Cover Letter

Dear Portfolio Committee,

Before this course I didn’t really have much experience with writing. It’s not that I didn’t like it, I just only did in school but I actually enjoyed it when I did. It is like a way for the writer to express their selves. Coming into this I was a little nervous because the only other college English course I took was RDG090 which was fairly simple so I didn’t know what to expect. Having the zoomed class once a week definitely help, I know many courses don’t have any zoom meeting and without the material covered would’ve been a lot harder to understand. I’ve learned a lot this semester, as I mention previously, I didn’t have much experience with writing so I did not know about MLA format or how to even put something in MLA format; I also learned about in text citation instead of randomly dropping a quote. I was in the military prior to attending BCC and when Professor Holy told us that are assignments are going to associated with a theme and I knew immediately I wanted to make a connection with my military past; and it was a great opportunity to express myself as writer and write about my past experiences or something that’s related to them.

For my first essay I choose to write about a topic close to my heart, suicide in the military. This essay was particularly challenging because for the assignment I had to find an argumentative point about the subject. After some brain storming, I came up with a thesis, what is the military doing wrong and what are things they can do better or new things they can implement. For this essay I had to do a lot of research and if it wasn’t for course, I would’ve had a hard time trying to find sources. There tons of possible sources but with learning about annotating in this course I was able to narrow them down and find the best ones. This is a topic that I hold near to my heart and I wanted to write the best essay that I can so not only did I find online sources I talked to some of the Marines and Sailors I used to serve with to get their insight on what is currently being done about suicide prevention in the military and their opinions on the matter. Overall, I think this is my strongest essay, I really used all the skills I learned from this course while writing it.

For my second essay I choose to write about my time at bootcamp and when I became a United States Marine. The journey wasn’t easy but it was well worth it in the end. Myself and my fellow recruits faced many challenges together, but with time work we overcame them together. I learned a lot at my time in Parris Island and was molded into something greater than I once was and still live my life to this by the morals I learned in bootcamp.

My final essay I wrote about the challenges face my today recruiters. In certain parts of the country, it is a lot harder for recruits to find the next generation to enlist in the military. Recruiter had to come up with new and affective ways to reach out the communities; once the pandemic hit, they were faced with even more challenges.

I have learned a lot throughout this semester and my writing has came a long way. I am now confident that when writing future essay, I will have the knowledge to able to do them well. I am thankfully for Professor Holly Pappas for teaching this course and my classmates for their peer reviews.