Kimberly Nunn

English 1106

Introduction to Portfolio

HOW I’VE CHANGED HAS A WRITER

     When I look back at all the essays that I have done in class and out of class, I feel that I have grown a lot.  I have always been really good at writing. I love to write poems in my spare time, whenever that might be.  Writing short stories helps your imagination grow.  It will help you live longer by exercising your mind.  It’s been proven that if you exercise your mind a little each day, you live longer.  There are many difficulties I’ve faced, things I’ve learned, and helpful advice that I have gotten.

     There have been many difficulties that I have faced through this class when writing my essays.  The majority of the time, it was just trying to come up with a good topic to write about.  When I think of a topic, I try to think of all the things about that topic to see if it would be enough information to write a 1-2 page essay on it.  Every writer should be thinking of those things anyway.  Another thing that I would be thinking about is how it’s going to grab the reader’s attention.  I usually start with 3 topics that interest me and then narrow it down to the one I think will catch their attention.  The most difficult thing for me was trying to write the thesis for the paper. The thesis is sometimes difficult to write because it could end up not making sense, to short, or to long.  Other times I just didn’t know how to put it into words.  I have become pretty good at writing thesis now.  I understand what a thesis should look like, how long it should be, and where a thesis should sit in my essay.  I have had a lot of advice in writing my thesis.

     There was a lot of helpful advice that I got throughout the semester.  Having conferences with Steve was very helpful.  I could ask him anything about my thesis and he helped me understand how to put it together.  It’s nice when we can ask a teacher something and they help us out. Some can be mean and tell us to do it all on our own. I tried the Smartthinking online too. That was really nice and helpful too.  When I submitted my essay, it was nice to look in my email and find that a professor wrote back with helpful advice and even addressed me by name.  I recommend it to everyone to try it once.  I received some good advice from peers, not a lot but enough to help.  All this advice helped me be the writer I am today.

     I have learned so much this semester about writing.  I learned how to properly write a thesis statement.  That to me is the biggest challenge I faced.  Sending my essay into Smartthinking helped me learn how to set up my essay with a introduction, body, and conclusion.  The advice I got from my peers helped me learn how to properly put commas in. That seemed to be the most advice I got from them, apparently I didn’t do a good job on that so thanks guys! Overall, I have become a stronger writer because of the advice that I got and learned from.

     When people look at my essays from the whole semester, they will see that I have changed so much in my writing.  My essays are set up properly with a introduction, body, and conclusion.  I know how to pick a good topic so that I get the reader’s attention.  I found that if I put questions in my essay, then I would crab their attention better.  I am now writing about real life experiences when I write about a topic because it helps them stay in tuned to my writing.  Towards the end of the semester, I found that I had little or no errors in my essays.  I had a lot of fun doing what I love to do