Dear Professor Johnson,

My portfolio is composed of my two favorite writing pieces. I enjoyed the writing

pieces that gave me the most freedom to write because it enabled me to write
about something I cared about. This class gave me the artistic freedom to actually
write about something I cared about. In other classes that had me write papers, the
prompt was always very restricted to being about the class. In this case however,
the first piece I chose to include was a topic I was extremely passionate about and
for the second piece I wrote about my favorite movie in my genre translation.
I chose to use writing project one in my portfolio, because it was my favorite paper
to write about. Writing about something I truly care about made it easy for me to
translate my thoughts to the paper. When you care about something I feel like the
level of effort you put in increases 10 fold. I think that applied to how I felt about my
writing in the first writing project. I desired to clearly express my thoughts and input
my own opinion in wherever I could.
Although I enjoyed writing project one, that is not the only reason why I chose the
piece to write. I also chose the piece to write because I was extremely proud of it
and wanted to make it even better. You had made some comments on my paper
referring to some things I missed when I was writing the paper. For example, I
completely disregarded the fact that the documentary Blackfish was biased. I felt
the need to fix this, because I cared so much about the piece. When I had initially
turned it in, I thought it was perfect, that there was nothing at all wrong with it.
Knowing that there was something that could be improved on it made me all the
more excited to pick up the piece again and work on it, especially because I enjoyed
writing it so much.
The second piece I chose to include in my portfolio is writing project three. Slumdog
Millionaire is by far my favorite movie I have watched as of now. It was a fun activity
to translate the movie into a part of an autobiography and really utilized my
creative side. The coolest part however was writing the metacognitive analysis. Its
not often that you think about how you think and it provided a cool insight on
myself as a writer.
I also chose to use writing project three because I was thinking about submitting the
piece to Starting Lines. It would be amazing to be published. It seems like a really
cool thing to say I did, so I thought why not. I know the paper needed some revision
and I utilized this perfect opportunity to revise it for class and for a chance to be
published and used in future classes.
The following reflective letter discusses how I felt I have grown throughout Writing
2. I came into the class without having written much throughout my college career
based on the classes I have taken and thought I would not be prepared for college
level writing. However, the class environment, as well as your support helped me
adjust to my insecurities as a writer and enabled me to thrive in the classroom to
prepare me for the rest of my time here at UCSB.

Throughout the course, I remember hearing that writing is an ever changing process that can
always be improved upon. Often times we write and dont pay particular attention to improving
our writing or trying new styles. But that isnt the way writing needs to be. Instead, writing can
change and grow and take on different forms and styles if one chooses to continue to improve
their writing. Writing 2 has developed all aspects of my writing skills and challenged me to try
new writing styles in an effort to move away from the standard format I had learned in high
school.
My initial understanding of writing revolved around sticking to the standard format. The
standard format essentially was the idea that most of my writing needed to be a 5 paragraph
essay, with 3 body paragraphs, an introduction, and a conclusion. I felt fairly competent in my
writing before entering the class because I had passed both my AP Literature and AP Language
tests, but with a score of 3, so there was room for improvement.
One tactic that I feel helped me grow as a writer, as well as change my understanding of writing
was trying new writing styles. The idea that my essays no longer needed to be a simple 5
paragraph essay was intimidating, but as I saw examples of writing without the simple format I
was able to see how I could change my writing as well. In Reids Ten Ways to Think About
Writing, Reid discusses that writing does not need to follow a standard format and instead just
needs to adhere to certain guidelines revolving the audience, authors interest, and showing your
point(Reid 4). Reid presents the idea that it is up to the author and their stylistic choices to decide
how they want to accomplish these things. Being introduced to many different styles helped in
my subconscious decision making process when writing a paper. I subconsciously chose in WP3
to follow a different format in my writing. Instead of the typical 5 body paragraph essay, I split
up the body paragraphs based on the different challenges I had in doing the genre translation and
the readings I used to help in the translation. The reason I chose this format over the 5 body
paragraph format was simply because I felt like my essay would flow better in the different
format. Using this format, I feel I was still able to accomplish the goals Reid identified in her
article without using the standard format.
One thing you learn as a writer is that reading is extremely beneficial to improving your writing.
I mentioned earlier that being exposed to different writing pieces changed the way I wrote. In
Bunns, How to Read Like a Writer, I learned that when reading other peoples work you can
analyze what literary choices the author made and determine their effectiveness(Bunn 72).
Reading like a writer is one way any writer can get better at writing; the analysis of other writers
work helped me in the sense that it exposed me to different writing forms, as well as showed me
what things worked and what things didnt work. As I read my peers work and different articles
throughout the class I became aware of writing techniques that I liked and writing techniques
that I didnt like.

Another tactic that I learned throughout the course to make my writing stronger was, to write
about something I care about. I never really cared about what I was writing in high school, so I
felt like my work was limited to how good it could be because it was something I was not
passionate about. After reading Reids, Ten Ways to Think About Writing, I learned that
writing about something you are passionate about is an idea that can really improve your
writing(Reid 4). When writing WP1, I chose something I cared a lot about to write about. I had
just gone to SeaWorld over spring break and my friend had introduced me to Blackfish. I was
hooked after I watched the documentary because the movie introduced many ideas that pushed
me to think about animal captivity in a different manner. I cared a lot about Blackfish and felt
like when the writing project was announced that I could easily fit Blackfish into the context of
the paper. Writing WP1 felt like a breeze to me and I enjoyed writing that piece the most because
it was something I cared about. It allowed the ideas to flow out of my head and onto the paper
with ease.
Writing 2 also helped me develop applicable skills such as organizing an essay and developing
my analysis. When writing WP3 a comment I noticed repeatedly popping up from my peers was
that my essay flowed well. I felt that my essay had great transitioning sentences that enabled it to
flow well. At the end of one of my paragraphs I talked about the perspective of an autobiography
and then in the following paragraph I tied the unique perspective of an autobiography to how I
was able to translate audiences between genre translations. Personally, I felt it was extremely
effective and helped the flow of my essay to make it readable and interesting. Another skill I felt
I developed through the class was developing an analysis and it was evident in WP1. I felt that
my analysis of WP1 was very thorough and there were no gaps in my thought process. Compared
to when I wrote the first in class piece, I feel like I have improved in both of these areas. I was
kind of lost and unsure because I had not written a paper for a while and it was something I was
not accustomed to. However, throughout the course I developed these skills, as well as other
skills to develop my writing.
However, as much as I want to believe I am a great writer, I still have trouble writing in either
the past or present. In WP3, before I revised my paper, there was a lot of switching between past
and present tense in my genre translation. The inconsistency plagues my writing because it leads
to the reader questioning what they are reading as the tenses switch, hurting readability. In my
genre translation, there was a point where I switched from past tense to present tense randomly.
It was obvious and I wasnt sure how much it would affect my writing until I went over it again
as I was revising and realized that readability was damaged.
If I had more time to revise these two pieces I would continue to try out new styles and reframe
sentences. I realized that as you revise you often think of different ways to present what you are
trying to say. How can I be more clear? How can I be more concise? We went over a lot of
stylistic choices in the last weeks of class and it just showed how many ways you can change a
sentence to say the same thing. Of course, somethings work better than others and are more clear,
but it definitely takes time to find these things and you might not think of it the first time you
revise or second, maybe it happens on the third time. Revision is a never ending process and
there are millions of ways to improve your writing and grow as a writer.

Sincerely,
Austin Lopez
Works Cited
Bunn, Mike. Reading Like A Writer. Writing Spaces. UCSB: Alternative Digital
Printing, 2014
Reid, Shelly E. Ten Ways to Think About Writing Students. Writing Spaces. UCSB:
Alternative Digital Printing, 2013