E-Portfolio

To anyone who has ever written anything,

AP Literature- " Here's a C"

In high school I was never introduced to English very nicely. I had always thought I was a good writer, but new I could definitely use some work. As I approached 11th grade, I took the AP Literature course. This was the first C out of my solid A career. I was devastated! I knew my writing could use some work, but I didn’t think it was C caliber. This incident had left a bad taste in my mouth and I hated English.

Flash Forward 2 years. I was required to take College Writing 1 as a general education requirement. I went into the class with a goal in mind; that I would become good at writing, no matter the cost. I was going to improve my work to the point that I could say I got an A in English, to once again regain my confidence with the English language. But how exactly could I do this? What was the secret to good writing?

At the beginning of the semester, Dr Kyburz stated something very specific that stuck to me. She said, "Write early, Revise Often". I thought to myself, could this be the secret to good writing? My whole life I would do my work close to the actual deadline and thought of working ahead as futile.

Writing is a process. a piece of writing can ALWAYS be improved, and it is through processes such as peer review, writing center tutoring, and instructor feedback that writing can go to the next level. A specific example of this involves my Documentary Summary Project. This piece in specific was extremely hard for me as I had never done summary writing for something as big as a documentary. My first draft was a practice assignment of the film Scaredycat. I did not follow the Dr. Kyburz’s advice and instead submitted it without the revising process. What I got back was a complete let down. I had gotten a C once again! Was English just not for me!? But as I questioned myself, I realized that maybe Dr. Kyburz was right. To reach its full potential, writing needs to be revised and revised again. I got to work. The real assignment was on our own now and I picked the film End of the Line. I first looked at Dr Kyburz’s comments. In there I found so many useful criticisms that I had failed to realize over my years of writing, and I applied them to my new summary. I then made sure to get multiple peer reviews to get as much feedback as possible. This I found was extremely helpful as well, as sometimes you just need another friend to tell you what you’re doing wrong.


Another example was in my rhetoricity narrative.I had never heard of rhetoricity and couldn't get my mind around it. In this example instructor feedback was key.I handed in a rough draft and after receiving it back I was completely enlightened. She told me in simple terms to focus on how language had an influence in this story.

I had finished my final draft of both the documentary summary and rhetoricity narrative. The feeling was like no other. They were assignments I was proud of and that wanted to turn in! But the final test was yet to come. Did I improve my work enough to get an A?! I nervously waited for Dr Kyburz to put the letter on my paper. " An A on both, good work Hamza."  Ecstatic I realized that English was for me. Nothing good in life comes cheap. Dedication and perseverance are needed for any endeavor and writing is no different. Writing is revision; all you must do is trust the process.