Cover Letter

Nick Last Name

English 1

Dr. D

Cover Letter

            For the portfolio I am writing I will be having 3 sections not including this one. The first section will be the Writing Revision. For this part it’s going to lead in to the next section swiftly hopefully. On it I’m aiming to be able to talk about most if not all my major English papers and other assignments in time order and discuss what I did badly and good on each. I will most probably start out naming more negatives on my earlier work and more positives and improvements on my later work while still trying to keep a good balance of each on everything. This is only the beginning of this part though. The real main point of the writing revision is to pick one single out of all those assignments and to revise it. I do this based on comments made from my peers or teachers or maybe even something I didn’t feel was the best way to write my paper like and I state the improvements and maybe rewrite things and other stuff. The things I mainly focus on for the essay I will be revising, which is my Literacy Narrative, is my wording and organization. I feel as though on that paper I wasted too much time writing about events that happened in my life and describing it rather than what has to do with writing.

            After this we would move onto to Writing Remix which is sort of like the Writing Revision however it is taking what I commented on and rewriting it to improve the mistakes but it’s written in a different style or genre. I’ll be remixing my Literacy Narrative like I’ve said before and I will be writing it in a more “talking to someone you know well” type essay rather than like I did before when I knew it was being graded. Although I usually don’t talk to people in long essay formations I will still be trying to give an interview but as more of something I was asked to give a long explanation and analysis for. But I’ll still be trying to write as I would to a person who doesn’t look down upon me but instead equally.

            Then when that part is over I will go onto the Hits and Misses part of the portfolio. I’ll give more than just two of each of these. I feel like there was a lot I really didn’t do good on in the beginning of the year but there are still some good hits with these, such as I was always honest when I wrote things for a grade and always feel like I shouldn’t lie when writing something. Other than that I still have misses like how I always turned in late work and couldn’t ever talk about a variety of things like how now I could talk about all sorts of things but right now I don’t have that chance like before but on this paper I’m going to try to write much more different things.

            Now that I’ve hit that note I can say that now I can let my imagination do the best of itself on my papers. Now I see myself as a better writer for schoolwork. I can’t say I’ve improved to the point where I can write well enough to get a perfect grade in English but I’m certainly better. As a writer now I’m trying to listen to what my teacher says and what other sources say about my drafts on things and I try to turn them in on time. I feel much more motivated now then I was before but that’s probably because of how horribly I was doing in English before. Now I’m at the point where if I don’t get a good grade on everything it will really affect me and make it harder for me to pull up those grades. I feel much more limited on how much I can slack off on these things. If I didn’t feel that way I really don’t think I could pass so I have to do the best I can in the time I’m given whether I want to or not.

            I have learned much about myself as a writer but that will be in my revision. The reason I don’t think I should write it here is because it’s not from school that I’ve learned about myself. As of my writing for what we are learning this year and are graded on I don’t think I’ve learned much about myself but rather more on how to put a paper together. The things we do in school aren’t personal but it’s more about writing about what you’ve learned and how to use it. I have gained much strength in writing in a more formal style such as writing in a correct format. That and how to use sources for research. At first when I was asked to give quotes and show backup for the information I had gained I had no idea what to do but as time went on I got a whole lot more used to it. I feel like I can transition into those things to back up my work much better and it sounds a whole lot better.

            The strengths I think I have as a writer revolve around those things as well as I have a lot of experience with writing and learning different things is easy for me and I can get used to them; however, a downside to that is that those things are hard to use with how I write so I have difficult at times on writing formally. This is especially hard for me when I have to write long papers that have more space than I need to hold the small amounts of information I have to show. That leads to yet another negative which I feel as if I am using write now that is run on sentences. I think I’ve improved on those anyway. It’s just that at first I had a horrible habit and now I think I only make run on sentences when I find them necessary.

            So you could say something I have improved on this year as a writer is run on sentences and I’ve been trying to use them less frequently. I’ve improved greatly on using evidence to back up what I have and I’ve improved on taking information and making something out of it. Pretty much all throughout the year I have been given books or a subject or sources to make something out of whether it be a thesis or analysis. So I think I’ve gotten better in the “write an encyclopedia or magazine article” realm rather than the “write a story in the style of Shakespeare” realm. This leads me to word choice. I think I’ve somewhat improved on that but the reason I said it leads me to it is I’m not sure if I’m using the word “realm” correctly or not.

            Either way I’m sure that next year I’ll be able to write better on my assignments or at least try to get them in on time. That’s another thing that makes my school writing not as good as I could make it; I always seem to have limited time to turn something in and half the time I’m more worried about getting a good grade rather than the paper being interesting to me. That’s only somewhat what my problem is now but this is going to be in on time unlike my past paper where I’m not even sure what I have and have not done. Overall I think what I really need to improve on is getting more information to write about and turning in those things on time. Other than that I think my writing has been improving simply from experience so there’s really not much I personally think I should change.

Writing Remix

Nick Last Name

English 1

Dr.D

Nyasha Character Study From an Alien Biologist Point of View

From what we have observed in Nyasha’s life is very vague information to us. There are many questions that remain unanswered over the course of her life. Ever since the beginnings of our research from the times she was new born we have experienced dramatic changes unlike our other subjects which we consider to live a “normal lifecycle” Nyasha seems to be doing opposite of what is expected in her species. As we progressively investigate more thoroughly her everyday life it is question to us why her behavior seems to malfunction.

It was an obvious decision to choose this child over the others in her country. At first we didn’t spend much time or thought in the poor area and study more on the humans with better scientific advances and intelligence in the Americas and Europe. However we discovered something special about the subject from the very beginnings of our daily observations. Despite the fact that the majority of her family as well as the others in her habitat seem to be dying out as natural selection takes place she was surprisingly intelligent. At first glance we predicted this one human could impact her land in ways such as Adolf Hitler and Martin Luther King. If she uses her intelligence properly she may rise up to supreme power. We had very high hopes for this one.

Ironically, as we first observed her life she had been one of the very few to move from her lands to European lands where we saw her studying the knowledge of the Caucasian humans; however, she was treated as a normal individual. She grew up harmless and seemingly caring for others in her species as well as domestic canines and felines. Considering this is average human behavior we considering giving up on her studies because we had already knew about most of the things she would do. We never gave up hope though. We knew from the very start that if one of the less intelligent species were to be overpoweringly intelligent she will eventually obtain a higher power. Even as a female who is treated less than the opposite gender she had the others attention she was around which was the Jeremiah family tree.

Ever since her arrival to the family she stayed in she progressively became abnormal. We were aware that she was always very nonsocial and introverted which was new to us at the time of our studies. It was something we had never seen before. We know humans are social creatures but why not this one? This wasn’t the thing we found as strange as she moved into her new home. The thing we found the most strange was her dieting and nutrition absorption. Being in a poor area with their extreme lack of food it should be seen as a gift and something they would be grateful to digest to increase their survival times. Even though we all believed this we watched as she ate a meal then proceeded to insert a tooth brush into her throat to induce vomiting. At first we insisted she was just malfunctioning for a day but her habit continued. She would avoid foods and everything humans need to survive. To this hour we do not know why she is doing this but it is highly suspected to be a sign of her longing to die so she can let natural selection take place. A smart person knows that when they are so unlike everyone they must be doing something wrong. She was rarely in human contact perhaps because she knew the others would disapprove. If she does not eat she will not be a problem to her ecosystem any longer. We are still unsure if this is the answer but to our knowledge this is the best hypothesis for her problems. Perhaps in the future as we observe her we can get more information from her. If not we may have to do a physical examination. Maybe then we will really know the secrets of her actions. 

Hits and Misses

Nick Last Name

English 1

Dr.Teacher

Hits and Misses

Hits:

1.      I think I put a good bit of my own personality in my papers to make them less average sounding.

2.      I have made improvements on grammar and tried using as little run on sentences as possible.

3.      Progressively over the year I have written on multiple ideas to keep a paper going.

Misses:

1.      Writing an obsessive amount of information on small things that don’t need to take up so much of a paper. Especially during the beginning of the year.

2.      The majority of my work is turned in late because I can’t make myself start doing work too easily.

3.      Inability to keep everything in the correct POV.

4.      Not being fully prepared for what I’m writing about or not having enough information to make a paper out of.

Writing Revision

Nick Last Name                                                                                                                     

English 1

Dr.Who

Literacy Narrative Essay Revision

            I feel like my own writing has evolved quite a lot through this past year. I feel like this for multiple reasons; such as just opening my mind more whenever I do write instead of just stating things. I’ve been writing for a while just whenever I can or have nothing to do I actually will write. From that experience you get from writing different things every day it opens you up a lot and makes you realize how all these different things sound and flow together. I’m going to talk about just that for now: how all of that experience came to me.

            Basically the first time I actually wrote something serious was for this one person in 8^th grade but like I’ve said before it was when I first started and it sounded really cheesy.  After that I wrote very little. I would write something only when it was like an idea for a movie script or something, which was not too often. I later graduated from my old school and because it was summer all I could really do was watch TV, play guitar or bass, or walk outside somewhere. Really the only exciting that that happened was my best friend’s quinceanera and that’s about it. That being said I was pretty introverted for a good 2 or 3 months and had all that time for free time with practically nothing to do.

            About a few weeks before I left my old school I had listened to the first solo album from the Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante “Niandra Lades & Usually Just a T-shirt”. When I was first hearing it I thought it sounded bad and thought nothing of it and that it was just nothing what I expected. But getting back on the timeline of summer I relisted to it and started to see more of it. It was very weird music and there was something about it that I really liked. The thing about that album was the way I could feel he put something creative into it. Nothing else have I heard before that was like what he had written. It was a genre I’ve never heard and the lyrics were so unique in a positive or negative way depending on what you like. But I loved everything about it. I thought it was the most perfect music and it had so much soul into it and you could hear him flipping the notebook pages to read the other lyrics and you could hear everything as if he was just right there. There was barely any editing and I really liked the sound of it so I started to admire it. Admiring it to the point where it was something I listened to everyday for months.

            Because of the love I shared for this music I began to write like it during the summer. Every day of the week I would work more and more on guitar and lyrics and trying to find out what things sounded the best. I never got too into singing during this time, just humming what I had written down over a song. I would commonly write things without good rhyming schemes and things that had particularly no meaning at all. If I thought something sounding good it went down and I put little thought into it. I just liked the fact that I was doing something. I progressively wrote better and put at least some thought into things but not as much as I could of. There was nothing really special about most things I did write because there was almost absolute nothingness on symbolism or patterns. Most things I wrote were almost absolutely focused on cacophony and occasionally euphony depending on what I’m writing about. Everything had enjambments and caesuras. Not on purpose though. It was just something that naturally occurs. If I wanted to go on with something longer I would and if I didn’t I wouldn’t.

            About halfway through the summer I got back in contact with a friend of mine who also writes and plays music as if it’s all he does. Not so much writing, but he played a lot of more average sounding music than I wanted to such as your standard Black Keys, Jack White or Muse sounding stuff. He’ll even sing just as well as them which was incredible to me. Being friends with him again sort of re-opened my “good music is not only one musical artist” part of my brain and I began listening to my old things which was good and bad. Since I can say that I sort of stopped writing or doing anything that has to do with my music as often about at that over halfway point in the summer and just completely ignored the thought of it for no real good reason in particular.

            Then when I was finally back in school at Episcopal. I was at that point where I still didn’t write as much if I ever did. Now in this English class we are expected to have good literate writing skills which I was not very good at at the beginning of the year. I would sort of go back to how I would write in computer class when I was in middle school which is total mumbo jumbo. Because that was unacceptable if I wanted to get a good grade I had to start writing normally and honestly did not feel like doing anything at all revolving around working. It was all forced and I just didn’t feel like doing it because I could seriously mentally not make myself do what I need to for school. It wasn’t that I was lazy and it wasn’t that I didn’t care for school it was just because I felt so tired with having to do all these things. I’ve been trying lately to get things in on time but I’m really struggling with it, I don’t know why. But even when I do write something for school now it’s not as interesting as something should be. I basically just tried to get a good grade and write in proper English again which was a total drab.

            In about spring break I started writing some more things. Surprised with how much I remember from before and being able to write all these new ideas that came from experience. I think I’ve made maybe about 3 or 4 a day. Because I’m in school I haven’t been doing it yet again but just a few things; usually for a picture or description of something. Ever since I restarted it it’s much more eye opening than before. I don’ know what I was doing before but now I actually can put things that relate to real life things using all sorts of different techniques. I don’t keep track of the techniques I use but I like to use a lot of imagery and metaphors and personification. I have started to pick up the symbolizing technique where you make something about something but that something is another something. I would have to say that around that time not too long ago I started to make something that came from me and not just a rip off type thing. Even though there isn’t much to write about I always think there is something to write about. I think a lot and writing it down in a formal way seems very natural. I’ll typically stay away from your traditional ‘plots’ to what I write. I don’t really think it would be very expressive to write a love song or about how great I am like a lot of famous people do. But instead you can write about more than just movie scripts or songs but even mathematics if you’re really that bored but that’s not the point. The point here is that I went from bad writer, to still bad writer, to normal person, to myself. I figured out how to put those thoughts in your mind on paper like I was supposed to. It just feels like I can write the way my brain wants me and I think a lot of people should because it’s really possible to become good at it in your own way, you just have to find it yourself.

About what I did:

For this revision I focused especially on the traits of ideas and organization. As for ideas I’m not sure if I “cheated” or not but I added more events that occurred after I had written the original essay for this because I felt there was more to talk about and because it’s easier for me to write about my current self than past. Considering I had more events to write about it’s easier to not go on and on talking about one insignificant event. As for organization I found that much of my original Literacy Narrative was mostly focused on two different events or times with little to no transition between different settings or details. So during this revision I focused on moving from one subject to another without causing confusion for the reader and including less detail for the small events that I talked about and more on what was actually important in the paper which was how my writing has improved over a course of time. It really bothered me how I went on about events in my life instead of actually how well I have improved writing so I feel like that was something I could easily improve on now that I’m more used to writing what was assigned to write about as well as being more knowledgeable on what my English papers should look like.

As far as the writing center meeting I went to I honestly don’t think we discussed what I should improve nearly as much as what I had decided myself while alone. The furthest we really went into was talking about grammar and organization but almost nothing on the actual information on the paper. That being said I think it was useful to get an opinion on what sounded more fluent in my paper and I’m thankful for that but I honestly think it wasn’t too necessary. It was helpful but barely helpful enough to be a necessity for this project. I could have discussed more at the writing center but by the time I had a meeting I had already gotten my mind straight on what I was doing and all we did was agree on how those things would be helpful.