Dear Mr.

Johnson,
I hope that you’ve enjoyed what you’ve seen of my portfolio thus far! Included here are
the third and final drafts of both of the Writing Projects from this quarter. For Writing Project 1, I
translated an article about racoons spreading eDNA around in the environment into the form of a
tabloid article, which I hoped would make the topic more accessible and interesting to the
general public. As for Writing Project 2, I chose to write about the conversation around the
importance of thesis statements to teaching writing, as well as how this relates to the old belief
that writing can be taught as a series of rigid rules. For this assignment, I chose to present the
arguments in the style of a play, which I hoped would be a clear and concise way of representing
the conversation. The last time you had seen either of these, they were still in an unfinished,
transitional phase, but they have both been greatly edited, and while I can’t say that they’re
perfect, I hope that they accurately reflect the process of editing and revision I’ve gone through
with them.
The second draft of Writing Project 1 was rather rough, but I followed some of your
revision ideas and came up with something that I’m much more pleased with. I feel like the
second draft was more of a summary than a true transformation, and it stuck very close to what
the academic article said. For my final draft, I really wanted to try to break away from just what
the article said and instead include what a tabloid magazine company might also add if they were
the ones writing the article. One of the biggest changes I made was trying to include a “scandal”.
To do this, I increased the emphasis the article has on potential health effects that racoons could
have on humans, which would hopefully pique consumer’s interests. The academic article itself
doesn’t actually touch on this topic much if at all, but I think that this degree of sensationalism
and misleading conclusion works in the genre of a tabloid magazine. To further emphasize this,
the first picture was changed to one of a much more intimidating, feral-looking racoon, rather
than the cute picture it had before, which matches the more sinister nature of the article.
Writing Project 2 had a better second draft, but it still needed a good round of editing
before submission. I was much happier with the second draft of this assignment than Writing
Project 1, but you still brought up a lot of good points that I could change for the final draft. I
reexamined a lot of the quotes I used, and I ended up shortening Berggren’s quote and removing
Tebau’s quote entirely, replacing it with a summary of their ideas in my own words. This
improved the flow of the dialogue as their quotes were a little bulky and were not very specific.
Another big improvement I made was expanding on ideas for new ways to teach writing. I
expanded on Tebau’s point of threshold concepts and added an alternative way of writing essays
that Berggren included, which is Rosaline Masson’s analytical method. In this method essays
build up to the main idea instead of starting with a thesis statement that gives the topic away. The
ending was also changed so that it includes a better summary of each author’s points, as well as
more information on alternative teaching methods.
Overall, I think that I’ve learned a lot about writing this quarter. I’ve never considered
myself a good writer, and I used to dread writing essays, but I think that this class has helped a
lot with some of my anxieties around writing. One thing that really helped me get started was
Anne Lamott’s article, “Shitty First Drafts”. I’ve always hated getting started because either
because I always wanted the first draft to be good, either because it had to be turned in or I didn’t
want to spend time rewriting it. However, this idea that “[a]lmost all good writing begins with
terrible first efforts” (Lamott 25) really made me rethink this preconceived notion of just spitting
out good writing. I’ve always admired classmates who could seemingly just write things that
made sense and flowed so perfectly, but now I can admit to myself that I was probably looking at
second or third drafts. Even if they were just that good at writing, through Lamott’s writing, I can
admit to myself that I don’t have to strive for this level of early perfection, and the first draft I
write doesn’t have to be perfect or even good, it just has to be written.
On the topic of writing bad first drafts, I used to also force myself to write linearly, but
writing, as we’ve mentioned many times in class, is recursive. This wasn’t a preconceived notion
that I had, but born mostly out of laziness. Either because of procrastination or just not wanting
to edit, even if I realized that my ideas were somewhat disjointed or that there was a better idea I
had stumbled upon during the writing process, I never wanted to pursue them and always stuck
with the first idea I wrote about. The third chapter, “Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking by
Teaching Writing” in Peter Elbow’s book, Embracing Contraries: Explorations in Teaching and
Writing really helped to encourage me into a more recursive way of writing. He mentions a
“back-and-forth movement between generating and criticizing” (Elbow 62) that I realize now I
lacked in much of my writing. As hard and tedious as it may be sometimes, I think that I will
always keep this in mind and embrace the recursive nature of writing. In doing so, I will try to be
willing to scrap and change ideas for the sake of making a good point and presenting good
writing, even if it may be more time consuming and difficult.
Finally, I also gained a deeper understanding of how to edit. In the chapter “Punctuation’s
Rhetorical Effects” by Kevin Cassell, he mentions that, “language is fluid and changes when we
use it in different situations. [...] In other words, we need to use punctuation effectively, not just
correctly” (Cassell 5). I’ve gotten into the habit of always running my essay through the website
Grammarly, which will check and make suggestions based on grammar and active/passive voice.
I would usually just take the suggestions that they give and trust that the grammar and
punctuation was correct because the website told me it was correct. However, I’ve learned that
there is a lot more to compelling writing than just following the rules, and there are even places
where “effective” punctuation may even trump being perfectly correct. This way of editing gives
writers more control over what they want to say and being able to express ideas in a way that
speaks to readers, and isn’t ticking the box for grammatically correct.
After this quarter, I can confidently say that I am a better writer. This isn’t to say that I
can easily come up with the most beautiful flowing prose, because I definitely can’t. However, I
have a better understanding of what it means to write and how the editing process takes subpar
rough drafts into final pieces that have meaning and contains information that is insightful and
interesting, not just the first idea that pops into my head. A point that I struggled with in this
class was the “so what” portion of each assignment, but through my practice with both writing
assignments, I think that I’ve gained a better understanding of how to approach this. In Writing
Project 1, I realized that the really interesting part wasn’t how racoons spread microorganisms,
but rather in how this could affect us humans. In Writing Project 2, the important part of the
conversation is less about the specifics of whether a particular writing device (thesis statements
in this case) are good, but rather, how this argument affects how writing should be taught as a
whole. I’ve gained a much better understanding of what to focus on, which tends to not actually
be what the research was about, but rather, its connection and affects on a larger idea, whether
that be public health or pedagogy. Maybe I’ll never be a perfect writer, but I think that I can be a
tenacious one who is willing to go through the proper steps of writing and revising, then writing
again.

Thank you for teaching us this quarter,

Emily Hu
 Works Cited

Cassell, Kevin. “Punctuation’s Rhetorical Effects.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, vol. 3,

Parlor Press, Anderson, SC, South Carolina, 2020, pp. 3–17.

Elbow, Peter. Embracing Contraries: Explorations in Learning and Teaching. New York: Oxford

U Press, 1986

Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York: Pantheon, 1994.

Print