Portfolio: Reflective Letter

Reflective Letter

-----Time cannot be stopped, altered, slowed, sped, or controlled. The only thing that we as humans can do with time is utilize it. The utilization of time is one of the most important parts of our daily schedule. A procrastination of time cannot be taken back nor can it be changed, it has passed and cannot be replayed or undone. The only thing that we can change is how we apply ourselves the next time around.
-----In my educational history I have not used my time wisely, procrastinating the day, week, and month away until the only time I have left is Sunday night before the paper is due that Monday. This was not a problem for me because I found learning to come naturally to me. I could easily use the aforesaid schedule and still pass with an A or high B. Not until I entered PSEC did I find this schedule faulty. Early on I learned that my teachers would not be impressed with the same work that satisfied the low expectations of my former teachers. This is when I truly began to apply myself.
Bacon’s Rebellion was my first true multi-draft essay. Once again finding that my teachers would not be satisfied with a rough draft that would pass in high school, I approached this essay in a way that I had not before. Writing up multiple drafts, I applied my rather advanced analytical thinking and created a series of drafts that were vastly different in intellectual level. “Though a traitor to his king and country, Bacon saw himself as a liberator, winning the support of the people and defending their land” (full rough draft) became “Knowledge is the key lesson that can be taken away from this often overlooked event. Learning from the reasons, reactions, and thoughts of the colonists what to or not to do in a very similar situation is the lesson” (Bacon’s Rebellion Final). The stage of writing between these two conclusion topic sentences is enormous, leaving the realm of eighth grade history assignment, I entered the realm of analytical application.
-----This progression was something foreign to me and so took a little more time to develop than for someone who had been practicing this method throughout their entire school career. With four weeks to finish this first essay, I found myself blindsided by the meager two weeks we were given for the second essay. Finding my developmental process to be slowed by the new, more efficient system of drafts and rewrites, my second essay left much to be desired. While having a stable thesis and very solid introduction paragraph, I found my writing to be very jumpy and wandering in multiple places. In paragraph four I even failed to support my topic sentence in any way. The comment “In this anarchy caused by the desires of the Patriots there are piles and piles of Patriotic documents, reveling in the total destruction of everything that has been built by and for the British” (Economic and Political Advantages of a British Massachusetts) is in no way supported by my ramblings about the fear of the Loyalists in the face of the Patriots.
-----I pointed this out not to show my weaknesses as a writer but to show that my growth is being measured in very different situations. If given the same amount of time on my second essay as my first, my second most likely would have rivaled my first in almost every way. My writing style has changed, and with change comes present setbacks and future advancements. “You must first take a set backward before you can take two steps forward”.