Welcome! Inside this portfolio, I have included some of my favorite pieces of writing from this year. After spending a year writing papers ranging from personal narratives to argumentative essays, I feel that I have greatly improved as a writer. Additionally, I have more become aware of what areas I thrive in and what areas I need to work on. I have always struggled with meeting the word count. Throughout this year, I have been pushed to work on adding more detail to my papers. I have a habit of writing the least amount of words as possible, but this year I faced this issue and worked on adding more information and content to what I am writing. By the end of the year, I was able to meet the word count easily and even went over the word maximum a couple times. For my descriptive essay, my first draft was nearly 200 words under the word count. However, I did not struggle with adding more content like I would have earlier this year. I was able to add more detail and context without spending too much time on it and falling into a hole of being uninspired. I have also improved in other ways, one of them being the ability to keep the same tense throughout an entire paper. In the past when a tense in one sentence did not match a tense in another, I would just shrug it off and keep going. I did not see it as a fundamental piece of the paper until this year. This class has pushed me to be aware of my tenses and it has taught me how important correct tenses are to helping the reader fully understand the story. In my Night essay, I made a lot of mistakes involving the verb tense. However, I knew exactly how to fix them. I wrote, “Throughout the confusion of losing something that once made up his entire life, he became angry with God.” I soon realized that this was incorrect since the entire paper was supposed to be in present tense. I turned, “[...] he became angry with God” into, “[...] he becomes angry with God.” Earlier this year, I would not have understood why this is incorrect or important. Now I have realized how necessary this is to understanding the paper as a whole. I have also struggled with reading directions and making careless errors. I have always had trouble with including all of the requirements because I tend to forget to read the directions fully. At the beginning of the year, I got half of my points points off on a peer review assignment because I did not read the directions all the way through. At first I was angry at myself for receiving this grade, but then I realized that this was a good thing. If this had not happened, I would not have learned my lesson. On this portfolio assignment, I have been really careful about including everything I need. This class has helped me understand that reading directions is incredibly important for getting a good grade. Overall, this class has taught me a number of important things that have helped improve my writing style. Along with this, I have also learned a sufficient amount of history. We spent a long time learning about the Holocaust and it’s importance of being taught in school. I am really grateful that we spent so much time on this topic because I feel like I had never really learned about it in depth before. Rather than just learn the facts, we learned about it in depth by reading and analyzing Night by Elie Wiesel. Because this book was concise and also really entertaining, I found myself wanting to read more and learn more about it. Now I feel educated about this critical time in history and writing the Night essay definitely helped me grow as a writer. This portfolio is a collection of many works that I am proud of, but when you look closer, it also represents how much I have grown as a writer. I am also proud of how I have become more aware of my writing style throughout this year. The growth of my writing style is evident within this portfolio. When I wrote my personal narrative at the beginning of the year, I had no personal style in my writing; I was simply just trying to tell a story and get a good grade. I am still proud of that essay, but there is a huge contrast when it is compared with my recent descriptive essay. In my descriptive essay, I have an identifiable writing style. I am really proud of how far I have come and I hope to continue to find my writing style as time goes on.