Laura's Portfolio

I'm sitting at my kitchen table, working on my paper. The corners of my lips are turned down, my brows, furrowed. There might be a tear or two on my cheeks, there might not be. Who knows? I'm certainly not smiling. My paper is probably fine, but it'll be a week before I look at it and smile. I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to do well. I've been sitting here for three hours. My eyes are drooping a little. I should probably go to bed, but I told myself I would write my conclusion tonight so that's what I'm going to do. I'm slouching completely. I'm beyond stressed out. But then, I type the final period. I breathe a sigh of relief and shut my computer so I can go sleep.

Next year, I hope to improve my writing clarity. Sometimes I will just state facts and expect everyone to understand what I'm saying. Things will make sense in my head as I read my writing, but they won't make sense to other people because there are certain pieces missing. I hope to make sure I spell out those pieces. I will attain these goals in two ways. The first is to try and look at my writing objectively, and read only what I've written and not add anything in my head. The second is to use peer review to my advantage. If they tell me that something is unclear, I know that I'm not being objective, and that I need to fix this issue.

    One particular area of writing I need to work on is the concept of synthesis rather than summary when writing formal papers. When I wrote my argumentative essays this year, both times I was told that I had enough quotes, but not enough arguments or analysis to support those quotes. I probably should have done a little more work towards that on the second paper; however, it has been something I've continually struggled with all year.    This area of writing is important because it's something I'm going to have to do my entire highschool career, be it in social studies, english, or even biology, and I'm going to have to be ready for it. That is, it's not going to go away, so I need to learn how to do it now so I can be prepared for the rest of highschool.

        My strengths in writing lie in my ability to make words flow. Although sometimes what I have to say may leave a little to be desired, I am able to avoid choppy sentences. I can use a semicolon, and use grammatical loopholes to my advantage. I am also able to do this with some amount of speed. Depending on what I'm writing about, blog posts usually take me half the time they take my friends.         Probably what my main strength in writing is is that I don't find it very difficult to write in most circumstances. Assuming writer's block is off the table, its generally easy for me to just write words and continue to write them.  That in itself I have used to my advantage many times this year.

     As a writer this year, I have grown in several ways. The main way in which I grew was in argumentative and technical papers. I have said this a lot, and I'm starting to feel like a broken record, but it is only because it is so true. Before I entered my freshman year, I had written nothing but small assignments and personal essays, narratives, and short stories. In both English and sometimes Social Studies, I was helped into the process of writing an argumentative essay through things like gathering information and outlines.     Although that was the main way in which I grew, I also grew in smaller ways. I have learned that sometimes, writing should be mellow. Literary analyses don't really need any energy. Sometimes, incorrect grammar really shouldn't be used as a literary device. Especially in formal papers. Blog posts, fine. Mini stories, fine. Research projects, no. And finally, I learned that I can find joy in any type of writing, no matter how dull i...

        This second semester, I went to the Writing Center to work on my research paper. This research paper was a bit of a struggle for me, because it required me to step outside of my comfort zone in many areas. When I went to the Writing Center, I was able to meet with a Writing Fellow who had different thoughts about writing than me, and therefore was able to make me think about my writing in a different way.         The focus of the meeting was mainly about my overabundance of quotes and my lack of sufficient arguing to accompany those quotes. I would just state my evidence and expect everyone to just get what I was saying, which isn't exactly the right way to go about things when writing an argumentative paper. I'm not sure it really drove my paper foward in any way, but it did help improve it.