Portfolio Cover Letter

Dear Portfolio Readers:

When I signed up for English 101 I was under the impression that I was not going to be doing a portfolio. It was something I was trying to avoid and the reason I dropped my first English class back in fall of 2012. The thought of people other than my professor reading and critiquing my work can be a little overwhelming and nerve racking. English has never been my favorite or best subject but, I walked into class on a cold January morning with a positive and hopeful attitude. Then my professor, Professor Pappas, said we were indeed going to be doing a portfolio. I wanted to slump into my chair and just drop the course right then and there. As you can see, I stuck it out and as classmates continued to diminish, I saw my writing was improving. One of my biggest problems with my writing was run on sentences. I’m the type of person that can just babble on and on and you could see that in my writing. Also, I tend to write without a plan. I kind of just go with the flow and hope it all turns out well. This is something I am still working but have saw to improve during this class. Some of these assignments I had to think about before writing. I am more than satisfied with the grades I received in this class and I hope you enjoy reading the three essays I included in my portfolio.

My opening essay is from our first assignment, CCP (Creativity, Curiosity, and Persistence) Memoir. I chose to write about the persistence of moving forward from my dad dying when I was 11. I am a person who keeps my emotions to myself and I wanted to go in a direction where I could be vulnerable in my writing. I believe this essay shows the type of emotional struggle I went through from this event to the person it’s really helped shape me out to be. I have come to accept that there is nothing I can do to bring him back but there are many things that I can and have done that I know he would have been proud of. I believe the paragraph where my daughter is born really shows my break through moment.

My second essay runs off of my first one. CCP Idea is where I took the topic of persistence and thought of a question. My question was Can Persistence Be Taught? This is essay gave me the ability to give my opinion while backing it up with different types of sources. It challenged me to make sure that I undeunderstood what I was reading when using sources. While writing this essay I had to make sure everything I wrote had a focus on the question if persistence can be taught? This essay also taught me how to do MLA format. It was something I found to be a little challenging at first. MLA is a format I have never heard of before but I find it can be very useful to potential readers.

My last essay was an annotation essay. This essay was most challenging to me because I had to actually stop and think about what I was going to write.  I chose to do my questions based off of McDonald’s because I feel this is a subject with a lot of controversy. It allowed me to brush up on my researching skills. I had to make sure I had a clear understanding of each article I was reading in order to answer each of my questions. This is one of the last essays we had to do in class and I believe it ties everything I have learned over the course of the semester together.

I hope you enjoy reading these essays as I have worked hard and spent a good amount of time on them.

Justine Arruda

 

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