Dear Portfolio Committee,
Through taking English 101, I experienced the ups and downs of college writing. I experienced the satisfaction of completing a piece filled with vocabulary choices and sentence structures that I could be proud of. I felt relief from finally finishing an essay, and being content with the work I put out. I felt the frustration of deadlines and being confused on what to write next, and how to write in a way that was sufficient. I learned that the positives and negatives are what makes up writing as a whole, and it is not possible to have one without the other.
I learned new things about myself, and my writing style. My favorite essay to write was the first one, my “Canvas Shoes” memoir. This first essay was about my experience with having insecurities about my appearance and financial status as a middle schooler. It was cathartic to write this memoir, and it was fun for me to write in a narrative style. I enjoyed being able to express my personal story in a more cohesive, and illustrative way. I enjoyed this assignment because it was personal. I also like how my piece could help a reader learn about the pressures of racism, financial situations, and insecurities that many people like me have experienced.
The second essay that I wrote bounces off of my memoir, through addressing the debate of the ethics in the fast fashion industry. My personal experience with buying mass produced clothing though a lower class perspective helped to form my opinions on this topic. I enjoyed researching and writing about this topic, and was genuinely interested in learning new information about it.
Going into essay three, I turned to the topic of gentrification. This topic was inspired by the recent gentrification of thrift stores, in relation to the effort to slow the rise in fast fashion consumption. I was inspired to explore this topic in a more broad way, straying from the topic of fashion. I focused on the gentrification of cities in the United States, and the differences between the “gentrifiers” and the “gentrified”.
In all, I enjoyed the method of choosing a broad topic, and choosing more specific points to write essays on. Exploring poverty and race in ways that I could relate to made the assignments engaging in a way that I was pleasantly surprised by. Taking this course helped me to explore different methods of writing, and to push myself. I was happy to take this class, because it helped to reignite my previously suppressed interest in writing. Through exploring topics I was intrigued by, it was easier for me to research and write about them. Thank you for reading my portfolio, and I hope that you will enjoy reading my essays.