My Letter : Reflective Letter

One of the areas in which we must all strive to improve to the best of our abilities is the potential to effectively articulate thoughts and ideas into our writing pieces. Improving my writing capability has been one of the most gratifying accomplishment because I have always been one to feel insecure about my assets as a writer. This insecurity spawns from self-awareness and knowing that writing can place you in a vulnerable state, as you allow others to perceive you personal notions and mental process. Some the most intimidating experience as a writer was having to write three essays within a short period of time because this type of task can demonstrate one’s genuine ability to both write coherently and rapidly. Due to these timed write,

Since my initial writing assignments, it is apparent that my writing has dramatically improved. Initially, virtually all of my writing was largely descriptive. However, irrespective of how the writing was descriptively exciting, my essays lacked a coherent structure and organization. They were like a shapeless cake without layers. They lacked the right coherency that enables a reader to understand a piece of writing in a proper order.

Thank you so much for keeping the doors of Union open. Your donation of (total amount of money they gave) aided in continuing the ministries of Union throughout the summer months. We want to reach out as the summer months wrap up and we continue to seek support.

Alcoholism and the addiction to any drug destroy lives, families and financial security. Growing up with an alcoholic as a parent not only tore my family apart to the point of divorce in 2013; but also left me as a financial insecure college student and a supporter for my younger sister through the years to come. Faced with the sudden tasks of paying for myself and raising my sister, I struggled to through the semesters trying to pay rent and be at home. Academically, I was disappointed in myself and knew I needed to make a change. Through many appointments through the success center, I became proactive to take control of the difficult situation I was in. Though I am still in this situation today, I have learned to time-manage and prioritize

I am not a big fan of writing papers because writing is one of my weakest point. The interpretive essay was a struggle for me and I also didn't know how to put my paper in MLA style. During my first draft I had no clue as to what to write. When I was writing the first draft of the interpretive essay I felt like I was explaining the story instead of interpreting it in my own understanding so I decide not to turn the paper in. When I spoke with Professor Ryan Clark, he told me to write whatever that comes to my mind and that the first draft doesn't have to be perfect; after the talk with him I decided to start on my draft. The first draft took me about 6 hours to complete. During the 6 hours process of writing the paper I change pages that

When I was a child, writing was one of my favorite hobbies, so I used to spend many hours to write in my daily journals. However, when I came to America, I felt more difficult to write and express my thoughts in English because I did not know much vocabularies and lacking grammatical knowledge. Then, I decided to go back to school to improve my writing skills because I recognize the significant of writing in my everyday lives. As a college student, my writing are about different types of class assignments such as reflections, journals, essays, and research papers. As a teacher aide in the preschool classroom, and most of my writings are reports, observation, notes, and curriculum planning. At the beginning of the Academic Writing Seminar (AWS 100) when I wrote my first essay assignment, and I found out that writing essays in English was not easy. At the end of the semester, I realize I have learned valuable lessons while working seriously to write assignments from the AWS 100, so this class will a step with deep preparation to help me successful in writing research papers skills at Pacific Oaks College. In this essay, I will also introduce the “best” of my writing, and share my experiences on the process of creating this portfolio.

Freshman year of college, a time to spread one’s wings, figure out the rest of one’s life, and express oneself. One way that I was able to express myself throughout my first year of college was through writing. This semester I expressed myself in two major projects, the first project was an evaluation on Fellowship of Christian Athletes Organization and what makes it a good organization. The second project was about why colleges and universities in South Carolina should serve fresher, healthier, non-processed foods in dining halls. While writing these papers I came across my strengths and weakness as a writer and as a student.

To describe an event or experience in my life and how it influenced my decision to further my education was a culmination of several situations that had happened in the last two years. It started with my place of employment. I had gone up as high that I could in the company and without any further education I no longer had the ability to make more money or to do anything else in the corporation. I began to get frustrated with the situation and with myself. I knew I had more to offer and the desired to do so. As the days passed I had a conversation I had with my daughter. She had questioned the importance of her schooling. I was stressing to her the importance of a good education and how that education will change her life for the better. I explained how an education can give

In the beginning of the year I was not confident in my writing abilities. I did not know how to format different types of essays, nor did I know the meticulous research that goes into each and every paper. When we started off with narrative writings I felt fairly comfortable, but little did I know that I was a grammatical nightmare. My most common mistake was forgetting about commas before coordinating conjunctions. I would also often times become wordy or improper whenever I wasn't sure how to get an idea across. Whenever the year started I was clueless on how to format any dialogue at all, but as the year progressed these dialogue mishaps dwindled down until in my final papers they were much improved. Finally, my greatest personal improvement

Improvement takes time, effort, and often times late nights. Many evenings I have labored overtime to improve myself. Often times staying awake till midnight to ensure that my daybook notes were the definition of perfection or even adding an extra paragraph to my essays to ensure that it would support my thesis. In English class, I explored my ability to read literature, writing essays, collaborating on discussions, and most importantly, learning. Regardless of my extensive background in each of these areas, I recieved the opportunity to expand and develop my skills more in some way as a reader, a writer, a collaborator, and especially a learner. Perfection is not always attainable, yet I should strive for the best adaption of my work.

The different activities I have participated in over the past 3 semesters have been incredibly rewarding! The majority of the activities I have participate in over the past 3 years have been on the USF campus, the organizations that I have completed these hours with were primarily with the offices of the Global Citizens Project (GCP) and the Center for Leadership and Civic Engagement’s Lead Fellows Board (CLCE), but also some hours were completed with the USF chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and with the GloBULL Ambassadors. The various activities performed spanned a wide range of different things including planning events that help to promote leadership across USF with the CLCE, tabling at events and presenting presentations with the Global Citizens Project, and

When it comes to reading for information, I tend to go back and forth to the scuba diver and a guy on a Jet Ski. It depends on what I am reading per say, if I find what I am reading interesting then I read more in depth rather than something I find unappealing. Generally speaking, when I look for information for a given assignment, I tend to ‘treasure hunt’ for information and facts I believe are relevant to the topic I am assigned to. I do not give myself the time to actually dive into readings if I am looking for specific information. The reason to why I do this is because I must find information quickly in order to start the writing process and finish the given assignment. On the other hand, when I read something for pleasure, I take

During the course of this semester, I wrote several essays, several of them being for English 111. The four primary essays I wrote for the course were on: the importance of truth, the time I almost died from an allergic reaction, a review of one of my favorite films, and a revision of the truth essay. In addition to my essays, I learned a lot from the peer reviews that the professor implemented as well. In writing the the first two essays, I found many improvements in my writing styles as a student. In the truth essay and its revision, I learned about the important of evidence and examples. This helped improve my writing style and essay because it provided information in areas that I was lacking. I felt as though my narrative

Everyone has a way of expressing their emotions. Whether it’s painting a picture or creating some kind of art. Mine happened to be writing. I have always loved writing because I felt that writing was the only way that I could truly pour my heart and soul out. Whether it was an amazing day or an awful day, I would write it down. What writing meant to me was to confide in myself and write everything that was in my head onto paper. As much as I loved writing, I also despised it. I learned that journaling was completely different from academic writing and somehow, I found academic writing very stressful because of how difficult it was for me to write. There were a few teachers that said I was, in their own words, “an excellent writer”, but I knew those weren’t their most honest words. I wasn’t being hard on myself or was I in any way saying that to get sympathy; I was saying that because when it I took the college exams, I received an average writing score and I know an average score wouldn 't cut it. However, it wasn 't just writing that I struggled with; It was the personal statement that gave me the most stress and anxiety. The process of writing my personal statement made me doubt my abilities in being a good writer and consequently decreased my opportunities in winning scholarships and getting accepted into universities under the UC system.

Reading and writing doesn’t connect with me, compared to everyone else. With reading and writing being one the major struggles I have, it was and still is very difficult for me to find my true reading and writing skills. In high school, I was in Adv. English courses throughout the 4 years, and I was an average kid in the class. We are forced to read a lot of articles about today main topics and issues, romantic story poems, and novels such as, Beowulf, The Tempest, and To Kill a Mockingbird. But my absolute favorite reading that we did was, Edgar Allan Poe poems. The way he uses that evil, dark, and scared tone, is what gets me the chills in a scary way. But with all other novels that I have done, I couldn’t really get into the readings. It then carried on to my free read and it was the worst part about English, because I don’t like to read for enjoyment and this would also go for writing as well. With writing, I can never get my thoughts on a paper correctly, so I would always be afraid of writing any type of essays, including this one. I feel as if writing were a punishment for me, because it takes so much time, thinking, and processing my thoughts or ideas for an essay. Summary, research, and argument were my worst enemy in high school. But with creative writing, I feel most comfortable doing, because I feel as if it's an easy way for me to express myself by writing whatever I'm feeling inside. It’s been a rough time with both reading and writing, this then puts my