Dear Mr.

Campbell,

Im glad youve made it to my portfolio and have the chance to review my work one final
time. First of all, I wanted to thank you for being my professor this semester. Its been a pleasure
being your student and I hope you can say the same about being my professor. So, moving onto
the portfolio. It starts out with the home page and introductions to myself and to the subject of
my EIP, then moves on to the other major assignments throughout the class. I have pages about
blog work, the daybook, my topic proposal and bibliography, the EIP itself, the literacy narrative,
examples of peer editing, and then finally this: the reflective letter. Putting all of my work
together in the end and seeing how Ive progressed is one of the most meaningful things to me,
mainly because I can see what Ive changed about myself and my writing.
This class came with a lot of writing assignments, believe it or not. I found all of these
assignments to be useful and interesting. Three years ago, I would not have thought the same at
all. As shown in my literacy narrative, I really only began to enjoy writing during my junior year
of high school when I was exposed to more advanced concepts of writing. Conveying hidden
messages and using certain tools to symbolize things was something that really changed my
mind about writing as a whole. But in this class, it was more straightforward and research
oriented, which I thought I wouldnt enjoy at first; research can be very tedious and frustrating.
However, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I really enjoyed this semester of writing. Ill
start this letter by going over the major assignments and what I thought of them.
It all started with the Dear Malcolm letter. I introduced myself to you and gave some
information about who I am and what I enjoy doing. As I stated in that letter, Im not too great at
writing about myself, but I powered through because it felt great to give some insight about who

I am. I still think writing about myself is one of my struggles, but with time, Ive started to get
better. Writing reflections in the daybook after assignments was one of the most beneficial things
I did in order to become better at writing about myself. I was able to critique myself and give
myself things to do better and I felt no pressure because nobody would see it.
In my literacy narrative, I did a decent job at explaining how writing became more
meaningful to me, but it was difficult to provide so much information without writing twenty
pages. I enjoyed this assignment because it gave me the chance to discuss something that meant
a lot to me, but I found myself not giving enough details in fear of it being too long. Looking
back, I would have changed the way I approached this assignment and written more details about
what changed my mind about writing; I would have elaborated more and given more information
about what really helped me come to different realizations. However, Im really glad we had this
assignment at the beginning of the class. Overall, it was a great essay to write because I really
thought about what made writing mean a lot to me.
Moving on to the Topic Proposal, I felt this assignment was a great one as well. It was a
fantastic way to introduce my topic and discuss what I knew about it after some basic research
and what I needed to know in order to write a paper about it. With every research paper in the
future that I have to write, I will start with a topic proposal, even if Im the only person who sees
it. I think I did a great job with this assignment because I outlined what I needed to look for and
how I was going to do it, which helped me tremendously with the research process. It was a little
difficult to come down on one specific topic, but once I had the topic, it was a great experience. I
think I did best on this assignment compared to the other ones throughout the semester, mainly
because I had clear goals for myself and I tried my best to fulfill each and every one of them. The
Annotated Bibliography was almost paired with the topic proposal, just with different

approaches. The bibliography was an introduction to research; finding four sources and
analyzing them was a great experience because it gave me expectations for the rest of my
sources. I forced myself to look into the sources I chose for my project and think about if they
were actually good sources. In the end, I found both the Topic Proposal and Annotated
Bibliography the two most important assignments of the class, and I think they were my two
best. They changed the way I will research and look into subjects in the future and I will be
forever grateful for experiencing them in this class for the first time.
The first EIP draft was important, but I feel as if I didnt do my best in it. I put effort into
it, but it was difficult to sit down and write so much about my topic. I think I did a good job
putting it together, but it wasnt until the final draft where I really put all of my effort into it.
Having some clear directions from both you and Faith on where I could fix my issues with the
first draft helped me a lot. I enjoyed writing the first EIP because I had a good time talking about
the issues surrounding my topic, but in my opinion, it was the second EIP that I really enjoyed. I
really put some passion into the second draft and I hope it shows. Im proud of my topic and the
way I presented my EIP on my portfolio, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed
writing it.
Finally, here I am at the ePortfolio. This assignment was a lot of work, but I believe it
was beneficial to me to look back and reflect on my past assignments. Most of the time, I find
myself ignoring my past writing and not using it to further enhance my writing skills, but this
semester, I had a different approach. When I first began to reflect in my daybook, it helped me
focus on how I can change and put more emotion into the writing. I used to write decent papers,
but they were a little boring. Now, Ive found that being critical of myself has an infinite amount
of beneficial qualities. Going back and reflecting on what Ive done in the past and deciding how

I can use that past assignment to improve on my intellectual ability is one of the most important
skills Ive ever learned, and Im happy to say this class was one of the main contributing factors
to teaching me how to do that. Reflecting in the ePortfolio has been one of the most enjoyable
aspects of this class. It took a while to put all of this together, but Im pretty proud of the way it
came together and Im happy with the way I presented it. I found that Ive come a long way in
terms of self-criticism, but I still have a lot to learn about writing about myself.
Another part of the class I thoroughly enjoyed was keeping a daybook and freewriting all
the time. I think having something to keep my mind busy and engage in prompts before class
was helpful because it gave me the chance to get what I was thinking on paper. The same goes
for freewriting. Ive found that the best way to find good ideas is to weed through the bad ones
because there will almost always be a gem in the middle of the crappy ideas, or an oasis in the
middle of the desert, if you will. Getting the mind going is the best way to really tap into the gold
mine that is the human brain, and freewriting and keeping a daybook really emphasized this
concept for me. Keeping a blog was also beneficial in this way because it was an easy way to
provide reactions to articles and videos and portray my thoughts about topics such as education
or happiness quickly and informally. I think the informal aspects of this class were some of the
most important because they really helped me find what I was looking for in terms of good ideas.
Throughout all of these various assignments, I learned a lot about who I was. I learned
how to really put some emotion into my assignments because I attached tangible values to them.
Being that this was only my first year in college, I had no idea what to expect of a college level
writing course, and to be frank, I was surprised. It wasnt that hard for me, but it was very
demanding. I learned how thinking beyond my perspective can introduce other angles of thinking
and how important this is to writing. I cant write well if Im only thinking of myself, and the

various assignments that had peer-review and commentary to go along with them helped me
think from other peoples perspectives.
I believe my most important work in the class was the EIP final draft that I uploaded to
the ePortfolio. I think this is the most important because it really helped me understand the
concept of attaching meaning with the words Im writing instead of just writing because I have
to. Sure, I liked writing before, but this was a new thing for me. I enjoyed putting all of my
semesters work together and discussing what I really thought about nuclear power. I had found
that passion I was looking for in something as simple as a nuclear energy debate. At the end of
the day, this passion is what makes me so proud of this assignment. I was genuinely interested in
this assignment and conveying my opinion about it and this was the perfect way to finish off my
semester.
Even though I got everything done in the class, I still have some weaknesses; I am
nowhere near the perfect writer or thinker. I have a lot I need to improve on if I want to become
an even better writer. I still have a lot to learn about writing and finding ways to come to
conclusions. In terms of thinking, I need to focus on other peoples perspectives more than my
own. I can be pretty opinionated and its something I need to avoid. I think I did a good job
steering clear of this throughout this semester in my writing, but I certainly thought of only my
own perspective a lot. If I want to become better at both, this is something I need to stay away
from, and I feel like Ive taken the first steps towards doing this so far in this class. My writing
has stayed pretty solid this semester, in my opinion. I think I did well on some assignments and
couldve done better on others, but overall, I believe my writing was pretty solid. A couple of
things I could work on to improve my ability would be using more details when needed and
being more concise when needed. Its a little difficult to find a balance between these two, and I

find myself struggling a lot when I dont elaborate as much as I should or I say too much about
an unimportant matter. If I can focus on these two things more in my writing, I believe I will
change the way I think and change the way I write entirely.
One of my main struggles coming into the class was being lost without clear direction.
This might have been the reason why I love math; I crave direction and in the mathematical
world, there is a set way to solve a set problem every time. The Topic Proposal and subsequent
EIP really helped me face this battle because they forced me to think about the alternative ways
to come up with ideas. The world is really an open-ended place, and its extremely intimidating
to me because there will come a point when I dont get any direction from anybody, but facing
challenges such as this early in my college career will probably prove to help me a lot. Im glad I
was given these assignments, because they really helped me shape my mind around finding
things on my own and figuring things out with less help from others. Being independent and
passionate are the two characteristics I have learned the most about in this class.
At the end of the day, this class was easily my favorite class of my freshman year here at
UNCC. I had a great time exploring what I was good at and how I could improve, as well as
being exposed to certain things I wouldnt have been if I didnt take this class. Learning to find
myself and what Im looking for, as well as achieving that passionate writing Ive been craving
for so long are some things I will never forget about this class, because theyre skills I will take
alongside myself into life. I am forever grateful for the experiences I was exposed to in this
freshman year English course, and I dont think I could ever thank you enough for opening my
mind to what I really am capable of, Mr. Campbell. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Joey Liptak