1815 University Drive

Fargo, ND 58108
December 4, 2016

First-Year Writing Committee

English Department
NDSU
Fargo, ND 58108

Dear FYW assessment committee:

Over the course of this semester, I completed three major writing projects. A memoir, a review
and a research paper. Each of these works was directed towards a different audience, and was
created with a different purpose in mind. All of these works had parts that were simple to write,
and all of them had their challenges. I believe I effectively communicated and integrated my
ideas into in all of these works in a way that was coherent and meaningful.

Over the course of the semester, there were many issues I struggled with, a couple in each major
assignment, along with general issues with non-major assignments. I think that many of them
were reoccurring throughout my works. I feel that overall, my conclusions were the weakest
parts of my papers. I think oftentimes they seemed rushed and tacked on, and failed to tie back
into the body of work, and provide a satisfactory ending. Another issue that I need to improve in
my writing is coherence. I tend to struggle to connect topics together, and as a result, transitions
tend to be abrupt and my papers can have an overall sense of disjointedness. Most of the
challenges I faced this semester were ones I created for myself. The emotional subject of my
memoir, a book that was challenging to explain why it was relevant, and an overabundance of
data for my research paper. As always, I struggled with spelling and punctuation, but Word and
careful proofreading alleviated most of that.

In the memoir, I struggled with choosing a topic, as well as writing about, what was for me, a
slightly emotional subject matter. In the review, I had a large struggle getting into the writing
mentality once I sat down to write it, and I struggled with putting myself into the paper and
making it mine, as opposed to just another paper. This issue caused me to put the review off
repeatedly, probably much longer than I should have, and even consider choosing another work
to review multiple times, as I could just not put myself into the work.

During the process of writing my research paper, I encountered the largest number of issues in
any one work. I struggled to quantify my qualitative data in a way that included all the necessary
data. I also struggled with the length of my paper. Writing a research paper with only five pages
of writing proved impossible for me, and I ended up almost doubling the maximum suggested
length. Running into mental blocks was another issue with that particular paper. When I sit down
to write, I generally do it in long sessions, with few breaks until I am done with the paper. With a
paper as long and condensed as I was trying to make my research paper, that proved difficult. For
example, I struggled for over an hour to write the discussion of the final question, and when I
finished, I simply walked away until the next day, when I ended up deleting my entire discussion
section and reworking it from the ground up.
I really hate tooting my own horn, and talking about what I think I did well when I wrote, as
no matter how many revisions I go through, there will always remain parts and pieces that could
be revised, improved, added to or cut. That being said, when reflecting on the semesters work it
would be unfair to myself, as well as get me docked points, to not include at least some positive
reflection. I think that once I worked past, or around the issues in my papers, what I produced
was solid work. I think that a strength in my writing was its descriptiveness. In the memoir I was
able to effectively describe the scenes I saw, and the emotions I felt. Another strength of my
writing is my vocabulary. In my research paper I was able to phrase sentences in a way that
meant I did not have to use the same phrase again and again to introduce my data. I also liked
some of the alliteration that I wove into my works, along with some of the vocabulary I used to
conceptualize and describe scenes within my work. I dont think any of my work was amazing,
but then again, I can be overly critical of my writing.

I think the works I created met both the education outcomes. I communicated using multiple
genres for multiple audiences and purposes, and my works had knowledge and ideas integrated
in a way that was generally coherent. The works within my portfolio use sources that are
pertinent to the work, and add to, or support it, as opposed to just sticking in sources or quotes
that are only tangentially attached to the work to fulfil a requirement.

As I transitioned from writing one work to another, I did not make any major adjustments in my
writing style to account for differing genres and audiences. Instead, I adjusted smaller things
within my style, like formality and technicality of words, while still keeping my same pattern of
writing as before. This allowed me to write for a range of genres and audiences without
hampering my ability.

Overall, I think my work this semester was satisfactory, although I do not feel that I made any
significant progress in my technical level of writing. I did however, learn to create a new type of
writing, the research paper, and as this type of writing is new to me, there is
certainly improvement that I could make there.

Respectfully,

Benjamin M Pitkin