A quote that always reminded me that first, second, and third drafts weren't meant to be perfect.
Cover Letter
Dear Michele, Throughout my time in UWP 1Y, I have grown more as a writer than I could have ever expected. The only hope I had for this class was to “get it over with” and hopefully receive a good grade. While my latter goal hasn’t changed, the former now seems obsolete. This course has taught me the value of writing and I am proud to say that I have a newfound love for creating literary masterpieces (if I do say so myself)! My skills have improved immensely, and I plan to continue on fostering these skills and using them in classes and jobs to come. More specifically, I believe that I have grown the most in two specific areas of the goals for this course. Through the Living Picture Narrative and podcast project, I was able to further my skill of both rhetorical knowledge and metacognition. As I have mentioned before, coming in to this class, I had very little knowledge of the writing process. I had always just written without much thought, and while that did get me through my many writing assignments, it didn’t make the process easy. So, when I saw that each assignment had several different assigned drafts, I knew I would be in for a different experience. I can confidently say that through the myriad of peer reviews and reflections that were assigned, I have furthered my ability in metacognition. Before this course, I would hardly ever review my papers on my own, if at all. However now, I feel confident in my ability to remove myself from my writing in order to criticize it as I would a peer. I also have learned how to most efficiently organize a piece of writing by limiting each paragraph to one main idea. I can officially say that my long-winded paragraphs are long gone, and from now on I will subscribing to the idea that less is more in terms of paragraph length. I am happy to say that I gained an immense amount of knowledge in metacognition that will be sure to help me in classes to come. Perhaps the skill I am most proud of discovering is my ability to write to different audiences, which is a concept under the umbrella of rhetorical knowledge. This class showed me that I can adapt pretty easily to appeasing certain audiences, which is something that I didn’t know I was even remotely talented at. Along with that, I also have a newfound love and appreciation for podcasts. I learned that it is difficult to make someone feel excited just through writing and words, however that can be combatted just by simple switches in vocabulary and the tone of the piece. Overall, this course has not only taught me various rhetorical skills, but has also shed light on ones that I didn’t know I already had. For my first piece of writing, the Living Picture Narrative, I was faced with the challenge of overcoming my debilitating habit of extreme procrastination. Fortunately, this class allowed me to submit draft after draft, all with separate due dates, which forced me to somewhat kick my habit. Among that, I also learned a few more substantial lessons in the importance of peer reviews and rough drafts. As I mentioned previously, I was never one to make multiple drafts, but after this course I am officially changed in my ways. Rough drafts allow me to morph my illiterate thoughts into a piece of writing that sounds much more eloquent. Before this class, I was passing off my rough drafts as final products and I can confidently say that will never happen again. Furthermore, I now can appreciate the helpfulness of a good peer review. Not only did my peers help me see the error in my own writing, but by reviewing their work, I in turn learned how to better edit my own. This paper is one that I am extraordinarily proud of because of all the work and multiple drafts that I put into it. The podcast project was something that I was initially scared of but found myself loving after diving into it. This project taught me the importance of writing about something I am passionate about, and not forcing myself into a box that I don’t fit in to. By writing about one of my favorite places in the world, I was able to show my passion and love through my words. This project also showed me that I can be very versatile when writing to different audiences, something that I didn’t know I could do. Unlike my other projects, I feel like this one needed a little less revision. It definitely wasn’t perfect the first time around, but since it was our third big project for the class, I felt that I had gotten the hang for my writing style. This project is one that I am proud of because I think my love for the place I wrote about really shines through in both the recording as well as the script. I feel that after completing this project, I finally have a firm grasp one what it means to excite the audience you are writing to. I believe that my ePortfolio is a great representation of my journey throughout UWP. I thoroughly enjoyed creating it, which surprised me only a little. I have never seen myself as a particularly creative person but playing around with the themes and aesthetics of my website was one of my highlights for the class. I kept it simple but dispersed personal details throughout it, which makes the whole thing really special to me. Overall, I am pleased to have a space to showcase my work that really describes me not only as a student, but as a person. While my goals for the class were unconventional to start, I am happy to be graduating this course with much more knowledge than I could have ever thought. I put a lot of work into this class and I am proud to see my effort reflected in the pieces that I am turning in to my ePortfolio. So, from my future professors, employers, and myself, thank you for allowing me to leave this class feeling slightly more confident in my writing ability than I had before.
Sincerely, Callyn Kammermeier
Revision is key to improvement, whether it's the first draft or tenth.
A look at home my workspace looked whenever I had an assignment due for this class.
"The first draft is just you telling yourself the story" ~Terry Pratchett