Dear Matt,

Writing 2 lit a fire under my ass because it made me realize that I wasnt as good as a writer as I
thought I was. Ill be honest, I struggled in this class grasping the prompts of the writing projects
because they were prompts that I wasnt previously accustomed to. But having learned different
writing tools to better the writing process and the way that I write not only made accomplishing
these prompts easier, but I feel as though theyll help me in the future with other papers Ill
inevitably have to write. Im basically going to roast my own writing so here it goes.

In high school, writing essays consisted of having a thesaurus in one hand and a 5hour energy in
the other, in other words, I was that bullshit, last minute, staying up til the crack of dawn writer
who wrote with big words and cursive language. I also realized that I used a lot of run-on
sentences and repetitive phrases that could otherwise have been removed. I guess the only
reason I got by was because I went to a high school of primarily English learners (I was up there
with the fluent English speakers) so by default the curve was low. As sad as that sounds, this
realization that my writing was shit made me really take into consideration the readings in class
as well as having my writing peer reviewed.

From Zinsser I realized that I didnt need all those unnecessary words that I used, that I could
convey the same message in a way that is easier for the reader. Using big words does not help
my writing, as it only makes it more difficult for my reader to understand. This is totally
different from how I would write in high school where I would instead be praised for using more
sophisticated vocabulary. From this course, I learned to really prioritize writing a draft and that
writing a paper all in one go may not be the best idea. I learned that to make it easier for myself,
I could make my first draft as shitty as I wanted to. This really helped me out with an issue I
primarily struggle with and that is wanting every sentence to come out as eloquently as possible
which would ultimately lead me into taking hours just to write a good introduction. I learned that
I could use my bullshitting skills to my advantage and lay out all my ideas. By doing so, I
noticed that in that moment of spilling out everything I would come up with other ideas that
would aid my argument.

Through peer reviewing and editing and seeing the work of others, I realized how subpar my
writing was and how I envied those that were better at writing. I used these peer review sessions
to my advantage, and I used what I learned from reading like a writer. I began to think about the
choices they made and how they had influenced me as a reader. It also helped me to revise the
essays of other because I would point out their flaws and realize that I may have made the same
flaws myself. Lastly, I also realized how helpful it is to have someone else read through your
essay and get a second opinion. It really put an emphasis on how important the revision process
was.

I revised WP1 and WP3 mostly because I was both unsatisfied with my writing as I knew I had
more potential, and the topics still interest me. In WP1 I rewrote the entire introduction, I made it
shorter and I cut down all the unnecessary context for a short and sweet hook sentence. I went
from addressing the conventions in op-ed articles as research, valid sources and anecdotes to
simply the convention of objective claims. I dropped the convention of length and anecdotes
because it had a very week elaboration and I could do better without them. I also reevaluated the
purpose of the genres and realized that while they bot influence the public they had different
purposes. The purpose of the opinion editorial articles was obviously to get the audience to
believe their opinion while the satirical talk shows had focused on allowing the audience to
critically think and be skeptic about a topic. Because I basically came up with a new thesis, I had
to fix the rest of my essay yet, I was still able to use the same sources as evidence.

For WP3 I made a somewhat drastic change, but not really. I decided that nature of private
journal entries was overcomplicating the idea that I had to have some sort of intended audience.
So, I changed the genre to Tumblr/blog posts, and I personally argue that blog posts can very
well be just like journal writing. Because of this, my analysis and translation still apply, all I had
to do to my analysis was change journal entries to tumblr posts and go from handwritten entries
and the conventional journal structure to blog entries. With the use of these tumblr I can take my
analysis further and argue about the use of the reblog button within tumblr and how it could even
help in achieving an even greater audience. In revising part one, I added more content and a bit
more detail to the blog posts

Overall, this work in my portfolio reflects the development of my writing skills in terms of
making my writing much more concise and clear. Having struggled with this previously, it was
the class readings that taught me different methods to approach reading and writing, and it was
the reviewing/editing process that allowed me to realize how editing may very well be the
backbone of my essay.

Sincerely,
Hector Albiter