Dear Professor Williams,

To be honest, I am not a fan of reading or writing. I don’t think you can enjoy it unless

you're really good at it and I personally believe that I am not the best so I never had the

motivation to keep going and get better to the point where I enjoyed it. I used to love reading and

writing and the freedom that came with it, but it got lost on the way through school. However,

taking English 111, I was surprised how interested I was in it and how much I enjoyed it. In the

beginning of the class, I wrote essays that didn't flow and were not exciting to read, they lacked

detail and structure that readers needed to understand. In this class, I have learned how to

approach my writing the right way and to make sure I am being thorough throughout my essay. I

have learned to write in different styles and new techniques to approach it with. My writing now

is much easier to understand, it flows better all together with more detail, and it gets my point

across.

I chose to revise “The Stranger in the Photo is Me” essay. I chose this formal assignment

because I felt this was a topic that I could build on and add more detail too. I also thought the

prompt was interesting and it causes you to think about your life in a good way. When I first

wrote this essay, I stuck to talking about what everyone else said and not having specific

personal details to make it unique to me. The essay was also just bland and did not flow to well

in certain parts. Before we wrote this essay we read about compare and contrast and how to write

using this method correctly. We did an assignment where we had to compare and contrast a

topic, I chose one that was personal to me and I think this was helpful because it introduced us to

the style of writing. We started our essay with an outline that gave us the foundation and

structure. From that point we wrote our rough draft and then had a peer edit and review it. After

revising with the peer review edits, the final draft was made and submitted. After it was graded, I
took a look at your comments and I began to revise my essay once again. Both your comments

and the peer reviewer commented about I should add more personal examples and explain what I

am talking about with more detail, so the main thing I focused on was personalizing it to fit me

and giving more examples. I also changed and reworded sentences to make it flow better and

also fixed grammatical errors. The peer review and instructor feedback really helped me because

it showed what I was lacking and let me know if anything was not easy to read and flowing. I

also worked on adding more to the smaller paragraphs to make sure I get my point across and

include everything I needed. My most significant change would have to be adding in all the

personal experiences and examples and spreading them out so it could be consistent throughout.

Overall, the​ Writing Process of prewriting, drafting, and revising helped me significantly

in this essay and my writing in general. It helped me realize that I needed to add more to my

essays to make it unique to me. The process made me improve my writing everytime someone

would read it because there were different people’s perspectives on it. I think that the strongest

part of my essay has to be all the personal examples I used to allow readers to further understand

what I am writing about. I think this because I have always struggled with making sure I have

enough details and examples in my work and this paper shows how I have improved doing that.

If I had more time for instruction and revising, I think that I would focus more on my

introduction and conclusion paragraphs because they are good, but I think I need to add

something to make it more personalized to the topic and give examples.

Personally, this class has taught me how to write more effectively than some english

classes in school. I think this is because this class focused on how to write instead of just writing

to improve without instruction. This course has allowed me to improve and better my writing on

a college level. If we had more time, I would have liked to talk about how to transition between
paragraphs on a college level so we can make it flow without seeming choppy. To end it off, I

loved this class and I can't wait for English 112.

Sincerely,

Skye Bailey
Skye Bailey

English 111

Professor Williams

12/16/20

The Stranger in the Photo

¨Is That Really Me?¨

“For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which in turn to dust and

ashes, which are shattered into fragments: and if you have no other life, you just have to build

one up out of these fragments.”(Fyodor Dostoyevsky). When we grow up, we outgrow what we

are taught to believe and how we live. When this happens, we learn to get out of our comfort

zone and find who we want to become based on what we have learned. Since this photo I have

grown a lot. Other than the obvious of growing physically, I have grown into a whole new

person and am slowly discovering who I want to be. When I was younger, I was a shy and quiet

kid, but as I grew, I learned what my priorities are and gained maturity and responsibility. As I
have gotten older, my personality, my priorities and responsibilities, and what I believe have

changed greatly. I never realized how much the way I grew up could impact me today.

When I was younger, I thought I knew everything I needed to know. I thought I knew

exactly who and what I wanted to be. The girl in the photo was a girl who didn’t need to worry

or care about a thing in the world. I was a shy introverted girl who everyone thought was a little

too quiet. I enjoyed being with friends and family. I loved always being active and trying

something new. I didn’t think about the future or what I was going to do in five years. As a little

girl, I only worried about myself and what I wanted to do next. It didn't matter to me what people

thought. When I thought about growing up, I thought I was going to graduate school and start my

dream career with no stress about responsibility. I was interested in what every little girl wanted

like barbies and arts and crafts. I would want something so bad but then a month later completely

forget about it and want something else.

My priorities when I was younger don't even compare to what they are now. They were

simple and all about having fun. They consisted of playing with friends, going on adventures

with family, and having fun while it lasted. In the photo, I was just starting kindergarten so I was

focused on learning simple things like spelling and writing. I wasn't too worried about putting all

my attention into school because, well, it is school and I had the rest of the eleven grades left.

Spending time with family was my number one priority because we would always have fun.

When I was a kid, me and my family would always go and do something in our free time. It was

always either going to arcades, fairs, or parks. I remember going to Carowinds a lot when I was

younger because the whole family would go and we would always get along with each other.

Everytime we went on vacation, we would never stay in one place, we would always be visiting

people and doing fun activities. I remember when we would go to Florida, we would always go
to the lagoon and swim. In New York, we would always go tubing in the winter or visiting

family. At the time all my non-immediate family were in different states, so that meant spending

a lot of time traveling and hanging out with just the five of us. To say the least, we were a pretty

close family because of the time we spent together and all the kids were young and close in age

so it was easier to get along.

Being a child, I was not exposed to the whole world for what it truly was and I had not

formed my own opinions or beliefs about religion, politics, or world issues. As a kid, I believed I

could do anything I wanted with the click of a button. I believed that life was like the movies.

When you are a kid, your parents tend to cloud the bad in the world and because of this, I

thought that nothing bad ever happened. As I was growing up, I believed what my parents

believed. This is whatever they did because I was too young to do anything by myself. What they

would talk about, I would always agree. When I was younger I thought I wanted to be a teacher,

doctor or a veterinarian. I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to be, but boy was I wrong.

In these eleven years, since this photo, I have changed so much. I have reshaped my life

to accommodate the life that I want to live and the one I grew into. I have matured greatly since

then. I have been exposed to the cruelty of the world. I now have a lot more responsibilities to

worry about since I am a junior in high school, so college and school are what I'm focused on

mostly. My friends and family are still important to me and are a big part of my life. Compared

to then, I now have different interests and hobbies. What I surround myself with is different, the

people are the same, but the objects and vibes are more equipped to what I like now. When I was

a kid, I was obsessed with pink, sparkles, and rainbow, but now it's different. Now I am more

organized than when I was messy as a kid and I am also more minimalistic now. I only get

something if I truly need it and I always ask myself if I will use this for a long period of time. I
love doing puzzles now but hated them as a kid. When I was little, I loved stuff that had a lot of

different colors and design but now that stuff doesn't fit my aesthetic. When I was little I loved to

swim and ride my bike and now I still love to swim but I don't find myself riding a bike

anymore. I now also love hiking and kayaking, which are things that I was too little back then to

enjoy.

My priorities have changed a lot. My main priority would have to be school because I

don't have long before I graduate high school and go on to college to build my career. I’m not

quite sure where exactly I want to go but, I either want to be in the mountains or near the beach. I

have spent the past years going back and forth on what I want to do, and I still don't even know

what I want to do. I have always put school first and strive to do good and get better every year. I

am more focused on getting ahead and being advanced with my college classes since I am a

junior. Family and friends are my second priority that I have kept. I value the time I have with

friends and family because you never know how long it will last. Most of my non-immediate

family moved closer to me and my family so we spend a lot more time together, which I enjoy

because it brings me closer to them and I like hearing all the stories from back in the good old

days. I also strive to be a kind person and never be negative towards anything. I strive to always

be who I am and never let someone control me. I definitely pay attention to this more because of

the world we live in today. I went from worrying about nothing to worrying about almost every

little thing and how I am supposed to handle it.

Getting older, I now have gained the knowledge and understanding to form my own

opinions and beliefs about religion, politics, and world problems. I believe that you have to work

hard for what you want because it's not just going to get handed to you. Stuff can happen along

the way that might affect that, but you have to keep going. I have learned a lot about making sure
you are keeping people close because you can’t go through life alone, you will always need

someone to help. I have had relationships fall apart, but also had the chance to start many more. I

believe that you have to make the most of your life because you don't know how long you have

or what will happen. I have learned more about myself and how I perceive life and the way I

live. I have learned how to adapt in today’s society and my eyes were opened to all the matters

currently going on. I now have more opinions about more recent matters that I believe my

parents just don’t understand because they have not adapted to society today. The world is so

much more sensitive now with the amount of opinions there is on everything and how far

generations have come to evolve.

Given these points, a lot has changed from eleven years ago and I am grateful for it. It has

shown me how to live the life I have wanted. As I have grown up, my personality, my priorities,

and my beliefs and opinions have changed. I went from being a shy and quiet kid with nothing to

worry about, to being a young adult getting ready to start a life on their own. I can now learn

from my experiences and build my life going forward with the good and leaving the bad. I

believe that in life, everything happens for a reason and you can’t be mad at something you can’t

change. So to sum it all up, I am no longer the kid in the photo, but that kid has helped me

become who I am today.