the writer looking to accomplish?” to figure
out how to properly respond to the essay prompt (Straub 18). Something that was helpful for this
course is that I was writing essays for other classes at the same time which were just as
demanding, so I was able to apply specific writing strategies learned in this course in other
papers to further my writing skills.

My strengths in writing are a bit difficult to identify by myself, but after analyzing some
of my work, I believe I have a good tone within the way that I write. I know that I write in an
accessible way without being too colloquial or too difficult to understand. I utilize vocabulary
that is interesting and fits well within my essays without becoming overbearing and muddled.
Yet, I do have to admit that writing about my writing strengths seems a bit odd and
braggadocious. As I will discuss later in this cover letter, I feel as though I have finally reached a
point in my writing that I am comfortable with my essays and consider myself a good writer.

On the other hand, my main weakness when writing is constant repetition. I can never
seem to avoid this as when I write, I’ll write a sentence that I like, then immediately write
another with the same meaning, but worded in a different way. This is seen in WP3 within the
first two paragraphs: “I have chosen to translate the children’s book The Secret Garden” and “I
decided to translate The Secret Garden from a children’s book”. This is a problem that has been
present since I first began writing, and I fight against it every time I am required to write an
essay. It often appears when I feel as though I am cornered and unable to think of anything else
to write about in an essay. Yet, I do have a couple other weaknesses such as problems with
conciseness and showing readers exactly what I mean. Oftentimes, I will use ten words rather
than two to explain a concept because I happen to enjoy using many strong adjectives to describe
what I am feeling or in order to emphasize something: “Since, in my opinion, there are so many
different ways to read this book”. This ends up making my essays a bit long and occasionally a
bit over-enthusiastic. By reading my essays aloud, I am able to catch awkward phrasing before I
submit my essays. Overall, though, I think I have made significant process to lessen my
weaknesses as a writer.

My sense of my ability as a writer has changed as before this class, I considered myself
not much more than a decent writer, but after learning each of these techniques throughout the
course, I feel as though I have graduated to becoming a good writer, and I trust in my ability to
write in a clear and, somewhat, concise way. Now if given more time, I would continue to work
on my essays, adding and revising until I felt as though I had the best sentences I could produce.

Sincerely,
Helena Stanley
 Works Cited

Bunn, Mike. “How to Read Like a Writer.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, by Charles

Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, Parlor Press, 2011, pp. 71–86.

Lamott, Anne. "Shitty First Drafts.” Language Awareness: Readings for College Writers. Ed. by

Paul Eschholz, Alfred Rosa, and Virginia Clark. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s,

2005: 93-96.

Straub, Richard. “Responding—Really Responding—to Other Students’ Writing.” The Subject Is

Writing. Ed. Wendy Bishop. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 135-46. Print.