Blanca Peto

UWP1Y
7-31-17
ePortfolio Cover Letter

Dear Michele,

Throughout the course of my writing career, I have been taught one way to approach
writing. Because of this, I was only able to work and develop writing tools for only specific types
of writing assignments, such as analysis essays. I never had the chance to create a document
of my own that was fact based. Furthermore, I never had a chance to observe a situation and
determine what my thoughts are and what I see before me. However, since participating in
UWP1Y during Summer Session 1, I have been able to unlock new skills and tools by which I
can express myself to the audience. Through the various projects, reflections, revisions and
editing, I believe I have grown as writer and have branched away from my uniform writing style.
Projects that helped me diversify from my uniform writing style were the Podcast Project
and the Living Narrative Project. For both of these projects, I had to develop skills that were
novel to me, such as writing about personal experiences, specifically after monitoring a
situation. I had to defer my thoughts about the moment, understand who my audience was and
tell a story in a way that they could relate to my writing. These projects helped me branch out
from my uniform style of writing as I had to communicate through storytelling, compared to my
typical analysis writing.
In regards to the Podcast Project, I had to accurately describe the situation before me.
Then, I had to develop my thoughts into a story, and express myself to my audience. All of this
required skills of communication that I had no experience of. However, through the acts of
monitoring a scene and writing down facts, then using my thoughts about the situation to create
a story, I utilized new skills of dialogue and was able to present my writing in an effective way.
Similarly for the Living Narrative project, I utilized past memories and experiences as
evidence to express myself, thus diverging from my usual style of writing. For most of my
previous writing assignments, I was told to only write and analyze someone elses work.
Compared to other projects, which were mostly large papers about scientific journals or
nonfiction books, this project was a breath of fresh air as I could finally write about things that
interested me.
Because of these two projects, I learned how to reflect. Thus I was able to discover
ways in which to relate to my audience. By developing a certain tone and relating to my
audience through facts that I discovered and not from a scientific source or anyone elses, I
weaved them into a story that I created. I learned how to use my own thoughts as evidence to
create a piece of work.
As a writer, it is essential that I practice different types of writing and using different
sources to write. For the Podcast project, I utilized both secondary and primary sources, which
is a skill I did not have beforehand. I used primary in terms of using my own observations and
thoughts to analyze a situation. Regarding secondary sources, I used a variety of newspaper
articles to validate my discussion. By using both types of sources, compared to the usual
secondary sources
Another way that I was able to demonstrate my ability as a writer was through editing,
coming up with revision plans and strategies. After each major project, we were assigned to
reflect upon our writing process, discussing what we did, what worked well and what is
something we could improve on. Reflecting on all of these aspects helped me in determining
what type of writer I am and how I can improve my writing. Furthermore it allowed me to
understand a crucial component of being a writer: editing and revising a piece of work until all
the components are concise and appropriate for the entire piece.
Throughout these 6 weeks, it was my goal to create projects and papers that I felt proud
of and that showed my skills and my development of writing expression. As a student and a
writer, I strive to feel some a sense of completion in my work. I approached each project in a
different manner, to best accomplish the goals of the assignment. For the Podcast project and
the Living Narrative, I tried to focus on my anecdotal writing skills and addressing my audience
differently compared to the WIkipedia entry. The Wikipedia entry was fact based, without any
opinion. I had to write in a very formal and unbiased tone. On the other hand, both the Living
Narrative and the Podcast Project could have some aspects of opinion. Through these projects,
I learned how to write a piece that had some opinion, but also relied on unbiased thoughts for
the reader to interpret for themselves. Both of these projects, I felt, showcased my expression of
the material I had been developing over the past 6 weeks. In designing and deciding on how I
wanted to present my electronic portfolio, I decided to stick with the anecdotal theme, choosing
the Portfolio project and Living Narratives to showcase my development.
The projects, multiple reflections and revisions for all of these projects have helped me
complete two learning goals for the UWP1Y curriculum. As part of the Knowledge of Convention
learning goal, I focused upon acknowledging the discourse community for all of my projects. For
the Wikipedia entry, the discourse community was fellow students at UC Davis and the general
Davis city community. For this project I had to write and express myself through a formal tone,
to educate and allow insight into a fact-based topic. Unlike the podcast project, which was also
for students at UC Davis, I had to deliver facts that would be useful for my audience and ones
that they would be interested in, thus working on my skills as a storyteller.
Furthermore, for the Knowledge of Convention learning goal, I developed means by
which to format my documents to effectively communicate to the discourse community, which
has helped me branch away from previous writing styles. For the Wikipedia entry, there was a
predetermined format by which I had to create my own entry. For the audience to interpret and
accept the information presented to them as accurate and authentic, it was necessary to follow
a certain formatting. This included adding an overview and table of contents for ease of
interpretation. Determining how to present this knowledge to my discourse community required
thought. For the podcast project, the media was audio. Thus, I had to develop a script that
would be comprehensible audibly. Both of these assignments were much different than those I
had been previously assigned in other classes. Working on these learning goals helped me
work past obstacles in my writing.
As part of the Metacognition learning goal, I had to gain the ability to accept peer
reviews for my writing development. Furthermore, I needed to learn how to apply these
comments to my current writing and for the future. In order to accomplish this learning goal,
reflections on each weeks lessons and main projects helped me consolidate my thoughts and
review the comments given to me by my peers and instructor so that I may develop my writing.
By reflecting on my writing, I was able to look and see what I had done in the past, and how,
with assignments like these, could improve in the future. Taking the time to accept others
comments, even though it was difficult to get this criticism, was ultimately to benefit me. Looking
back at it now, I believe I have grown as I can interpret my past writing and see how I have
changed.
Throughout the past six weeks, I gained various new skills. In the beginning, it was
challenging writing about subjects that I was not used to. However, as the time went on, through
the different Learning Goals, reflections, assignments and projects, I believe I can walk from
UWP1Y with a better sense of my writing style is and was. Furthermore, I developed an idea
about what my writing techniques are and how I can improve on them. Through UWP1Y, I have
changed as a writer, for the better.