Savannah Kennedy

Matt Wilson
9 June, 2017
Cover Letter
Dear Matt,
Thanks for a wonderful quarter in writing 2. I was so nervous going into this class
because I had not taken a serious, challenging writing course since my junior year of high
school. But I think I was able to pick up my skills again and learn a lot more about editing that I
had not known before. Previously, my editing skills were not great; I much preferred to write on
demands just so I did not have to go through the editing process. While I would still prefer to
write on demands, I now have a set of skills and activities I can do with myself to edit my
papers. I am glad to have learned all of that!
For the final portfolio, I chose to revise WP1 and WP2. Those were the projects that I did
the best on, despite loving WP3 the most. In WP1, I had to address a new audience, which also
resulted in a new purpose for my paper. Since my audience was now writing 2 students, I had to
center my paper more around genre, conventions, and rhetoric rather than around the specific
conventions of online news articles and Tumblr posts that reviewed 13 Reasons Why
specifically. So, my new thesis was, The genre online news articles achieves its purpose of
analyzing pop culture through criticisms, while the genre Tumblr posts achieves its purpose of
deeply connecting to their audience by using hashtags. This addresses the genres more in
depth, rather addressing the topic. I did this mainly because it fit the new prompt, audience, and
purpose. I also only chose two conventions, criticisms and hashtags, because I wanted to go
more in depth on the analysis for them. By doing this, I was able to do deeper analysis while still
staying within the page limits, which can be hard for me.
I also chose to significantly revise WP2, beginning with a new audience and purpose.
This time, I wrote to inform an audience of writing 2 students about genre, academic disciplines,
and how they tie together. In order to change the audience and purpose, I rewrote the thesis
sentence to be more specific. I wrote two separate sentences: The economic piece
Investigating Some of the Factors That Influence Consumer Choice When Adopting a Shelter
Dog in the United Kingdom by co-authors Christina Siettou, Iain Fraser, and Rob Fraser uses
algebraic equations and statistically significant research data to analyze important factors in dog
adoption and send a greater message that studying consumer choice economically can tell us
about the way humans make decisions. The sociological paper Adoption of Wagging Warriors
by Denise M. Lupp uses cited legislation and historical case studies to explain why dog adoption
is a beneficial choice for all, and send a larger message that studying sociology can help people
understand the world, each other, and themselves better. This thesis was very specific to the
types of academic disciplines, what conventions they use to achieve their purpose, and what
their purpose is as part of that broader academic discipline. I was able to do this while using
examples from the same topic of dog adoption. Some other major changes I made were to the
quote examples. I no longer used block quotes, but instead wrote them as either summaries or
shorter quotes. I also rewrote my analysis to go more in depth and be more in line with the new
purpose. I made sure that all of the analysis tied back to the thesis sentence and connected to
the overarching message about the purpose of economic and sociological academic disciplines.
 I like both pieces in my portfolio, and really appreciate all of the revising that I did. With
the new guidelines, I thought editing would be impossible. But, after rewriting my thesis
sentences I was able to come up with the right editing tools to make my pieces fit the new
prompt. I think I could still improve on the technical aspects of my writing, such as making sure
old and new information flows, grammar is correct, sentence structure is effective, organization
is sensible, and ending sentences (in each paragraph) connect back to the thesis. I did not
focus on this as much as I focused on ideas and revising the purpose/audience in the portfolio,
and it has always been a point of struggle in my writing.
As a writer, I have learned so much about editing that I had never known before. I never
respected the editing process, but now I have many tools that I will be sure to use during editing
in my time as a college student. I am glad that I actually paid attention to the editing activities we
did, because they will be very useful for all of the next times that I have to write an essay.
In the future, I will make sure to consider all I have learned about genres, editing, writing,
genre theory, rhetoric, and conventions. I truly learned a lot in this class. I believe the grading
style (full credit on assignments as long as they were complete and on time) helped me focus
more on the readings, what I was learning, and the editing process, rather than just on writing to
get a good grade. I did not think it would work for me, but I truly did learn more with this class
style than I thought I would. I am glad that writing 2 was a required class for me to take,
because I ended up learning a lot about writing, reading, and editing that I know I will use in the
future. Hopefully I will be able to take another writing class, or a class with a lot of writing in it
that I can use these skills for in the future. But for now, I think I can use a break from the weekly
writing assignments.
Thank you for everything!

Sincerely,

Savannah Kennedy