Dear Matt,

Two of the most important things that I learned this quarter was that there is no such
thing as a final draft and getting to a good draft takes much time and thinking. I remember on
the first day of class when you said that writing is just a bunch of choices. Well that shouldnt
be too hard I thought to myself. I couldnt have been more wrong. Every sentence can be
written in thousands of ways to portray something that is slightly different than the other and
finding the optimal sentence is incredibly difficult. Getting to a good draft requires introspection,
which is not an easy task. In high school, my shitty first draft was usually my final draft
because that was all that was required. I think that this class was the first ever to ask me to
question my own decisions and that insisted that no matter what, it could be better. Although this
can be frustrating, it is nice to know that I can always improve my writing. One thing that I really
worked on was concision. I felt like I was taught in high school to write with large words and
complex sentences when I could have easily made them shorter and just as effective. It was not
until we discussed in this class that I realized that this was unnecessary and that I should say
what was on my mind in a plain and orderly way (William Zinsser).
The first and second WPs taught me the theory of genres, conventions, rhetoric, and
expectations of audiences. WP3 was where I connected these ideas and applied them in a
translation between two genres. WP1 focused on how specific conventions made up a genre
based on expectations of an audience. WP2 focused specifically on academic discourse
communities and taught me what to expect in regards to rhetoric when reading an academic
article. At first, I was bogged down by the amount of esoteric information, but as I read more, I
read like a writer and was able to see in between the lines to see what choices the author made.

With that being said, I chose to revise WPs 1 and 3. I felt that I could display what I
learned this quarter better by translating WPs 1 and 3. Also, since my topic of gravitational
waves is new, I enjoyed writing and revising it. I revised many things in the two WPs. For one,
based on the audience, I dramatically changed the tone of my writing. To be honest, in my first
draft of WP1, I did not really know the audience I was writing to. So, I had a boring and formal
tone throughout the WP. In the revised version, since you told us our audience was an incoming
Writing 2 student, I dramatically changed the tone of the WP. I addressed the author as you and
used casual words such as bullshit. I did this intentionally because I feel that it would be more
entertaining to write like this for a college student and would provoke them to continue reading
my paper. This word choice was heavily influenced by the readings in the quarter. I enjoyed
reading things like Shitty First Drafts more than readings like Johns Discourse
Communities. This was due to the large difference in the word choice and tone of the two
authors.
For WP3, I also changed the tone. I was a lot more personal in the second part of the WP
so that I could show my audience why I was interested in gravitational waves. I was hoping that
my interest would ignite a similar feeling in them. Also, since I was trying to show off my skills
to this audience, I explained my process of translating the academic article in more depth than
the first WP3. Furthermore, I discussed the importance of the images shown in Cosmos episodes
in the revised version. The pictures are essential for creating a pleasurable learning experience
for the audience. The Writing with Pictures reading was incredibly helpful when it came to
writing about the reason of having pictures in the episodes. Also, I implemented more readings
so that I could show the audience exactly where I acquired the skill that I used in the translation.

The feedback that helped me the most was your comments. Most of the comments from
other students was positive feedback, which did not really help with my revision process.
However, your comments pointed out many weaknesses in my writing that became habits over
time. My introductions were one thing that needed extensive revision. My first WP had no hook
and would not get anybody to continue reading. My first sentence talked about genre theory and
conventions in my first WP. Looking back at that and comparing it to my WP3 revision reassures
me that I have made progress in that regard. Another thing that I struggled throughout the quarter
was concision. Obviously, I have not perfected this aspect of writing, but I do feel that I have
improved since the first day. My first drafts of the WPs exceeded the page limit and it annoyed
me when I had to cut out information. But, as I looked at my choices more and more, I realized
that I could say something with less words, or simply remove it from the draft completely. This
was very weird for me because I felt that more was better in high school. I saw my
improvement in concision in my chemistry lab reports. I used to go over the page limit each
week, but I was able to make the page limit on my last two reports of the quarter, while
conveying the required information.
Another thing that I worked on for both WPs was information flow. Before, I had this bad
habit of getting out all of the information to show I knew my stuff. Obviously Im supposed to
show what I learned, but I would just jumble up everything in one paragraph. I was repetitive in
my first drafts. I would make a claim and give too three to four sources of evidence, when in
reality, I only needed two. I felt that this helped with concision and information flow. Reading
my draft and putting an asterisk where I made a point helped me realized exactly where I was
being repetitive and confusing my reader. I would either remove excessive information or put
similar ideas all in one area to not confuse the reader. Also, something that helped me realize

where I confused the reader was when somebody else read my own draft to me. It was awkward
at first, but as I payed attention, I noticed that I jumped to different points all over the place,
which was very ineffective in conveying the information to my audience.
The main skills that I will apply in any writing projects are drafting, concision, and
information flow. I felt that concision and information flow is what I struggled with the most.
Regarding drafting, I never really made extensive changes to a draft in high school, but I
definitely saw improvement with each revised draft. I will try my best to convey my information
in a clear, concise, and effective way so that I do not confuse my reader. My goal for any writing
project in the future is to get my reader to read my stuff and leave them with a sound argument.
With the help of the techniques of this class, I feel confident that I can accomplish this goal with
any future writing project.
Sincerely,
Ali Mahdi