Portfolio: Letter

Trying, failing, and learning from mistakes is one of the best ways to become better at writing. Luckily though, I have not had the misfortune of failing yet. Few are natural born writers, and I happened to not be one of them. This writing class has helped me to develop my strengths and skills, while also lessening the amount of shortcomings I have. I have increased these strengths through writing multiple essay’s this quarter as well as blog entries. When compared to my writing in previous years, I feel that I have improved drastically.

The first essay I have chosen to use as a sample of my work was the essay I did for my mid-term. I was to write on a quote from John Locke’s Treatise on Government. The only portion of it that I had minor trouble with was adding historical content relevant to the quote that we were to be writing on. In this essay, I was able to organize my information in an effective way as to get my thoughts across. Also, I was able to maintain good topic control. That was much better considering that I did quite poorly on that aspect for my first essay. Since then, I have been able to maintain control over my topics better than ever. My biggest struggle was addressing the reader directly during the early part of the essay. “Such decisions can be good or bad depending on our sense of reason.” Where it says, “our reason” is one specific point, before I made corrections, where I addressed the reader. I am surprised that I was able to make so much progress so quickly.

Shortly after the mid-term, the class was assigned our second essay that was completed in pairs. In these pairs, we were to argue why we were either patriots or loyalists during the revolutionary era also called Patriots vs. Loyalists. My partner and I decided that we were going to writing letters back and fourth to each other. For this essay, as opposed to essays before, I was able to write an excellent thesis which was,”Staying loyal to the British crown and King George III is the only way to end this conflict quickly.” I have been working to implement theses just as good into my other essays. I also felt that I made some good progress with topic control when I did my part of the essay. At this point, I was still having problems with using my sources but also with organization. Otherwise, I did very well on the essay overall.

About a day or so ago, depending on when this is read, my class completed the writing final exam. The exam consisted of an essay we had to write discussing a quote by Michel Foucault. I think I did rather well on the essay considering the complexity of it. One flaw that I should have paid a little more attention to was coming up with a well written thesis. Organization and personal reflection were my strong points in this essay. I was able to organize the points of the essay that I needed to write on as well as keep to the point. It took me a bit to find some good, concrete supporting information and evidence but I feel that I was bale to nail that one home as well. I feel quite confident about my grade for the final but not overly confident.

Considering where I was when I started writing 101, a lot more progress has been made than I thought possible. I am still struggling a little with writing theses, but I have made much progress considering where I started. Also, I am struggling with topic control a bit but I have gotten far better with it than originally thought. Organizing my information is something that has become quite easy for me, as well as theses for certain assignments. Even after taking this class, I still believe that writing, most often, is merely a way to complete an assignment. There are of course, always exceptions to this. In short, I have gotten better by far with my writing, but my philosophy on it has not changed at all. I believe that the two essays I have chosen, as well as my final exam, will be testament to how much better my writing has become throughout this quarter.