1 Mark Stickles Ms.

Ingram English 1103-036 29 November 2012

The Giant Final Cover Letter In this essay we are asked to reflect on the work we have done not only in this class but also throughout most works we have completed with pride during the pursuit of our college degrees. The rubric asks that we show how we got to the point we have assumed in our writing careers. We are also asked to reflect to our instructor; from a standpoint as seen by me mostly has a conversation about a final grade. If I were to give myself a grade in this course, it would be an A. I feel that my writing has improved drastically from when I first embarked on my college writing to this final paper showing all the changes. The very first real essay we wrote in this class was the What Its Like to be You piece. The language program where I was taught in Baltimore did not believe in cover letters, therefore I had never heard of them until this assignment. I felt this extremely useful as the course progressed, even though in the beginning I did not give this my true attention. As I read over what I have previously concocted for this cover letter I realized I did not truly analyze my writing as the assignment asked. What I basically said was that I did not like writing without electronics when that was very far from the question that was asked. We were asked to write about what we say well and what we think we do not say so well. What really surprised us about this assignment? What I wrote was a page of

2 complaining about how much easier it is to type a paper with the use of electronics to either help drown out the background or just speed up the typing to keep up with my train of thought. Without electronics to help me in writing this assignment I found that I could not focus for minutes at a time and it took me much longer than it should have. I also found myself lost without the spelling and grammar tool. (WILTBY 1) This left me with much room for improvement in my assessments of myself, which would in turn help me correct my writing. You can see the improvement needed in this assignment through the rough draft with the corrections from peers on it. I corrected this paper using the corrections on it but also I tried to focus on what other students made mistakes on that I corrected. I used these corrections to search my own piece until I eliminated all of the details I feel that I had missed before. I also included the revisions for the 3-Sided Essay because I felt that Ms. Ingram really brought up solid points about my sources, and repetition. I was a very stubborn writer coming into this course and I truly believed that the writing I was doing was as good as it could possibly get without the help of others to correct my paper for me. The way that this course is designed I had no choice but to rethink my entire thought pattern for rereading my work. In high school grading your own paper was meant for the soul purpose of correcting spelling and grammar only, the way we grade these papers now takes it into account a deeper understanding of what our paper is really telling the audience. After truly using the group revision times and creating my cover letter I was able to really redesign a solid second draft that was significantly different from its predecessor. In most cases I would look through the structure that the paragraphs set up and change it around to really have a definable

3 opening and conclusion, not just rambling anymore about the topic. It took more time to write papers this way but in the end after the completion of the final draft I was confident in the work that I was presenting in that it contained everything the assignment asked for in a college level piece. The next assignment we were to complete is the annotated bibliography. I found this very hard to complete because my research topic was something that I may have had already a subconscious bias opinion on. This topic was head injuries in the NFL and the task was to find sources on all three sides of the argument because after this assignment the 3-Sided essay was due. I feel like I did not do very well at all on the first part of the Annotated Bibliography assignment because I could write more easily about one side than the other. I looked at several sources for each, and looking back on it I believe it was because I had stronger feelings towards to the side against the NFL. You can tell this by the use of my verbs, in accusing the NFL I used words like the author said, while defending the NFL I used words like the author claimed. This should show the bias that was in my paper. The Three Sided paper was key to my success in the Argumentative essay because it laid out basically what I looked at as an outline to follow regarding each point of view. I also included the cover letter for this because it talks about the sources that I chose and how I think they contribute to the paper. This is key to becoming a successful researcher in the world because you need to know which sources are okay to use and which should not be trusted in academic work. The Argumentative Research essay came pretty naturally to me. I enjoyed being able to research topics that interest me and this showed in my engagement in the essay

4 itself which contains points that were organized using the side shadowing activity that I have also included which was a great deal of help in organizing my thoughts and keeping the paper true to the main argument. I chose to include this piece because I feel it really shows a difference in how it is outlined in comparison to some of my earlier pieces where I did not use the side shadowing activity. In the first cover letter I wrote about all the flaws in the paper, which were several. My group really helped me compare my thoughts that were on the cover letter to what I wanted to see on the paper. You can really see the difference in the structure, as I continued to teach myself about how to structure a piece before writing it instead of just free writing whatever came to my mind. I then included perhaps the hardest writing assignment of the year for me, which is not from this course. It was an engineering paper titled Whole Life Concepts Paper. This paper was difficult because I felt like I was stretching every idea I had because I was trying to fit the requirements that were set forth by the department. The requirements were 10pt font with single spacing and the paper had to contain at least three to five pages. I used this to talk about almost everything under the sun because I couldnt get a solid train of thought and was not able to organize it the way I had wanted to. A paper fairly similar this, designed for another class, was the Goal Setting Paper. This was assigned from a class called Fire Safety Engineering 1120. The topic of this paper was to write down all the reasons past and future that you want to succeed in the field that you have chosen. I felt that this helps my portfolio because it is basically me free writing about something that comes naturally to me, and you can see the raw draft and how the

5 structure comes out. This is important to compare to other pieces that I have written and corrected the structure on. I left the daily entries to the last part of this paper because I feel like they do not show why my writing has changed over the semester. Nonetheless I included these pieces because they show my effort in things such as taking notes on reading of a book and just free writing about a very general topic. These show how my mind operates in the form of note taking, which is important if someone is to understand the madness to my work. This outline shows that my mind does not organize until after everything is written down, I just write and write until I feel that I have all the jumbled information on one collective sheet. As for the free writing assignment about inquiry, I feel that this shows my passion and how my words seem to come more together when I am talking about my passion such as in the WILTBY essay or the Whole Life Concepts Paper for engineering. These are the reasons I feel that I deserve an A in this course. I truly tried to better my writing in all its forms and that is what language classes are about. I completed every assignment on time as well as came to class on every day that something important was happening such as turning in a second draft or even a first for that matter. The only absence I have is when we had our meeting in the library about writing this very essay. I do strongly believe that I have put in as much effort I could while trying to balance a college schedule that is completely new to me. This course has made me a stronger writer in many aspects of my writing and honestly I feel that it laid the base for even more improvement later on, which is key because now that the base is laid this can continue out of a language class as well.