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Ethan Lin, Writing 2

Professor Kassner

Letter to My Professor

Dear Nora,

I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me this quarter. I don’t think any teacher has
ever responded to my questions via email or writing journal comments as fast as you did. I’m
very appreciative for all the help you provided me on my writing projects, and you really
allowed me to enjoy academic writing. For my final portfolio, I created a personal website where
people can learn about me as a person, but also learn about my growth as a writer through my
two WPs. The various photos on the homepage and aesthetic design of the website summarize
some of my interests and hobbies. On both the WP 1 and WP 2 subpages, I included photos
related to topics I explored in the two projects to complement my revised WPs. When you’re
reading my portfolio, I would like you to pay particular attention to my revised WP 1 reflective
essay and my revised WP 2 syllabus course schedule. Overall, I’m satisfied with my WP 1
petition, so I focused more on restructuring and using clearer language in my WP 1 essay. For
my WP 2 syllabus, I would like you to focus on the revamped formatting of my week-by-week
breakdowns, as well as the more apparent distinctions between different authors that I added.

Being completely honest, I was absolutely terrified of taking Writing 2 when I first signed up for
the class. My initial understanding of writing was very restricted. I always felt pressured to
follow the writing structure and conventions already set in stone by my literature teachers. This
made writing feel like a repetitive and boring process. I’d often find myself writing in the same
style, not being able to express myself creatively in my essays. Before the quarter started, I kept
thinking to myself: “If I occasionally struggled with academic writing in high school, there’s no
way I’d succeed at a college-level writing course!” The past ten weeks proved me completely
wrong.

Writing 2 taught me that writing isn’t constrained to a set structure or formula. I was introduced
to this idea by a simple, yet powerful, threshold concept of writing I learned during Week 1.
“Good” writing is contextual, because “what counts as formal and correct can differ widely
across contexts” (Wardle and Downs 15). This was completely contradictory to what I was
taught in high school. I used to always follow the traditional five-paragraph structure and rely on
academic language to formulate my arguments. Wardle and Downs helped me understand that
writing is contingent upon the context of the situation, and I broke away from my initial belief
that writing always has to follow the exact same structure.
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Another course reading that influenced my understanding of writing is Lisa Bickmore’s “Genre
in the Wild:Understanding Genre Within Rhetorical(ECO)Systems.” I learned that writers should
reaffirm the “stable features of the genre,” but that doesn’t mean they can’t “adapt and reshape
the genre” to communicate their ideas more effectively to their audience (Bickmore). Genres
have conventions that should be followed, but great writers are flexible and go beyond the most
obvious conventions of their genre. As I explored how to write in different genres throughout the
quarter, I challenged myself to implement the more subtle conventions of each genre, especially
using language that appeals specifically to my new audience.

In my first journal entry, my past self stated that I often found myself writing in the same style,
as I used a similar writing structure for every subject. Closing in on the quarter, I can say that my
understanding of myself as a writer has significantly changed for the better. Writing in different
genres throughout the quarter helped me develop into a more versatile writer. More specifically,
completing WP 1 and WP 2 helped me improve at identifying what writing conventions are most
appropriate for the genre I’m writing in. Finally, I made one important change to my mindset as
a writer. I started to speak with my own voice and express myself creatively in my writing
pieces, especially in WP 1 and WP 2. This allowed me to break my old habit of only writing out
what I expect people, namely my teachers, want to see. I now have greater control over my own
writing, as well as increased confidence in my writing abilities.

WP 1 allowed me to grow as a creative writer in a variety of ways. It taught me how to create

writing that appeals to a specific audience. Creating the WP 1 petition was the most intriguing
writing project I have ever done. Putting myself in the shoes of my audience of college students,
I wrote the petition as if I were trying to convince myself to sign it. Throughout the process, I
learned that engaging the audience with the topic is very important. If the language you use
makes your audience confused or bored, they won’t understand the points you’re trying to make.
Revising my WP 1 helped me identify one of my weaknesses as a writer. I used the passive voice
in my essay too much, so I focused on writing in the active voice in my revisions. The revision
process made me better at writing with clear language and less confusing sentence constructions.

Creating the WP 2 syllabus was also an influential experience. I learned how to summarize a
discourse community conversation to a new audience within a new genre. Using the conventions
of a syllabus to tell my course’s students about the conversation was challenging, but it helped
me realize that not everything can be translated from genre to genre. My WP 2 revisions show
my growth by presenting the course schedule of my syllabus in a more readable format.
Organization is an essential part of writing, so I revised the course schedule’s formatting to make
it easier for my course’s students to find the important information they need to know.

Best regards,
Ethan
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Works Cited

Bickmore, Lisa. ​Genre in the Wild: Understanding Genre Within Rhetorical (ECO)Systems​.

E-book, Open English @ SLCC, 2016.

Wardle, Elizabeth, and Doug Downs. ​Writing about Writing​. 4th ed., Bedford/St. Martin's, 2020,

pp. 14–16.