Dear Professor Tumen,

In the last 10 weeks, I have learned much about what it means to be a writer, a student, a
reader, a critic, and most importantly an optimist. For most of my life and my education, I have
felt stuck in my capabilities as a reader and writer, and thought that I was stunted. I felt unable to
improve nor achieve greater levels of skill. However, your direction and course has allowed me
to see otherwise and actualize my potential.

Simply discussing writing in the classroom, I was able to understand that writing is not a
clean-cut format and is not binary. There really is no “one way” to write and this is a lesson
finally learned in Writing 2. Primarily, the article on “The Transition from High School to
University” immensely changed my perspective on how I should write and what is considered
acceptable. My standards for etiquette and proper writing were not incorrect, but they were
inflexible and conformed to very standard ways of writing. The typical 5-paragraph essay
structure is not wrong but it is not creative. Being shown that this was not the way I would have
to go about writing for the rest of my life, helped me acknowledge the ability I had to explore
different routes, styles, and genres.

In revising the WPs for this portfolio, I predominantly learned what it means to revise.
The in class lesson dedicated on differentiating editing between revising highlighted the mistakes
that I have been making my entire life. No one had ever shown what it meant to revise, and
rather simply told me to revise. The revision process for my WPs was difficult for me, in that I
was still practicing the craft of revising, but it helped me learn that my work is never really
unfinished even I think it might be. Revisions can reform a work entirely and change its structure
so that it is unrecognizable. My revision process is only ever done when I decide that the path
that I took revising is the one that I want. Otherwise, revising would never end. So in this
process, I really had to learn what I wanted out of my WP, and revise towards that goal. This ties
back to my lack of creativity and being able to stray from structure. Choosing my path, my style,
and my own revision took some work out of muster since I am typically not writing for myself
and my own choices, but rather for the preferences of others.

I still would like to learn more about what it means to be a writer and what writing can
look like in a university or college setting. I think there is still much to be explored in the realm,
and my curiosity has the best of me. There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to writing,
and I find that fascinating.

After taking this course and being able to explore my own choices and biases, I believe
that my writing style is somewhere along the lines of oral-sounding, informal, casual, and
personal. I’ve been often told that my text messages sound like me speaking, and that’s because
the way I phrase my words and emphasize certain ones, translates my voice onto the keyboard.
In this class, I’ve tried to replicate that ability in my writing since it’s my most natural form of
writing and speaking. Other times, I will try to sound professional and pretentious as to assure
my audience that I am actually a credible source worth listening to. But I tend to go back towards
using informal language and talkative writing. I think this style is most common in my replies to
students or forum posts. I’m unafraid of judgment and more free to speak my mind the way it
does normally.
 However, for works like my WPs and its revisions, I try to keep my writing style on the
more formal, professional end since you are the primary audience. My normal speaking tone
doesn’t always come off as skillful and can be more challenging to understand for academic
audiences. So when writing my submissions and making my revisions, I kept alert to ensure my
tone and style was formal and professional, but this did not mean I would strip away personality
and individuality in my writing. I simply would write in the same way I would speak if I were
speaking to someone of high caliber. I’d like to think that I don’t speak like everyone else, and
therefore these words and formattings are unique to me. Often when speaking, I will repeat a
syntax or word, and this can be repetitive in writing. I ignored that issue and proceeded with it in
my writing since I believed that this was true to how I would present myself and my work,
instead of a robot.

For my WP1, revision was difficult mainly because I did not know where to start. I
almost wanted to start from scratch. But instead, I chose to still appreciate the work I initially
submitted and work on reorganizing and revising to make the product I believe is high quality. I
focused a lot on the organization of the video I made. I didn’t think the very beginning of my
video was very naturally sounding or authentic, like it would be for other videos of the same
genre. So I made it a goal of mine to rephrase what is said but also to shorten it. The introduction
shouldn’t have been a speech—it should have been a few short sentences. One of the things I
wanted to really revise in my WP1 is the transitions from lyric to lyric, commentary to
commentary. The transition was cut and dry, and it was not smooth at all. The topics were all
over the place and this bothered me in retrospect. To revise this, I firstly changed the style of the
commentary and the language of it, but then I also rearranged some details to include other lyrics
that were referred to in the original paper I found. When I mention the song “Our Song”, I
included lyrics this time, to tie in more context and to use more details from the paper. In the
portion about girly music and this affecting Taylor Swift’s relationship with the media, given
their obsession with her personal life, I included the lyrics to the song “Mirrorball” that the paper
makes, about how the lyrics and song reconcile Swift’s public and private image. Another point
of revision was the fact that I felt that the style of dialogue was extremely overly formal and not
how Taylor Swift would actually speak in an interview. For example, in the portion about Taylor
Swift returning dignity and agency for songwriters in her industry, I felt that this sounded so
scripted and unnatural, and despite the fact that Swift is quite formal in her interviews, I doubt
that she would ever actually say something like this. Those aren’t typical words people use in
everyday conversation. I rephrase this to say “I try to fight for my credit and validate my
songwriting, so I’m always sharing my songwriting process with my fans, and I think this has
changed the trajectory of songwriting credit for all songwriters in this industry”. Outside of the
words for the WP1, I also tried to make my background yellow, like it is for many videos in this
genre.

I think the commentary and feedback that helped me most was from one of my peers who
mentioned that the videos of my genre were typically more informal and casual, and the artists
speaking were often speaking more personally and for their fans. This helped me revise greatly
from my first WP1 draft to the final WP1, but I kept this in mind for this final revision as well.
 For my WP2, revision actually wasn’t too difficult. From the time of submitting my WP2
to when I began revising it, I already had ideas of what I believed could be improved and the
styling of it. The biggest changes I made were the layout of the genre and what it looked like. It
became clearer what my genre was and what my intentions were. I also revised some ordering of
the posts, and moved the sources slide towards one of the earlier posts rather than the end
because I felt that it made more sense for the narrative I was now portraying. By making the
images grouped into separate posts rather than simply one post allowed me to incorporate a
discussion between the audience and writer more clearly and understandably. There is a question
asked for each post, which has also been enlarged for greater visibility, and each post has a
different topic relating to the main discussion on vocabulary. I thought this was one of my more
creative feats and I was impressed with myself. I also included comments from other people in
the audience, as I wanted the discussion to continue and be seen as something that actually has
value to society. The first post in the assortment of posts was added from the original WP2 to this
one, so that it would be clearly stated that this was a discussion and interaction between the
author and their audience.

In this revision, the feedback from you directed my revisions and edits the most. Hearing
from someone who was confused about my genre and my goals made it clear to me that my WP2
was not as obvious as it seemed to me, and that it required revising from a point of view other
than my own. Your insight and confusion allowed me to work on areas that I did not notice
before and improve upon flaws.

Within this portfolio, I believe that I like how creative and personal all my work is. The
decision to make a video about or on Taylor Swift is one that only I would make and go through,
and that is something I admire greatly. I typically do not include personality or individuality into
my work, and doing so is a large step forward for myself. I share the same feelings towards my
WP2, in which Instagram is a large part of my life and incorporating it into my academic work is
something I am quite proud of. I still would like to be able to improve on genre translating and
being able to remove my voice from my work and speak in different ways. I think it would
improve my flexibility as a writer.

I hope you view my portfolio and realize that I have used the tools and ideas that I have
learned this quarter and put them towards my revisions. At the beginning of this academic year,
much of my work sounded the same, looked the same, and were carbon copies of one another.
Very little of the work I was putting out was unique. In this portfolio, I have included my own
voice and my identity, but I also learned different ways of writing and how to distinguish
different styles. Looking back at the lesson on threshold concepts, everything I have learned in
Writing 2 has been a massive threshold concept in my ability to be an actual creative writer and
understand the complexities of real writing. I think at the end of these 10 weeks, I am a more
experienced writer. I have been writing in the same styles and structures my entire life, and I
have finally been able to branch out and try new things. This has given me experience, and this
changes how I approach writing, how I read writing, and how I feel about writing. My strongest
feature in my writing now is that it isn’t boring. Or at least, not always. My writing can have
variety now, and I believe this is a pretty strong quality to have.
 For any new writing projects that I will inevitably have in the future, the one thing that I
will take from this course when I approach the project is to keep the audience I have in mind.
Not everyone is the same and not everyone will want to read the same way. Whether it be a
scientific report or a letter to a friend, it is so important to me to keep in mind that genres vary
and there are essentially infinite genres to choose from. It’s just a matter of what genre to choose
and when.

I hope that this letter shows the impact that you have had on me and my progress as a
learner. My potential is still growing and I have you to thank for showing me.

Sincerely,
Meghan Van