Reflective Letter (Rough Draft)

(Note this is only a Rough Draft, the Final Draft will be posted on Wednesday.)

-----You’re approaching the end of a narrow corridor, in a dark building, with the faint sound of screams in the background. You know you don’t want to approach the end, but you have to. You hear a rustle as you near the corner, and wonder why you ever choose this fate. Just then, everything goes black, and seconds later a bright message appears, Wal-Mart! How many times has this happened to you? How many times have you sat in front of the TV, wasting away your time, surfing channels, watching old horror movies, or sitting through commercials? While sitting there, have you noticed the amount of excess that pollutes everything you are watching? Extra gore, super low prices, or complex love relationships, all are an example of excess. Don’t you just wish that it would end, or maybe not end, but adapt into a form that does not emphasize the wasteful? Sadly, that date is still a long time away, but luckily that progression can still happen, although this progression is not in what you watch, but what you read. My writing progress used to be just the same as TV is today, excessive in its explanations, but this has greatly improved over my last couple of months in Writing 101. With the introduction of college standards, my writing style has adapted to whatever has been thrown at it. My excessive nature in writing has adapted to the situations of writing, and changes from specific to lengthily when required. My writing skills have improved in adaptability and being specific.
-----My first essay showed my weaknesses in writing, wordiness and taking too much time to get to the point. This essay “Bacon’s Rebellion: Land or No Land?”, I used a lot of excess words and phrases, and in turn my words began to separate from my topics. As you can notice by just the organization of the essay, the sporadic reasonings behind the points, led to a sporadic dispersion of those points. The location and even the existence of the 2 body paragraphs before the paragraph about immigration prove this. An example of the culprit, excessive and lengthily writings is shown in many examples throughout the essay, which don’t need to be pointed out to be seen. My specificity is also a problem in this first essay, as there is a major lack of it. As I have said, my excessive writing separated my sentences from my topics, and thus they were not very specific. They began to get into a point, but just drawled on and on, losing focus and the reader’s attention. These problems were major weaknesses for me in writing, but as I grew in my adaptability to the course and it’s standards, I was able to notice what I did wrong in my writings.
-----The changes I made in my first essay show my current knowledge of writing. As noted previously, my weaknesses in writing are primarily writing excessively, which leads to me not being specific. Since my first essay, however, I learned how to control this lengthily writing, and adapt it to the situation, this situation being a one-person persuasive essay. The underlined portions show my current revisions to my first essay, and there are many. Focus on the introduction and first body paragraph for now. The revisions made there were to cut down on repetition and to make points more specific to their topics/purpose. An example is this: In the first essay, before editing, notice how the introduction began by attempting to draw the reader in by telling them a story, which was then followed by assumptions that the reader was ignorant of the subject. Now notice the revised version, and how it does not only stop telling the reader what’s going on, but showing him, it is also allowing space for both those who knew about this event and who didn’t, without making those who did feel insulted. These portions of the revised versions are only some examples of how I can implement my writing skills into past essays, although I can also implement these skills while writing as well.
-----My third essay shows my ability to use my current knowledge of writing while in the actual writing process. I have shown you my weaknesses and how they have improved, but I have not yet shown you how I can adapt these improvements to different situations. This collaborative essay contains a smaller part for me, due to my orchestration of the collaborative process within my group. The second body paragraph is the part I wrote, and so it is the part we will focus upon. This paragraph gets down to the specifics, with the sentences following the outlines that were set with the topic sentence. The sources were used in proper context without massive repetitive and unnecessary commentaries attached to them. It supports the reasons used with the commentary, as it isn’t hindered by useless words and phrases. The flow of the paragraph makes since because the ideas and reasons are kept under proper control.
-----The progress I have made in the class is evident in my abilities to adapt to different writing situations and focus on specifics. My weaknesses were apparent at the beginning of the quarter, and coupled with my ever-increasing progress in the class, helped me to realize what I had done wrong in my writings and how to make future essays better. These evident signs of progress in my writing abilities is why I have supplied the following essays, so that you can see my progress yourself, from first to revised first to last.