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Dear Malcolm,

Throughout this Extended Inquiry Project I have covered a lot of material in

research and have truly learned a large amount not limited to just my specific topic

in itself, but also to my writing style as well. This project has forced me to explore

many different outlets and angles that have collectively worked together to create

my finished portfolio. Although at the time, some of the activities, such as the

annotated bibliography which proved to be my most trying, seemed to belong and

tedious, I can now see how each of these steps were necessary in order for me to

successfully create a healthy portfolio. One of my favorite exercises that truly did a

significant job in helping me to develop my thoughts is actually our one on one

meeting. I have never had a teacher have a one on one meeting with me before

especially regarding a large project. The reasoning why I found it so beneficial was

because I was able to gain confidence by knowing I was on the right track, but also

notified of some things I needed to do differently.

I believe that my most important work was my EIP because it was one of the

most in depth pieces of writing that I have done to this date. Mainly, this work relied

so much on research, which was a different type of writing than I am used to.

Besides my graduation project, I had never experienced such a long work of writing

that held as much detail as my EIP did based upon its research that I had to conduct

to even write it. As a student I believe that this work had helped me to become more

conscious about my research, which is going to be very important as I continue my

journey throughout college. One example that demonstrates my improvement of

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research was the annotated bibliography. Though I struggled with this activity, it

helped me to see the research that I was doing through a different light. By making

me explain every single little bit of research I was using it helped me to weed out

some of the useless sources of information and insert a lot of very supportive points

into my final EIP.

I think that my strengths and weaknesses have definitely been improved

over the course of this semester. I believe that one of my weaknesses come into play

when I begin to initially choose a topic because I tend to bite off more than I can

chew. Even though this is a very strenuous project that we completed throughout

the course of the semester, my topic still had to be specific enough to realistically be

fully covered in only one semester. As I have previously mentioned, one helpful

things that helped to improve this weakness f mine was the one on one meeting that

helped me to see the importance of choosing one pretty specific topic and then

researching is very thoroughly. My second weakness was my lack of knowledge of

proper MLA formatting which has been improved just by getting my work back. I

have been able to correct a lot of citations to which I previously had been taught to

site wrong, and now I never have a mother excuse to incorrectly site my work again.

My strengths have been highlighted through this display of my portfolio

because I have been very organized and responsible when dealing with my

assignments and I have put a lot of time into my work that hopefully can be easily

seen through my portfolio. I am very glad to have gotten this opportunity of creating

our own e-Portfolios to set up and design the work that we have completed. This

task called for a lot of creativity and I enjoyed designing my website very much.

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My progress as a thinker has been sharpened by causing me to look on two

different sides of a topic, which I completed in my EIP. Through creating an

exploratory essay, it was very important for me to become a thinker and suggest

questions or thoughts that I could further uncover throughout my paper. Specific

challenges that I can think of to have truly caused a significant toll on my nerves,

was the lack of correct MLA format and the cutting down of useless sources to key

sources. Both of these I have touched on and prior to this project was lacking in.

However, upon the completion of my EIP both of these things were not only vital but

also improved, as I had to learn how the proper way in order for my EIP to be valid.

When it comes to having to post things on a social networking site, utilizing

Tumblr was something I did not regret. My creative writing significantly improved

as I was writing more and more post on my site. The reasoning behind this is solely

because I was able to post things that truly interested me, thus writing about wasnt

very difficult. Through my experience with Tumblr, I realized my love for writing. It

is evident that my loves range from doing things with family and friends, to dogs,

but a passion I have overseen throughout this process is my ability to write about

things near and dear to my heart. Creative writing is something I am fortunate to

have in my arsenal of skills and intend on utilizing as I minor in communications

throughout college.

Overall, the inquiry process definitely helped me to improve my skills as a

thinker and questioner; the topic proposal process was the most helpful for me, the

annotated bibliography tended to be my most challenging and my EIP is my best

work throughout this project. After putting all of it together in one e-Portfolio, I am

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so proud of the work that I have accomplished and determined that it will help me

to succeed in English 1102. This entire process has been challenging at times but

taught me a lot that I look forward to helping me as I aim to succeed in future

throughout my college career.

Sincerely,

Rachael Parrish