May 2, 2024

Dear Mrs. Davis,

Thank you for the opportunity to reflect on my writing journey through the creation of my
portfolio and website. My portfolio is a testament to my life and the people in it, my passions and
beliefs, and my creativity and versatile capabilities as a creator. Creating this assignment started
as a dreaded task but turned into an adventure that led me to rediscover my passion for writing
and reflect on my development journey as a writer. Enclosed, you will uncover the evolution of
my writing identity, insights into my writing process, and reflections on my strengths and
developmental needs moving forward.

The first artifact in my portfolio is The Elder, a short essay I wrote for a Sociology course I took
this semester. The Elder is a reflective and analytical piece that ties the past and present storyline
of an Elder's experience with change from her youth to the current time. While I was prohibited
from disclosing the Elder's identity in my original submission for class, I am happy to now get
the chance to reveal that the stories are anecdotes from my grandmother, whom I adore. My
favorite story in the paper pays tribute to my grandmother's hardships in her career as a woman
in the mid-20th century. Despite her exceptional academic background and prosperous drive to
work at a leading accounting firm, her gender barred her from working in a position she
deserved. She is now retired alongside her husband, my grandfather, with whom she ended up
going into business after leaving the firm. I chose this story because it delivers so many
emotions, and I actually enjoy reading it– reading is something I usually hate. Tying in
sociological perspectives elevates the stories' rich backgrounds and provides a sense of reasoning
that the stories on their own don't justify. I spent almost no time writing this piece, the least I
have on any essay preceding it–with the exception of "timed writings"–yet it is one I am most
proud of. I placed The Elder first in my portfolio because it is a short, captivating, and easy read.

The second artifact, The Parent I Won't Be, is also quite personal, and I debated publishing it at
all. As depicted in this essay, my grandparents and parents have taught me many valuable life
lessons, and without their role in my life, I would be quite bland. The Parent I Won't Be speaks
volumes beyond the literal notation of parenthood, but it is genuinely a soul-searching narrative
about the impact of my childhood and sets the scene for the person I am today. It was the first
paper I wrote in the last 4 years and the first submission for my English Composition 1 class I
took last semester. Even though it is one of my earliest pieces, it may be one of my most potent
in this portfolio. I don't see this as a negative when looking at my development as a writer. I put
an abundant amount of work into this piece, and it enhances the finesse of my writing skills,
which I wanted to highlight within the artifacts I presented. Artifact 2 paves the way for who I
am and provides some background on my life, a piece I found best fit for the second slot of my
portfolio.

Probably my weakest piece of writing in this portfolio is Artifact 3, It's Right to be Wrong.
However, I found it worthy of a place in my collection as it is one of those "timed writings" I
referred to earlier. I wrote It's Right to be Wrong in a mere 90 minutes without knowing what my
prompt was before starting. Although it probably still has some grammatical errors, it displays
my ability to write freely in a set amount of time. I find the theme of this paper quite obvious, yet
it is still confusing at the same time. On the surface, my writing seems somewhat repetitive, and
the stories I used as evidence may not have been the most valuable for what I was trying to
convey. I won't be too hard on myself because, as I said, I wrote it rather hastily. My goal was to
portray how a person, myself included, can be right and wrong simultaneously. Furthermore, I
wanted to illustrate how knowing what is wrong is a way of grasping what is right. Additionally,
I aimed to demonstrate that being wrong doesn't always have to be detrimental; recognizing
when you are wrong signifies growth. I'm not sure how well I explained these similar ideas in
my original submission for this assignment, but I would love to write it again someday at my
own pace. Funny enough, I think my most recent piece of writing in this collection is my
weakest, and my preliminary piece is my strongest, but I don't think that means I have regressed
as a writer. Instead, it highlights how varying topics, personal interests, and different creative
periods can influence the quality and impact of the work I produce. Thus, I included this essay
third in my portfolio as it showcases my ability to write swiftly amidst time constraints.

The final piece in this series is Artifact 4, The Modernization of Human Dining, a podcast I
published on Spotify, and a copy of its transcript. I won't look at the podcast in the same
constructive way as I did with the previous artifacts because it is a different medium. I wanted to
ensure my portfolio was diverse, and adding this podcast seemed fit to accentuate my work's
variety. The Modernization of Human Dining focuses on neurogastronomy, essentially the
"science behind what makes food irresistible" (Allen, 2023). I had a great deal of fun creating
this podcast. I learned plenty about the food industry's liberty of manipulating how its consumers
perceive the taste of food, for example, with the various plate colors and shapes a dish is served
on. I contrasted the extremes humans have gone to in the name of food compared to animals who
consume the raw forage they encounter. This is the first and only podcast I have ever recorded.
Listening to myself talk is a little cringe, but I'm glad I stepped out of my comfort zone to create
and share it. I figured most students wouldn't take the time to listen to this podcast, so I placed it
last. The podcast fits well with the theme of food within my website and blog posts, and if I were
to create a new website based solely around food, I would likely relocate it as a primary relic.

Taking a step back from the works in this portfolio, I'd like to examine how my literacy
developed throughout my childhood. I learned how to read via mental torture and by force, aka
grade school. In first and second grade, I probably read more than I have at any other time—and
I dreaded every moment. We had a class library in the back corner of our multi-age classroom.
Students could read and advance through the different labeled levels of books. There was one set
of books I really wanted to read, but I wasn't allowed to pick them until I reached their level. As
a result, I had to advance through the earlier stages. Once I got to that set of books, I was
comfortable and no longer cared about progressing to the other levels. At one point, I even put a
fake book cover over a comic book I brought from home and pretended to read it. I didn't care
about reading then, and I still don't care much about it now. My ability to write, however, has
always been a strong suit. I wrote a short story about a little girl's grand adventure in third grade.
I read the book to my grandparents, hiding my pieces of notebook paper within an actual book
from school. I pretended to read them a story from the book, and at the end, I revealed I was
actually the author. Whether or not they were just pretending to be supportive parents, I'm not
sure, but they seemed quite surprised and impressed at my writing skills and swore I would one
day become a writer. In recent years, my grandma has still commended me for being an excellent
writer, but she frequently tells me not to worry about my work so much. I often spend hours
stressing about my writing presentation and whether or not I sound literate, even for assignments
that pay no regard to mechanical composition. I have stopped worrying about this as much and
just accept that I am not a robot with perfect grammar skills, and it's okay to make mistakes here
and there—just kidding. Unfortunately, my verbal articulation is still rightfully under scrutiny to
this day. Even though I am 21, my grandfather has no problem correcting my grammar. There are
words I frequently get confused about like drunken, dranken, drunk, drinked, etc. Why can't I
seem to grasp something as simple as the former tense of "drink" when recounting my day? I'm
not sure. Nevertheless, I still frequently slip up on the word and other past tenses. With all of this
in mind, I'd say my literacy has developed exactly as my childhood self foretold: I hate reading. I
am an exceptional writer who loves telling stories. But, having a conversation with me, you
might occasionally question whether or not I flunked out of English class–I didn't, at least not
yet… fingers crossed.

My writing style has definitely elevated since I first began. It isn't completely refined yet, but
maybe one day, I'll have a magic tool to aid my prowess. Up until high school, I never really
wrote any papers. I didn't know what a topic sentence or thesis statement was until then. I only
knew about free writing, and I was happy with that. Throwing in all of the formatting, outlines,
and conclusions really tripped me up. It was only a couple of years into professional writing that
I realized I had some creative freedom and didn't have to adhere to the
five-sentence-per-paragraph outline I saw in ninth-grade English class. Since then, I've continued
to overthink paragraph formatting, yet I actively push myself not to worry too much as long as
my ideas flow and sentences support one another. Sometimes, however, that "flow" becomes my
undoing, and my thoughts stream a little too freely. This leads to a situation where I can't write as
fast as I can think, leaving me running in circles, almost as if I were checking my pen for more
ink. If only there were a gadget that could process and organize my thoughts into coherent
sentences as quickly as my brain generates new ideas. Such a mechanism, were it to exist, might
prompt Dostoevsky and Kafka to rise from the dead and snatch it from me. Until that day, I'll just
have to develop my writing skills the old-fashioned way: with ChatGPT–I mean "with a quill
and some good old determination" (ChatGPT, 2024).

Composing the blogs and portfolio for my website has awakened my enjoyment of sharing my
work publically, and I may continue doing so in the future. In the past, I have found myself
journaling sporadically in the notes app on my phone. I get interested in a topic or idea and
ramble about my thoughts. I never look back at these notes, but publishing blogs on my website
made me realize I should start blogging about my passions. With the new Journal app iPhone
presented with their most recent update, I have an innovative platform to refine those lost
mementos. Going forward, I don't know if the pressure of writing would make a suitable career
for me, but it would be wise to pursue it as a leisurely hobby.

Thank you for pushing me to express myself not only through this assignment and my website
but also through the work you expected from me in Composition 1 and 2 and from our
conversations over the last eight months. I hope we have more. I appreciate you taking the time
to read this letter, and simply put, I am grateful to have landed in your class and had you as an
instructor.

Farewell and take care,

Gianna Allen
P.S. I drank lots of water while writing you this letter :)
 References

Allen, Gianna, host. "The Modernization of Human Dining." Modernization of Human Dining,
Spotify, December 2023,
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1gJ5o62k27ObmlmGPTmhAH?si=E6lw63TNTxOXydx9DTL9
tA.

ChatGPT. "Completion of a joke about writing and thought processing." OpenAI ChatGPT, 30
April 2024, https://chat.openai.com.