Dear Barbara

December 2, 2012 Dear Barbara,
Like I said in my first letter, I really like writing. Since I wrote the first letter, Ive done a lot more writing for college and Ive had lots of experiences that can now be written about. Although this is the end of English for me, it will not be the end of writing.
Thank you for a really great semester. This class was different from any other English class Ive ever taken. My favorite thing about it is that Ive been able to learn new ways to express myself. I learned a new, higher level way to portray my life with the Personal Essay and I learned a new way to make an argument with the first-person Inquiry Paper.
The assignments were fun, but thats not to say that they werent difficult and even frustrating at times. For me, the hardest of the three projects (the personal essay, inquiry paper, and ePortfolio) was the personal essay. I find translating something that Ive experienced to be really difficult. The way my brain works, I see everything in images in my head and to put this movie accurately into words is like translating from one language to another. To write this paper I stayed with my parents for a weekend and stayed up writing, typing, and revising until 4 in the morning where no one could bother me. I am very specific about how I communicate things about myself and about other people. These are long nights that
take a lot of mental energy. However, they are worth it, because when I wake up, feel a sense of satisfaction to have written the paper and to be pleased with the state of my rough draft.
In a lot of ways, I feel as though my Inquiry paper, Finding the Role of the Elderly in Modern Day Society, is the stronger of the two essays that I wrote. Its the piece that I feel most compelled to share. I often talk about the findings that shocked, surprised, and disturbed me about the history and current trends of the way the elderly are viewed and treated. I feel that this paper is important for people to read and that it actually makes me an advocate for an important cause. The first person incorporation makes the research that much stronger and gives the writer more power and emotional influence over the reader. I know I will continue to share this essay to make a point. The research I came up with was strong and interests people in daily conversation. I can use this as a ploy to be an advocate and give people some perspective about our culture and values for the elderly.
I learned the most about writing in the Inquiry project. Throughout his part of our curriculum, I was exposed to new approaches to writing. I had never read anything like An Expedition to the Pole by Annie Dillard, but I liked it because it was a puzzle to figure out and was expressive. I learned that research papers can be artistically constructed and dont have to be so restricted. This was encouraging for me as an artistic person. Womens Brains by Steven J. Gould taught me a new way to employ the shock factor to your audience, and then use it to illustrate your point. I
tried to use both of these authors styles a little bit in my paper. Over all, the approach we were allowed to take for this paper differed the most from what I had been taught in high school. In this assignment I realized that as time goes on, my writing in a professional/academic setting really does not have constraints. If you write it, it is in your hands and you can put as much or as little of yourself into it as you want.
Both of these essays and more are in my ePortfoio, which Ive just finished tonight. Ive included a list of the processes involved in the development of each of the two projects. Anyone who views my website can see how learning to write in the given styles was a process. We had to read and be exposed to great writers first, then make multiple attempts to get to our final products. My ePortfolio really shows that all of these ideas were new to me and that it took me time to learn about the given styles. It also shows the evolution of my papers. Each paper started off short and rough and was expanded and developed to become more sophisticated.
My portfolio is unique largely because of the photos Ive included. I included general photos that are representative of me (my paintings and my portrait on the front page) as well as photos that Ive taken that show my personal experience with my writing topics (with Coach Feaster and nursing home residents). Everything on my ePortfolio has my fingerprints on it, from the photos to the narration I provide, to my notebook samples that were scanned in.
My philosophy is that writing should be used to document meaningful stories that have never been experienced quite the same way as they were by you, as with the personal essay, or in the case of research writing, to approach a topic that isnt thought about often but that is worth pondering.
I established this philosophy before the semester began, but I couldnt articulate it this way at the beginning of the semester. At the beginning of the semester I would have described myself as a thoughtful, reflective writer. Now that Ive had the chance to put together my ePortfolio and reflect upon myself, I would describe my writing as unique and reflective of my values. I have grown as a writer and artist in many ways. I am increasing my outlet for expression under different constraints and it is also becoming easier for me to crank out higher quality essays. That mental translating process I explained a minute ago takes less effort the more I practice.
Writing my personal essay was most valuable for me this semester because it helped me to establish the end of senior year as a finished book and move on to college. The most difficult part of the semester was putting the pressure on myself to make these projects something I would be happy with. Im not easily satisfied and so I had to put a lot of time and thought into my writing.
In the end, this semester was well worth the time and effort. Thanks, Barbara, for a great semester. My greatest take away is that writing is not restricted to the regimented style we are taught in high school, but that I can challenge myself and make my work stand out by straying from the structures Ive learned in my early education.
Have a very merry Christmas, and I hope to see you around! Sincerely,
Isabel

Dear Barbara

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December 2, 2012 Dear Barbara,

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