5 May 2017

Dear Mr. Di Somma,

For my reflection letter I have chosen the food presentation, reflection letter, and my self

reflection letter and all the process work from the racial profiling essay, the into the wild essay,

and the BNW essay. From this work, I will reflect on what I learned about my skills of finding

evidence and editing that I have developed, and my ability to to incorporate evidence and

commentary. I will address my academic essays, my new skills of creating a works cited page

and drawing conclusions, my style of writing, and goals that I have for my writing skill.

For my first essay I chose my personal statement wrote in the first semester. It was

important to me because it was the first serious essay I wrote since the year before. It tested my

abilities to write a decent essay and the skills I still have retained. I did not make it clear for what

I would be writing about because it [seemed] like two stories. My focus was way out of balance

and I had a choppy flow. This taught me for what I need to improve on future essays. The

second item I have chosen to reflect on was the food presentation that we did first semester. This

was a great example of two brains coming together to help make their weaknesses strengths.

Ethos, logos, and pathos were used many times when presenting. We did a good job telling

anecdotal stories. The evidence we found was greatly related to what we saw in the current day.

The third essay was the bullying essay which I wrote second semester. This was one of those

essays which I really focused on getting right. I spent a lot of time thinking about what to write,

and how I would fit evidence to match what I wanted to argue. The final product was something

that I was proud of.

 The first prep work that I used was from the racial profiling essay. Most of the

prep work helped me understand the background of the prompt much clearer. Reading the pages

from the ERWC book helped me gather evidence from online that was relevant to what I wanted

to write about. Finding the evidence before hand made it so much easier to begin writing an

essay. The second piece of prep work is from the Literary analysis from Into the Wild. Every

piece helped me piece my essay together. Defining the traits of the character early helped me

decide what type of person McCandless really was. Then all the prewriting and rough drafts

helped me edit, fix mistakes, and complete the final version of the essay. The final piece of prep

work I have chosen is from Brave New World. All the activities that we were assigned forced me

to delve deeper and emerge with a better understanding of the book. The notes that we took made

me read the book instead of just reading sparknotes online. The prep work is an essential part for

writing any great essay.

The top five skills that I have improved on were drawing conclusions, creating a

claim/thesis, find evidence, integrating quotes, and editing the draft. Drawing conclusions from

the text is a skill that I had improved on throughout the year. I came up with an opinions and

stuck with it by proving it to the best of my abilities. Creating a thesis was something I used to

have trouble on, but spending a good amount of time on a good thesis can improve a whole

paper. In the bullying essay my thesis was stated that not only does bullying affect victims in

the short term, but also in their adult life ahead. The thesis took a bit of time to create. I spent a

good amount of time reading articles and more about the subject before coming up with that

thesis. Finding good evidence is another skill that I have improved on. The food presentation was

an excellent example of how I have improved on finding evidence. Anecdotal evidence and real

life evidence that others can relate greatly increased the effectiveness of the presentation.
Integrating quotes without dumping them into the paper was another skill that I was not really

too clear on. The progress of quote integration went from Clark stated that... to those who

were bullied have. I put more thought into what needed to make a better flow. The last skill

that I improved on was editing the draft. Proofreading the draft demonstrated what changes I

needed to make for the final version to be the best it can be. Of course the final piece was never

perfect, everything could be made better and more problems were made clear every time it was

read again. There is still much more room for improvement to make me a better writer.

The two strengths of my writing were MLA and use of ethos, logos, and pathos. MLA

was something that was taught freshman year and it is something that I have been consistent on

throughout the year. It is one of the easiest and basic parts of any paper. Ethos, logos, and pathos

in both the presentation and essays had much thought behind them. I found it important to

connect something emotional that people would understand to something logical that people

would understand. From the presentation we addressed that companies believe in profit rather

than quality and cited evidence to back that claim up while also doing a good job [at] telling

anecdotal stories. Two weaknesses I have had this year were topic sentences and the works cited

page. My topic sentences were generic and just stated the actual problem: bullying causes

depression and anxiety problems in individuals. This was the hardest part of starting a

paragraph for me. There was something more that could be written with more meaning and

something that would keep the reader interested. My second weakness was the works cited page.

When writing the racial profiling essay, I did not even attach a works cited page. Other times the

spacing in my works cited pages would be completely off because I would forget to fix that

issue. There is still time to completely revamp my weaknesses and make my strengths even

stronger.
 The only skill that I was unsure of was formatting a works cited page in MLA. The

formatting and spacing are what really troubled me. The process went from not including a

works cited page to it having fat margins. I transitioned into making less mistakes later in the

year. It is still not perfect and can definitely need more work to help perfect this skill.

There is still work on excluding dead words or slang from my papers. Mrs. DiSomma

circled many dead words such as nowadays and a lot in the Brave New World essay. It

brought for a paper that was less than professional. I need to improve on locating words which

were not meant to be used in academic essays I write. A thesaurus would come to be very helpful

in my case and I am sure to use one in future papers.

College level reading is way above the standard of past English classes that I have taken.

It involves a great deal of analyzation and work to understand. The writing requires much

thought to be a good paper. These skills that transferred to my American Government and math

classes. For American government, I analyze the writing and history more thoroughly to fully

grasp what is being taught. For math, I carefully read the directions and what they expect of me

to correctly solve the problems with all the of the steps. This gave me a taste of what will be

expected of me in college. I do not feel like I am completely prepared for what college is going

to send my way, but I am willing to take on that challenge to broaden my perspective of reading

and writing. My papers reflect on what I need to improve on, and others reflect how well I can

take on the challenge of creating a good, presentable, piece of work. I am ready to take on

college, and I truly believe that I can do great things. Thank you Di Somma for educating me for

the past two years, you have taught me well and I cannot be more thankful for having such a

great teacher.
Onward and upwards,

Dominykas Paura