Holly Skinner

ENG 2001
12/7/14

To whom it may concern,

When I think of my writing life, I am satisfied. I have always been a good writer, and I
rarely experience stress while writing essays and assignments for classes. I am usually able to get
my point across effectively; I am rarely dissatisfied with my delivery of my central ideas. I am,
however, often dissatisfied with my weak introductions and conclusions. In this way, as a writer,
I am an acrobat. I am mentally agile as an acrobat is physically agile, and I am usually able to
easily convince my audience that my ideas are valid as they read. The grace and agility of
acrobats encompassed my academic writing life, while the risk and fear that may accompany
their acts relates to my personal writing life. Writing creatively is hard for me; I am almost never
confident in my creative writing. It feels like a risk when I attempt writing for personal
enjoyment, which relates to the risk acrobats take while performing. Similarly, in the way that
many acrobats have to rely on their colleagues to hold them up or keep them balanced, I rely on
my classmates and friends for critique and editing. Usually my introductions and conclusions
develop more fully after they have been reviewed by someone else.
Throughout this course, I have grown to know myself a bit better as a writer. This course
didnt necessarily introduce me to new ideas about myself, but it reinforced the ideas I already
had. I am still not great at writing introductions and conclusions, and I still hate revising my
work. This course did show me, though, how useful revising can be. I often have glaringly
awkward transitions that I wouldnt pick up on unless I read back through my essays. I have also
learned that though I may not take all of the advice given to me during peer reviews of my
essays, parts of that advice can be extremely helpful. I have grown to value peer editing more as

Holly Skinner
ENG 2001
12/7/14
a result of this class, and a huge part of that is the fact that the majority of the students in my
class are on the same level of academic writing as I am. The online writing groups were an
effectively organized way for the members of my group and I to comment on each others work.
Similarly, I learned that while I still may prefer non-group work, writing collaboratively with
people who have similar ideas and writing styles can be somewhat enjoyable.
As a future medical doctor, I will most likely be writing collaboratively in the clinical
setting. I would love to do clinical research and publish my findings at some point in my career.
Doing so would most likely entail working with a colleague, which could be extremely
beneficial. The collaborative writing we did in class was especially helpful in preparing me for a
future professional career that may entail collaborative proposals. As my proposal was
scientifically based, it showed me that my future points will have to be aptly backed by scientific
evidence if I want it to be taken seriously by professionals. Scientific writing is not the same as
other academic writingthe guidelines are different, as is what is expected. Because of the
collaborative proposal assignment, though, I have a better idea of how much time, planning, and
revising it would take to get a future proposal ready for presentation. The writing we did is not
completely like what I would be doing as a medical professional, but it was helpful nonetheless.
Other than conducting, writing, publishing, and presenting medical research, I cant think of
other ways I might be writing collaboratively on a large scale as a medical professional. On a
smaller scale, Im sure there will be times I will have to write a report or chart with another
doctor or a nurse. Considering almost all of medicine is based on collaboration, it will be a huge
part of my career.
I love having technology for writing, and all of the assignments for this class, especially
the proposal, depended heavily on it. I realize that people in the past wrote without it, but having

Holly Skinner
ENG 2001
12/7/14
only known modern technology, I cant imagine writing and editing without it. I am so thankful
that technology allows me to essentially free-write if I want to. I dont have to be careful while
writing; I can type furiously and screw up spelling and grammar, yet come back and fix it
virtually immediately. Though my hastily-written first draft has often been the one Ive turned in
for various classes, I like knowing that I can easily go back and change my writing as drastically
as I want to. I dont think that my academic writing has become any less formal as the result of
texting and social media, and I would hope most students can differentiate between when its
appropriate to forgo grammar and spelling rules or not.
As previously mentioned, one of my greatest challenges while writing is conveying my
introductory points well. Conclusions are often easier for me simply because I am relaying
previously discussed information. My introductions, though, often start out too broad and
awkwardly transition into my thesis or main point. I also mentioned my dislike of revising; both
of these are areas where I depend on my classmates for help as an acrobat relies on his or her
partners. I know that if I want to get anything published or taken seriously in the future, Ill have
to edit it many times. Getting used to editing multiple times now will prove beneficial to me in
the future, when I will most likely have to revise many times to produce a professional
document. Again, as I mentioned before, my strengths in writing mainly focus around the
content and wording. I rarely make grammatical errors (which is probably why Im in the habit
of not revising), and my vocabulary is adequate, if not advanced, for my age. This reflects on the
agility and skill of myself as an acrobat. I am also quite good at analyzing pieces of art and
literature and conveying my ideas effectively.
My self-analysis essay addresses many of the issues I brought up, such as my penchant
for unsatisfactory introductions and a lack of confidence in my creative writing. I revised it to

Holly Skinner
ENG 2001
12/7/14
resemble as newsletter for parents and guardians, and it now contains many of the ideas I think
are important in regard to parents fostering their childrens learning. In that essay, I use a lot of
my weaknesses in writing and experienced throughout my schooling as examples to convey my
central ideas. My rhetorical analysis essay is reflective of what I am truly good at writing
academic analyses. In high school, rhetorical analysis was my favorite genre and the one I was
best at writing. The hypertext essay reflects my more informal side of writing; I had never
written a hypertext essay before this class. I enjoyed exploring a new genre, and that essay
allowed me to play around with my sentence structure and style some. I wrote a good majority of
my groups collaborative proposal as well, so it shows my tendency to crank out work under
pressure and rely on others to edit and help me make my thoughts more coherent.
This class has overall allowed me to reevaluate my writing life and think more critically
about myself as a writer, especially regarding the self-analysis piece. I have been introduced to
different genres, like hypertext and collaborative proposals, and I now have experience writing in
these genres. This will prove beneficial in the future, especially writing collaboratively. This
course has also provided me time to reflect on my own pieces and revise them more than once,
showing me the value of doing so. All of the essays showed me the value of having classmates
look over and comment on my work. The hypertext essay showed me how my writing can be
somewhat informal yet still academic, and the collaborative proposal showed me how sticking to
strict guidelines can be important. All of the assignments showed me how to use technology in a
new way, whether through research, creating my own website, or working as a group on a shared
document. I have learned a lot from this course, and I will carry this new knowledge with me
throughout the rest of my writing life.
Thank you for reading,

Holly Skinner