Jacob O’Neal Cover Letter

April 28th, 2022

Mrs. Davis, I have had so much fun with this class. Every assignment was able to
challenge me, and I thoroughly enjoyed each one. For the portfolio, I chose works that I believe I
worked my hardest on and even a few that represent me and my interests.

The first piece of writing is a history paper covering the Cold War and how the United
States was involved. The reason I chose this was because I worked for hours to refine this paper
and to just research the information that I cover in the paper. It is a short paper, but it is chock
full of information. This paper was written in March of this year, and I honestly believe that if
you look at the other papers in my portfolio that you will be able to see how far I have come in
terms of writing ability. But you can also see that there are still flaws with this piece of writing.
The second piece of writing is from last year, I really enjoyed being able to write this piece
because it is about one of my favorite countries in the entire world. I had done a good amount of
research papers before this one, so it really was not a huge deal to me. This paper was probably
one of my favorites to write in this portfolio, and I believe that it looks better compared to the
earliest paper in this portfolio. But, of course, there are some things that could be changed or
fixed up. The third piece of writing was the first piece of writing that I completed from this
school year. I was able to write about myself and something that is very important to me. That
topic/activity is travel and getting to write about it was amazing. Like I said with the last paper
this piece is one of my favorites in this entire collection. In my opinion, this paper is not the best
when it comes to format or writing style. I hop around to different points in the paper, mainly
because at the time I was just writing as the thoughts came to me. I think I have improved in the
few months since I wrote that paper. The last piece of writing is an essay from this course, it’s
the paper I wrote about how one can be a better neighbor. I really enjoyed doing this assignment
and it was my favorite from this course. I think you can see an improvement compared to every
other paper in this portfolio.

This writing class has helped me improve my skills, mainly due to the feedback that I am
given on every one of my papers. That really showed me what I was doing wrong and how I
needed to fix it. One of my biggest issues is word choice, and I think that due to the feedback I
am now able to choose better words to help my writing flow better. I also needed a way to be
able to organize my thoughts and put them in the right places in a paper without it looking like a
huge, jumbled mess. If you look at some of the pieces of writing in my portfolio you can see that
this has been a problem for me in the past.
 I try to start my writing process by writing down a few ideas that I have and make a very
basic outline with them. Before taking this class, I would not even plan out a paper before
starting to write it and I now realize that this was probably the worst thing I could have done. I
would have to put an outline in my writing toolbox if I had to choose. Outlines have helped me
so much this semester and I do not think I will ever write a paper without using one ever again. I
think I have made good progress as a writer. I do still have things that need work, but that is
completely normal. I was able to take various points from this class and incorporate them into
writing for my other classes, which is awesome. A big weakness of mine is placing commas in
the wrong places and placing way too many of them. I have been trying to work on this
throughout the semester, and I do think I have improved but I still occasionally make a mistake. I
want to do a form of journalism in the future, so I have that to look forward. I plan to start my
own website or social media and post my articles on there; I would also like to get involved with
the student newspaper. I would like to say that I am prepared but that would be a lie. However, I
think I will enjoy it, so I am going to pursue it.

To conclude this letter, I would like to reiterate that I was able to learn valuable skills
from this course that I will take with me and use in future writing tasks and assignments. This
course also challenged me to be a better writer and improve myself. I have loved to write for as
long as I can remember, when I was younger, I would make up random stories. But I never really
appreciated writing or tried to improve my writing skills. I will be using the skills I learned in
this course for the rest of my life, and they will be especially helpful to me for the rest of my
college career. Another big thing for me was that even though I loved to write, I would dread
having to do any sort of writing assignment. However, this course has certainly changed that for
me. Not only have I wanted to start writing more, but I have also been striving to do better and
improve my assignments. It has been a long ride, but I am happy with how far I have come
within the last semester. It is honestly surprising to me when I look at my pieces of writing from
now and writing pieces from the last year and semester.

Sincerely,
Jacob O’Neal