Dear Portfolio Committee,
I’ll be totally honest in telling you that I’ve never been a fan of writing essays or English class in general.Throughout high school, I always felt i wasn’t learning anything new and the whole subject as a whole became very stagnant.Just the same setup as every other year, a boring old writing prompt and five paragraph essays.Not exactly the most interesting class of the day as you can imagine,But I found out very early that English 101 in my first semester at BCC was going to be a different animal.For starters, the whole blog setup of writing was very intriguing to me.It had somewhat of a social media type feel to it, with my and my peers writings all shared together in one place.Aside from the setup, the prompts and assignments were very interesting and new, which helped me become more interested in writing professional looking documents in an MLA format.All and all, English 101 has definitely helped me become a more well rounded writer,and also has made me become someone who can enjoy writing an assignment as opposed to just trying to get it done.I feel that the following three essays I have here for you are some of the best writing I have ever done in my academic career, and I hope you enjoy reading just as much as i enjoyed writing them.
My first essay I have here for you was the one I took the most time to compose.It was a new kind of assignment for me, as I’ve never really written a research paper before,and also never heard of an “annotation” essay.I chose to have this essay first in my portfolio because I believe it demonstrates my development and a coming together of many different skills in writing in the best way.I chose the very popular subject of legalizing medical marijuana because the argument is a reflection on the shift of attitude that is happening in the world when it comes to marijuana.While writing this essay and researching the topic, i wanted to make sure a conveyed the message that whether or not you agree with legalization, you have to acknowledge the cultural shift that is happening across the nation, and that topic is very interesting to me.I would like for you to pay closer attention to my final paragraph,as I believe it is the paragraph that can sway your opinion one way or the other the best.
The next piece was a memoir about my experiences replacing the engine on my old vehicle.This was my favorite essay to write as it gave me a chance to recollect on a past experience that was very important to me.I love working on cars and this experience gave me an opportunity to decide on whether I’d be continuing on in the trade as a career.It was a trying project and took a lot of determination and persistence.Its that very word persistence that this piece was centered around, as the assignment was to take the reader through your experience with great detail and have them feel as if they were in the room with you while everything was unfolding.I show this concept of detail and displaying persistence the best in my second paragraph after the dialogue in the beginning of this essay.Paying attention to the descriptive nature of the paragraph, I hope you formulate a mental image of my struggle as I work underneath my vehicle and also hope you can feel that I grasp the concept of a descriptive type essay.
Finally, I thought of it only fitting to be my first essay of the semester last, so that after reading through my portfolio you can understand how much I’ve progressed throughout the year.The assignment was to focus on the idea of Persistence and to research a question regarding it.I chose whether or not Persistence is an acquired trait or a tool that we all are born with.This essay blends together very well not only researching for a paper but also work citing.Another interesting twist to this assignment was using one of my peers essays as source of reference,which helped bring together all of our ideas on the concept of persistence.This essay displays my skills in the area of researching and organizing an essay around an idea, which are skills you will see throughout my blog and the other essays in my portfolio.
All and all , my portfolio is a good display of my somewhat of an evolution as a writer. Coming.Coming from not having many of the skills required yo pass this course to actually displaying them as a regular basis and being confident in my abilities as a writer.Also progressed from someone who disliked English class writing assignments to enjoying composing essays in this course.The plan is to build upon this year and to continue gaining skills and developing myself as a writer.All the skills I’ve learned so far like development, organization, mechanics, and research skills are my base as a writer now.They are tools that I can say I have in my tool belt,and skills that are clearly defined in my three essays i have here for you.I appreciate you reading and taking the time out to give my portfolio a look over, thank you.
Sincerely,
Dillon Antone Pinto