Dear Malcolm,

It’s crazy to believe that I’m now writing this letter already. It feels as if not too long ago,

I was writing to you about myself as my first college assignment. Now I’m ⅛ done with college

and completed this ePortfolio- that deserves some celebration, right?

I thought I was a pretty decent writer in high school, but this class has definitely

challenged my writing style. In elementary school, we would do a warm-up where we had to

write about something, but my teachers didn’t do it as much when I got into higher grade levels-

I believe this is why students struggle so much with writing. This class is centered around small

writing assignments that all come together in the end to create our ePortfolio masterpiece.

Daybook entries, started by a small prompt, get gears moving that otherwise wouldn’t if we

didn’t take the time. This was a great check-in to see how I was progressing in the class and an

outlet to get down thoughts swirling around in my head (UWRT related or not.) Lit Lounge posts

and class discussions about readings allowed me to learn how to evaluate sources and articulate

my feelings. Instead of reading a textbook about how to write, we actually saw first-hand

examples of how to use quotes and statistics in an article. All of the readings gradually increased

my confidence in source evaluation that by the time we got to the Annotated Bibliography or EIP

Draft, I felt comfortable pulling content from articles and putting it into my paper.

The process of inquiry was something I thought I would find easy, but this was a rougher

rollercoaster than expected. Preparing for my Topic Proposal, I started off wanting to do an

educational-based research topic but struggled to find something I wanted to dive into for a

whole semester. In multiple classes, we were discussing how children have different

opportunities due to the families they come from and the schools they go to and I found passion
as to why my future students might face this inequity. I had personal experiences where I faced

this inequity and witnessed it multiple times with peers and wanted to have a conversation about

why this is evident. There were plenty of sources and studies done to show the prevalence of the

issue which was needed to complete my Annotated Bibliography, aka the most detailed

assignment I’ve ever completed.

I had never handwritten my citations out and relied on citation generators to do the work

for me since that was substantial enough in high school; I never actually knew what details were

needed to complete a citation until I had to complete several for this component. I most likely

spent more time trying to find worthy resources than actually writing the assignment, but in a

way, I’m okay with that; I used to just settle for the first page of results when I had to do research

for previous classes. In this case, I actually had to sit down and see if it was worthy enough to

include and gave me a lot of information to talk about. This assignment really made me see how

important it is to spend a good chunk of time finding sources. If you search for the best articles,

your paper will be much stronger and you’ll find it easier to write because you have an ample

amount of good information to pull from.

As soon as I finished the Annotated Bibliography, I moved on to composing my EIP first

draft. I think the best way to compare the AB and EIP is to relate to track and cross country; the

AB is about finding relevant information and being precise with your words. The EIP, however,

is a race filled with uphill climbs I wasn’t prepared to get over at first. I was typing more than I

had all semester and trying to make sense of the multiple ideas I had in order to have an orderly

paper. As I was writing I had to keep remembering what we constantly read and heard so far this

semester: your first draft can be far from perfect. I think we all strive for perfection, especially in
writing, but I had to remember to put words on the paper; you can always go back and revise, but

you have to have material in order to do that. The paper had to be at least 5-7 pages, but I

decided to write all 10 pages in order to get as much feedback as I could and so creating my final

draft would be easier than if I stopped at the minimum.

Once my paper was returned, I saw I made the same mistakes I had made all semester:

clarifying things that I know but the reader will not. I think this came from trying to finish on

time as well as forgetting that when talking about multiple groups, who “they” is isn’t clear to

readers. I also am very wordy in drafts so I cut down some sentences so there was a better flow

to the essay. Now going forward, I will thoroughly read through my essays and papers and try to

fix the reoccurring mistakes found in this assignment. My assumption I made with my first draft

was correct- it was a lot easier to revise and complete my last draft since I wrote all that wanted

to in the beginning.

In my opinion, the hardest assignment to do was the final one: the ePortfolio. I had never

worked on designing a website so I would get frustrated trying to understand the mechanics of

the website builder. After spending about 4 hours of changing my theme multiple times, deleting

and adding pages and more, I finally built a very basic outline of what the website would look

like. Every day I would get on my website and add to it or change the layout to make it fit with

other pages. I would try to focus on one element at a time but would get overwhelmed with how

much was needed for each one and ended up fixing a little bit on each page. Deciding what

daybook entries or Lit Lounge posts to use wasn’t difficult, but writing explanations is what took

up a lot of time for me. However, now that it’s completed, I’m so proud to look at the
composition of all my hard work put together and will be showing this off to family over the

holidays.

This class takes motivation and effort to succeed but overall has been such a helpful

course for current and future classes. Fixating on a topic to become an expert in allows students

to gain confidence in their writing and critical thinking abilities. Each assignment is a layer to

add on to make a beautiful masterpiece at the end. The articles we read not only allowed us to

view writer’s moves but also covered interesting topics, peer work allowed students to get

multiple points of views on their work, and class always brought a laugh and something

insightful to think about. This class has taught me to question and think about simple processes

like reading an article or writing my thoughts in a concise, orderly form. We use words every

day, and this class gave me a new appreciation and made me feel more free with what I say.

Thank you for being a helpful, supportive, genuine, and hilarious professor. It’s very hard to

make someone want to come to an 8:30 class, but I never wanted to miss UWRT (especially

when you sang Rihanna in class- best class ever). The lessons I learned in the past 4 months

ensures I can finish the other ⅞ strong, so thank you! Keep teaching students how the power of

questioning and words is unbelievable!

Sincerely,

Kaitlyn Collins