March 20, 2020

Hi Josh,
It has been a great pleasure having you as my Writing 2 instructor this quarter!
I have learned a lot from this class and you, and it would take me ten pages to discuss all of
them. But there is a reading that has significantly changed my view of the process of writing, and
that is the “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott. Its main idea is that a writer has to start with
“shitty first drafts” in order to end up with “good second drafts” and “terrific third drafts.”
Knowing that I, and any other (even good) writer, will write terrible first drafts, has changed how
I feel about starting writing. That is, I used to procrastinate whenever I had a writing assignment,
and the psychology of procrastination is, in fact, a fear of inability to perform well on that task.
But if I know that I will in destiny write terribly, my fear disappears. As a result, I have shown
significantly less procrastinatory symptoms this quarter during all my three writing projects.
As I just wrote down the paragraph above, I recalled a Chinese saying that corresponds to that
idea, which is “The beginning is the most difficult part.” I wish I could fully incorporate what I
have learned about the shitty first drafts into other aspects of my life. That is, I’m not being
afraid of the idea of starting anymore, because I know I will do bad, and I know I will become
better by doing bad first.
Another thing that has left me impressed is a quote you once mentioned in class: Writing is never
done, only due. That was also how I kept feeling like when I was revising my writing projects for
the portfolio. The reason that I submitted my portfolio was never that I felt finished or satisfied
with it, but because of the set due date.
As an English-as-a-second-language writer, I wish I could learn more about English usage and
surface conventions. Although you have encouraged us to write freely and forget about all the
rules we have learned about “good writing,” it would be clearer and less abstract if we could go
deeper analyzing word choices and sentence constructions by doing deliberate practices. We
have done similar activities in class, but I lacked an essential key to understanding those
concepts from an English-as-a-second-language perspective.
For the final portfolio, I chose to revise my WP2 and WP3. I was very determined to revise
WP2, because it left me with an impression that it was largely unfinished. I had a feeling that I
stopped at a very surface level in understanding and discussing the literacy practices in
Economics and its purpose as a discipline, so I meant to dig deeper and revise it significantly
about its thesis and organizations. In choosing from WP1 or WP3, however, my rationale was
much simpler: I like WP3 better, not only because I have enjoyed making arts, but the concept of
translating genre is fascinating itself.
Writing about WP2 was challenging because I have only been taking an introductory class of
Economics. Even though I could recognize some patterns of conventions, my problem lay in how
to interpret their purposes and connect them to the big picture of the discipline of Economics,
which was also pointed out by you in your feedback.
Although you have patiently told me that it was acceptable to make wrong statements, I seek for
a more accurate and objective understanding of Economics and its goal as a discipline.
Therefore, I did two main things to help me think about Economics from a new perspective: first,
I re-read the introductory chapter on my Economics textbook, whose author gives a clear
definition of Economics and a professional view on its practice in reality. It also discusses the
categorization of microeconomics and macroeconomics and their different research focuses.
Then, I did a little bit of research on the concept of the discourse community. Having a general
understanding of this concept has significantly helped me reflect on the question of why some
conventions are specifically important for Economics.
These two new understandings were mainly demonstrated by my drastic change of introduction.
In my submission draft, I started my introduction by my personal experience from Economics
class, but then I transited to talk about how economists do research abruptly, then the thesis
statement suddenly appeared, and then my introduction ended. Intending to make my
introduction flow more smoothly, I restarted it by defining Economics as a discipline, and then
moved to talk about what kind of research questions economists would be interested in. Then I
discussed briefly the overall purpose of economists, and how that relates to the literacy practices
and Economics as a discourse community.
One thing I kept in mind when I rewrote the introduction is that I imagined my audience as
someone who is unfamiliar with either Economics or the concept of literacy practices, while in
the past I used to think of my audience as you, who has professional knowledge on both
concepts. This shift in the intended audience helped me write more clearly and logically.
Then I re-organized my overall structure. Originally, I had “General Writing Style and
Organization” first, then “Use of Evidence,” and finally “Citation Style.” This is not very
coherent in the way that it does not correspond to how I introduced them in my thesis statement
either. After revision, I had “Use of Evidence” first, then “Writing Styles” and “Paper Structure”
separately, and finally “Citation Styles.” This new structure emphasized two aspects of literacy
practices I discussed: one is methodologies, which is the use of evidence, including models,
statistical analysis, tables and figures, and the other one is textual features, including writing
styles, paper structure, and citation styles.
In discussing models, I used to use the model of supply and demand as an illustrative example.
However, when I re-looked at that paragraph, I thought that it would still be confusing to
someone unfamiliar with Economics. That is because models are being used in different
scientific fields; it’s important to define clearly how and why economists use models. Therefore,
the other drastic change of my revised draft is that I offered a more detailed explanation of the
example of supply and demand, in which I discussed how the same model is presented in
narrative form, visually, and mathematically.
Other changes would be minor changes in English usage and surface conventions, although I had
a feeling that my revised work would probably sound more awkward as I had been too cautious
choosing words and constructing sentences. As shown by the comparison document, I did not
mean to re-write my entire essay. Due to the emergency, we had more time working on our final
portfolio, yet that was how I ended up agreeing with the quote that “Writing is never done, only
due.” I’ve dedicated a significant amount of time revising my WP2 but still had a strong feeling
that it remained unfinished.
However, it is due tomorrow.
That is probably why I did not have my WP3 revised as drastically as WP2.
Revising WP3 was actually harder than I thought it would be. The first reason was that my
memories were still fresh so that I could not recognize many issues related to contents or
language as sensitively as I did for WP2. Another reason was that WP3 required less research or
further understanding of concepts, so it seemed hard to add a lot of new stuff.
Therefore, the way I revised WP2 was to focus on the English usage and surface conventions, as
you recommended in your feedback. Except those minor changes in word choices and sentence
constructions, which, again, I felt have become more awkward, I reflected on the concept of
cohesion and coherence. I used to obey the rule of avoiding using the passive voice, but since
learning about the real purpose of passive voice in class—which is to make a stronger connection
between sentences—I started to incorporate using the passive voice into my writing. Although I
did not know whether my writing has been improved or become more natural, I did pay more
attention to the logic and consistency between each of my sentences and ideas.
This knowledge had been particularly reflected by my changes from the end of the second
paragraph to the next few paragraphs. In my original draft, I first talked about the differences in
rhetorical situations of academic articles in Economics and film posters, in which I specifically
addressed the four components: subject, audience, composer and context. However, my analysis
of these four components was not incorporated effectively in the rest of my writing.
Another thing I did was to revise my WP3 was that I added more reflection over the process of
designing the posters. I surely did not end up drawing what I had now with my first intuition, so
it was important to re-think not only why I did this and that, but how I ended up making that
decision. Then I immediately realized that I was doing metacognition to examine my artistic
choices, which I did not demonstrate a deep understanding in my original draft. With my
expanded experience of this concept, I internalized this idea of consciously reflecting on the
effectiveness of my artistic choice into the body of my revised draft.
Thank you for your invaluable comments on each of my writing projects, as well as your patient
guidance and support when I asked for help. I found that I have become more confident about
writing in the way that I actively look for things to improve on. In the future, I will always keep
in mind the idea brought by the “Shitty First Drafts” not to be afraid of starting, and remember
your quote of “writing is never done, only due” so that I would keep a modest attitude revising
my work.
Thank you for making this class a great memory for us by your professionalism and creativity for
teaching. I have genuinely enjoyed Writing 2 very much.
P.s.: Just in case you did not recognize on the home page, I wrote “I have enjoyed Writing 2!”
four times in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Would you guess why?:)
Sincerely,
Jiayi Zhao