My writing portfolio Essay

As this quarter comes to an end and I revisit the work I have completed throughout my time taking UWP 1, I reflect on my growth as a writer. The following portfolio is an arrangement of my completed assignments as well as a demonstration of my growth in writing. During this quarter, I have learned many lessons about writing and the process of writing such as, the importance of revision to obtain a-hopefully-excellent worthy final draft. I believe my writing has improved in that I now understand my grammatical error patterns and how to fix them to get my "shitty first draft" to become a draft that is worthy of turning in. In this assortment, I included the assignment 1 narrative and the assignment 3 research paper which represents how much I have learned in UWP 1. I selected assignment 1 for my portfolio in contrast to assignment 2 since I believed that assignment 1 is a better representation of my writing style since it was my first writing assignment. I want the reviewers to notice my growth from assignment 1 in comparison to assignment 3 and so, that is the main reason that I chose the narrative. For assignment 1, I learned how to effectively write a story and for the research paper I learned how to write an effective thesis and look for credible sources. However, to adequately tell you my progress as a writer I will talk about my style of writing before taking this UWP course and my progression throughout the course.
Prior to taking UWP, my method of writing papers consisted of spilling out all of my ideas on paper and revising it afterword. However, this style didn't help me achieve an A-worthy paper because I had a hard time identifying grammatical pattern. In the beginning of the quarter my professor, Jessica Krzeminski, asked us to read and analyze Anne Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts" and while reading her article, I noticed the similarities in our style of writing. Lamott's "Shitty First Draft" is equivalent to my first paper that I pour out all of my ideas in. As long as I could remember, I have always used this method of writing, but I lacked the knowledge of identifying grammatical errors to revise my paper. It was extremely difficult for me to detect run on sentences, punctuation, and tense shifts. Sentence structure and organization was also a difficult task since I would always finish my assignments in a fast paced manner I failed to acknowledge whether the essay had "flow". In her article, Lamott stressed the importance of revision and how it can turn a dull novel into a bestselling novel. I was inspired by her words. I utilized her advice and applied it to my writing in continuation of this course. I structured the revision process as key to everything I wrote and since then, I saw my feedback steadily improving. The amount of editing needed on my paper ceased and to my excitement, so did my writing.