Brian Wallace

Prof Koyuncu

English 106

4/30/12

Cover Letter

English has never been my best subject through my experience as a student. I have

learned a lot about how to improve myself as a writer through taking English 106 at Purdue. The

two papers I had to revise for this portfolio I feel like I did not do too bad, but I could have done

a lot better at them. I am glad I am able to go over my mistakes with the help of my professor

and correct those mistakes so I can get a better grade in the class. I got a better grade on the

second assignment because I was more interested in the topic than the topic for assignment three.

After all the work I put in to revise these two projects, I believe that I have improved both grades

by learning from my mistakes.

The first assignment I had to revise was the essay about Timothy Tredwell. I was a really

interesting topic for me and I was surprised on how fast and easy it was to type the paper up. I

got a good grade on it the first time so I would only expect to get a better grade on the revision.

The main things I changed in this paper were the little details that got points taken off. One of the

little things I got points taken off for was underlining the title and my works citied, so of course

that was an easy fix that will get me some points back. Also, my introduction to the paper was

ineffective so I changed that a lot in order to really have people understand what the whole paper

will be about. I really tried to make it broad in the beginning and then more concise on the

obsession of Timothy. The last thing my paper needed to be revised on was the conclusions of

paragraphs. For some reason I did not do a good job of wrapping up the idea or topic and just left

it out there to dry without an ending. I went over the whole paper and fixed that so when people

are reading the essay, they should be able to understand it fully. The second assignment should

be completely revised and I do believe a good grade will come of it.

The second assignment I had to revise was the photo essay about a picked topic by me. I

decided to talk about how my dorm, Owen, was very old and made me feel like I was living in

the 50’s. I had a good topic and good pictures, but the problem was that I was not very good at

working on Photoshop. A lot of points were taken off because it was very clear I did not know

how to work the program which was an important part of the assignment. The first thing I did

was found someone who knew what they were doing with the program and asked them to help

me. We compared assignments and I even got a few laughs out of her because of the assignment.

Part of the problem with my photos was that I tried doing too much with them when all I needed

to do was make them look organized, neat, and logical. I completely changed the order around of

the photos in order to make more sense and I added an introduction photo along with a title page

to really make it look like a photo essay. The photos themselves looked unprofessional so I

added margins around them all and I also put landscape photos with each other and portfolio

photos with each other to make the flow of the essay look more organized. I really think out of

the two revisions, my biggest improvement was the second essay by far. I worked really hard on

making the whole thing look better and I hope in the end all the hard work will pay off for me.

Also, just on side note, I just want to let you know that I did enjoy the class this semester

and I did learn a lot from it for the future. Being that this is the last thing I will ever type or send

to you, I felt it was appropriate to let you know how much I appreciate the class and what you

did for me as a writer.