Raju 1

Dear Professor Campbell,

What a journey it has been! When I first walked into this class, I did not know what to

expect. English was one of the classes that I struggled in the most, so I was nervous at the

thought of going into college and having to take an Honors writing class. I’m glad to say that

although my past has been rough with English, as soon as I walked into this class, everything

changed, and English went from one of my worst classes to one of my favorites. I will never

forget the day when I sat down with a bunch of new faces and you immediately walked in and

had a bright face and started the lecture by cussing at the projector. At that moment I knew that

this class would be fun and a learning experience as well. The first “assignment” per say that we

did in class was the free write and I initially did not really understand the purpose of it because it

seemed like any old warmup that you would do in school just so that the teacher could get ready

with the materials. However, in hindsight I notice that each free write had a component that

related to the task or topic that we talked in class at the same time. For example, if the free write

was “Reflection is….” The class period would be spent talking about the importance of

reflection and ironically allow us to reflect on our answer before and after the lecture. This idea

of “self-reflection” has been taught to us for many years but never applied, but I am glad that this

class has strongly emphasized the importance because reflecting not only helps in class but

outside as well. Furthermore, this class has given me the strength to cultivate my writing. After

submitting the Topic Proposal for our Extended Inquiry Project, I received feedback and

comments from you as well as other friends of mine on how to change my structure and

grammar which helped me a lot. Keeping these suggestions in mind, I continued to write my

other pieces of writing which include the Annotated Bibliography and the final essay. Writing
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for applications and interviews have been a strength of mine for years but writing in order to

express my ideas on a topic and try and argue for it has been an area in which I have struggled

which is why I chose to write an argumentative paper. I believed that if I do pick up a style that I

am relatively new to, I would be able to receive suggestions and advice to grow and get better at

argumentative essays, and this happened. Throughout the semester, in addition to the

argumentative essay, I was able to learn a lot about the small details that make each person a

better writer. Another major idea that stood out to me was the first Lit Lounge prompt on “Shitty

Drafts.” However naïve it sounds, I initially believed that the renowned authors today would

write a piece of writing and just revise what they have written without mapping our

brainstorming their thoughts which seems like a pretty bad idea in hindsight. The concept of

writing a shitty first draft stuck with me this semester because I would always have this

expectation that my writing needs to be perfect the first time, I write it and worst case, edit it

later. After reading and interpreting the article in class, I wanted to try this technique and I did on

my Topic Proposal and It could not have been any better. I threw down facts and thoughts I had

on the topic just to see what I had and then creating the structure and flow was not hard at all.

My Favorite Assignment

My favorite assignment in the semester was the Annotated Bibliography. This is probably

a weird choice when comparing to other students and honestly it threw me off also because I

never would’ve expected an assignment in which you have to analyze sources would be my

favorite. However, this assignment taught me the most and I believe that it will have the most

impact in my writing in the future for the next four years as well as my years past college. When

picking a source prior to this class, I would normally search the topic up on Google and find the

first few links and use the information on it without analyzing its credibility. The only thing that
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I knew was “Do not use Wikipedia.” When I first got introduced to this assignment in this class,

I was confused on the purpose and what I would exactly get out of it but that changed after I

finished the assignment. I was able to learn how to analyze sources and figure out which are

valuable versus the links that I did not need.

My Least Favorite Assignment

My least favorite assignment was the Lit Lounge. There were some instances where I was

genuinely interested in the topic that was addressed but many of the times, it was topics that I

was not interested in which made the work tedious. I understand the purpose of the assignment,

but I feel like every student should be able to pick an article that they would like to analyze

rather than being assigned a certain topic. I definitely do not despise the responses and feedback

given but if I could critique one thing, it would be the choice of topic. Rather than making it

mandatory to everyone to pick a topic, the student should be able to post the link of the article

and/or TedTalk into the discussion and write about what they read from it and what their opinion

on the topic is.

“Dear Malcolm” Letter

The “Dear Malcolm Letter” was the first piece of writing that we had to do in this class

and was the best way we could have started. When walking into the class, I was worried that you

may not know who I really am and that the other students may not want to interact outside of the

classroom, so this really helped me put my foot into the water regarding this class. I was able to

tell you everything that happened in my past as well as my future aspirations as a Computer

Science Student. However, cliché this sounds, after I wrote this letter, I felt welcome into the

class and was able to interact with you and others as if I have been knowing you for years.
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Topic Proposal

The topic proposal was my second favorite assignment to do. This spiked my creativity in

the topic of racism and the spread of racism in the past and in the current generation. I had

picked this topic at first because as a minority, I have faced racist comments and remarks from

friends as well as strangers, so I wanted to analyze and figure out the root cause and how to fix it.

However, when I continued to gather information on the topic, I was able to see that I was not

the only one and in fact, there are millions that suffer the same issue. After reading this, I knew

that this was a topic that I wanted to do and continued to do more research. As the topic proposal

was assigned to us, I already had a plentiful amount of information I could put and prove that the

topic I wanted to talk about was worth arguing for.

Editing my EIP First Draft

Editing my first draft was the longest process I have ever been part of and the most time I

have ever spent on an essay that I have written which is also seen in the output. Revising my first

draft off your comments as well as my peer’s comments was tedious at first but as I got into it,

rather than tedious, it got more interesting because I was able to see growth in myself as a writer.

In high school, I was used to writing my essay and reading it once and just submitting without

asking feedback from anybody which affected my grade negatively as well. Although my grades

on my essays and writing in this class weren’t the best, I felt growth which I feel like is the most

important thing as I take more English classes. I look forward to using the skills I have learned in

this class in my future English classes as well as other classes that require me to write.

Final EIP Draft

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The Final Draft took the least amount of time for me in the process because most of the

time I spent was on the revision on the first draft. After revising, I just removed the markups and

read through my essay again and was able to call it my final.

Future

In the future, I want to take more writing classes to help my vocabulary and thought

process. I can see a drastic growth in myself from the writer I came into college as versus the

skills and techniques I am leaving with. Hopefully, I can get you as my professor again!

My Experience

Overall, this class was definitely my favorite in the semester and there is few reasons

why. One main reason is your openness and the reason why you teach. There are many teachers

and professors I have had that teach just to meet the standards and seem like they just want the

money but you genuinely care about the well-being of your students and I feel like any of us

would not mind coming up to you and asking questions because you would take time out of your

day to help us. Another reason why this class is my favorite is because of the assignments. None

of the assignments that we had received seemed like busy work to me. Every essay and reflection

that we had to do seemed to have a purpose and connect with the topic that we would talk about

either in class or the topic that each of us are writing about. The only thing that seemed to be a

little tedious to me was the textbook reading but other than that, I did not mind doing the other

assignments and I actually enjoyed it.

I am really glad that I was able to be in your class and I have and will continue a lot of my

friends and underclassmen to take your class next semester and next year. I hope to see you
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around Dr. Campbell. I had an amazing semester and it was primarily because of this class.

Thank you for everything that you did for us and the long hours grading our essays. I hope they

were worth it. I hope you have a great break and I look forward to seeing you around campus!

Thank You,

Aditya Raju