Reflective Letter

---Before this year, I was starting to think that I had stopped improving as a writer. All my writing classes in high school were focusing on making us write essays about facts, and only facts, the obvious intent being to test us to see if we were paying any attention in class. I was proven happily incorrect once I came to PSEC however. I never could have guessed how much room I still had to grow as a writer, including learning a whole new method of writing that included analyzing the text, trying to find its meaning as it applied to me, as opposed to listing facts. I feel that I have grown a huge amount as a writer this quarter, as shown by my grades on the two actual essays we wrote this year, and my use of the They Say/I Say format for writing.
---As I am a little bit of a “glass half empty” personality, I feel it prudent to begin with my weaknesses as a writer that I am still learning to overcome (made all the more difficult considering I would have never guessed that I was having these problems just one year ago). One of the primary problems I am having as an academic author is using an abundance of quotes. In my two essays titled “A Story of a Delawarean” and “Final Draft; Now in Color!” I used very few quotes. I feel that once I begin putting more quotes in for me to analyze and support my argument my writing will become much better. My other weakness as a writer is my reluctance to change. In my first essay (an analysis of Bacon’s Rebellion), I went through five drafts before I even realized that I was not properly using the They Say/I Say format, which was new to me at the time. I have since fully adopted this new form of writing essays, and I dare say that I have got a solid grasp of how to use it now.
---Of course, there are things that I have been doing well on, one might call them strengths. These include an understanding the concepts of They Say/I Say (post stupid drafts of my essay one), and my ability to do my work in a timely fashion. The proof for my understanding of the They Say/I Say format is conveniently given in a numerical representation. I am talking about my grade. On both essay one and two I received a ninety-one percent, even though my information was not the best quality. This shows that even when I was having a hard time including information that was relevant I was able to use the They Say/I Say format well enough to significantly impact my final grades. The second point is slightly harder to prove, but there evidence is still there. I managed to get essay one done in all of one weekend, and that included a total rewrite. All I did the final day was some grammar and semantic fixes. The same happened with the second essay, although I had it fully written out about three days ahead of schedule, as opposed to only one. I still had to do some grammar and semantic fixes, but I really don’t count those toward total time spent writing as they are often just me being a perfectionist.
---I feel that this year I have improved a significant amount as far as writing is concerned. I know that I still have room to improve, but I feel that I am much better prepared for future writing courses than I was a year ago. My strengths outweigh my weaknesses by a lot, which is not something I would have said at the beginning of the school year. With my newfound grasp of the They Say/I Say format, I feel that I will be able to do better on future essay style assignment that my teachers assign.