17 June 2022

Portfolio Committee
Northern Oklahoma College
English Department
1118 West Hall of Fame
Stillwater, Oklahoma 74074

Dear Mrs. Davis,

I have put together a collection of writings I have done over the duration of this class. I have
chosen a mixture of writing styles from letters, blog posts, and structured essays that I believe
show growth and change in my writing just over the past six weeks. The writings I have chosen
give insight into my views as well as my life and show my style as a writer in all kinds of
different forms.

My first writing sample, under “Artifact 1,” is the very first essay that we were assigned in week
1 of the summer semester. I chose this as the first writing, because it is the first writing we did in
this class. This essay was a persuasive essay that I titled ‘Everyone Needs and are Needed.’ The
prompt was “Every one of us is here for a reason. We are all essential. We need, and are needed
by, each other.” What does this mean to you? How does it affect how you approach others?
This was fun for me to write because the theme was something I feel passionate about, and that I
could relate to. I also love being able to write how I feel personally over a topic, rather than a
fact-based informative assignment. For “Artifact 2” I chose our second essay assignment for this
class that was a letter to an authority figure about a topic of our choice that we felt firmly about
and supported. In hindsight I wish I had chosen a different topic for this assignment, because it is
extremely controversial and hard to cover all the reasonings, examples, and opinions surrounding
the specific topic. I chose to write in support of the Abortion ban in Oklahoma, but this is a good
example of how my writing has improved and a mistake that I will not make again if I had to
write a similar letter for another class.

For the third writing attachment I chose to go down a different route and combine two of my
favorite blog posts I wrote throughout this class. I personally liked all the blog assignments
because they are mostly up for us to choose how and what we write. We are given a topic with
links or videos to watch before we write how we feel over said topics in 15-20 sentences, and
although they are shorter than essays, they can show a lot of writing style and growth within
them. The two posts I chose are complete opposites, yet they both tell readers more about me as
a person and some issues that I believe in. The first one is about Alton Carter who I know
personally and whose story throughout the foster care system was taught to me in middle school,
I have even read his book. The second was about the impact of food, and especially fiber and
GMO’s. It also was the kickstart to our annotated bib assignment, so I talked about the prompt I
was choosing and how I feel about obesity and what interests me that I wanted to research and
look more into. To tie all my writings together for my final writing I chose our last project the
Annotated Bib project. I liked this assignment because it taught me more than the others.
Although it is not an essay, I learned how to look for sources, quotes, and even how to create an
outline using them. This is a proficient writing assignment to add because I was able to pull what
I wanted to from the sources and write about what was important and stood out to me from them.

My writing has evolved and improved throughout the duration of this class, and I have learned
valuable lessons about writing that I will continue to carry with me in all my future college
classes. The most important lesson I learned in this class was to watch the videos that you posted
before starting the assignment. In my Comp 1 class directly before this class there were no
videos to watch, only written instructions, so I was used to that, but the videos that you posted
truly made the class easier to navigate and complete. The main thing that I want to continue to
carry over from this class is the making of an outline before full on writing an essay. I have
struggled with findings topics to write about and trying to make sure that my body paragraphs
are not the same topics that are paraphrased differently.

In conclusion, I appreciate all the work that you put into these assignments, and I feel that they
have made me a better student and writer, teaching me lessons that I will continue to use in all
my future writings. The variety in writing styles and assignments helped me tremendously,
because truthfully, I am not sure if I have ever written in letter format before this class. I am still
nowhere near a perfect writer but seeing the improvement over a six-week course makes me feel
more confident in my abilities. As for my future, I am planning to complete my associates degree
and continue schooling to become a Radiologist Technician, I am not sure how much writing that
will consist, but I will have the abilities to write when needed. Outside of a career I have always
dreamt of being able to travel the world and see places and cultures that I am not able to
experience here in Oklahoma. Maybe I will write about the places that I go so that others can
experience them through my words. Thank you for being my teacher and for helping me gain a
better understanding of writing.

Sincerely,
Kendyl Prichard