Dear Reader,

My name is Irene Arias and I am 20 years old. I am a New York native who moved to

Connecticut when I was 17. I started writing since primary school and loved it since. When I was

younger, I wasn’t a very good writer. My spelling wasn’t perfect, and I was terrible at writing

topic sentences and trying to think of a topic to write about. As much as I tried to fix my writing

it didn’t really help until I got older. I started understanding writing more and discovering my

strength and weaknesses. This portfolio is going to show the ups and downs of my writing

stages through my English class this semester. My hardest paper I had to write had to be my

Rhetorical Analysis. Finding a Ted Talk that interest me was tricky to find. Once I found which

Ted Talk to write about, I didn’t know how to put it together. It turned out that my hardest

paper I wrote was my best. After reading it repeatedly, it became my favorite paper. While I

was taking this course, I have learned a lot. From having grammar Mondays to having writing

workshops it has helped me. Listening to other people’s input has helped me better myself on

becoming a better writer. After taking the time trying to understand the content of the course, I

see why this class is important. The things we learn in English can eventually help us in the

future from writing resumes for jobs to extensive vocabulary for just daily speaking. This

semester has been a fun experience from being a first-year student and meeting new people.

Thank you to Professor Ferrara for being a great professor. It makes me so excited to see what I

am capable of in my English 102 class next semester and where else my writing journey is going

to take me.