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John Ranshaw
Professor Gordon
UWRTE 1103
April 7, 2017

Dear Professor Gordon,

Throughout the semester, I have been compiling a portfolio of works that show my

overall growth as a writer and thinker. Although this may not seem like a lot of work

accomplished over this semester, the work itself has had more of an effect on me than I can truly

put into words. We have done an array of readings and writings but I feel that it is appropriate to

highlight the ones that I feel made the most impact on me. This semester, the Daybook writings

were one of the activities that really influenced my development as a learner. Every day, I would

come to class and wait for you to give us the topic or prompt for us to either discuss or write

about. In doing this change between writing and discussing it really made me think about the

best way to portray my feelings and understanding of the prompt. Allowing me to better

understand how I should use my language for better understanding. Also, with that in mind being

given the prompt eased my ability to start to debate certain points and reach the ideal

understanding for giving us the prompt in the first place.

The most important work that we did in this class was without a doubt the extended

inquiry project which essentially started at the beginning of the semester with reading the book

to this very point involving making the website for our portfolio. This project or assignment is

what really tested my abilities as a writer because not only is this a prompt writing but I had to

come up with the prompt to write about myself. On top of that this project has led me to learn

how to do proper research and find well-backed articles for supporting my writing and ideas
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regarding the topic. This project was no small project, it is compiled of the topic proposal,

annotated bibliography, extended inquiry draft and final, and this final reflective letter as well.

My strengths and weaknesses as a writer and thinker are probably common for most,

mine revolving around the issue of proper grammar and sentence build. I have always had the

issue of when to use commas and semi colons regarding the grammar section and the sentence

build. I can never quite get it down when I should use each one and my sentences dont always

seem to flow together very well. My strengths would have to involve my ability to never give up

on a writing and continuously trying to get the proper words down to show my understanding of

the subject. It may not be very good or proper English but I pride myself on the effort I put forth

in my writing. Regarding thinking, my weakness is that I seem to be narrow minded on certain

subjects and that is probably with relevance to how I was raised and how I think out problems. It

is something that has allowed me to be successful in engineering but it would not allow me to be

successful in a more creative based environment. My strengths for thinking would be my ability

to adapt to the conversation and open to a perspective once it is brought to my attention. Helping

to easily deem whether it is a valid point or not and why.

In this class, we were tested as a writer, reader, and thinker to help give us the ability to

see how much we have grown in each aspect over the semester. For the reading portion, I havent

read too many books thus far in my career as a reader, let alone ones that involve tragedy such as

To Kill a People. It is very hard for someone to read a book like that and not sympathize with

those afflicted by those tragedies. For my writing, I have had to write a total of two big papers

for this class each on a different topic followed by many little papers and writing in between. I

think I have become a more proficient writer throughout this semester, meaning that I can get my

point across in a very direct yet understandable way. Finally, as a thinker I was tasked with
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looking at many different perspectives and hardships regarding genocides this semester and in

this class I have learned to begin to identify what lies beneath the text. Essentially, what I am

saying is that I can infer and see the true meaning behind a piece of writing much easier and

understand it better.

This semester as whole was compiled of annotating To Kill a People, supplemental

videos, topic proposal, annotated bibliography, extended inquiry project draft and final, and the

portfolio. To start we were tasked with reading the book, To Kill a People, by John Cox. In

reading this we were supposed to take notes/annotate on anything that we felt was relevant to

understand the book better, the reason for the genocides, or something that sparks your interest

that will help you with your extended inquiry project. The next assignment that wasnt really an

assignment but more for our benefit in understanding the genocides and giving us more

background for our writing was the supplemental videos. The supplemental videos were very

hard to watch but they helped us understand a specific genocide a little better because it gave us

two things to reference for information: the book and the video. We did a video on the Rwandan

genocide and the Holocaust, the Rwandan being the trickier of the genocides to understand fully.

The next assignment was coming up with a topic that we were interested in enough to research.

The topic proposal was no easy feat, it was quite hard to determine what to research more about

that involved the genocides that we read about. The next thing on the list is the annotated

bibliography which included us doing research on the topic we chose and finding five to seven

credible sources to support your claim on the topic you chose. The research was very extensive

and time consuming along with a lot of time taken to put the annotated bibliography together as a

whole. The next part was writing the draft of the extended inquiry project which was compiling

the research I found into the best way to help present my point regarding the topic I chose. Then
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I had to edit that paper which resulted in me getting my final draft of the extended inquiry

project. Which of course is followed up by this very letter and the website that I created to

showcase my work and growth over the semester as a writer, reader, and thinker.

Overall, this class has helped form me into the writer, reader, and thinker I am today and I

cannot disagree that I still have a long way to go before I am anywhere near the level I should be

at regarding any of those tasks above. I can only continue my effort to get better and hopefully

learn with each passing experience.

Sincerely,

John Ranshaw