Dear Portfolio Committee,

Perhaps the most striking thing about my experience in this English 101 class is how confident I feel in comparison to the last English 101 class I had taken only a semester prior. 2020 had taken a toll on me both physically and mentally, more so then I had anticipated. I walked into this course with a very pessimistic view of my abilities as both a college student and a writer, but I shall be walking away with my head held high. This course has challenged me to take a new, deconstructed, look at my writing and who I am as a writer. I have also learned about research and how important it is to take the proper notes, keep my thoughts organized, and refine those thoughts into compelling arguments. I have much to learn still, but the things I have learned in this course will not doubt be of use to me in the years to come as I strive towards an associates degree.

The first essay I have chosen, Art and Affirmation, is a very personal piece. Tasked with writing a memoir of my own experiences was certainly challenging. I am a fairly private person, sharing things about myself, particularly emotional things, is a tall order indeed. But given that I had to write about an experience pertaining to my chosen subject of art, I couldn’t think of a better moment then the night my father surprised me at my high school art show, in more ways then one. This essay challenged me to not tell a story, but to pull the reader into my mind. I am inviting you to walk through this memory right beside me, I want you to feel the cold stone stares under your feet, hear the droning murmur of proud young artists and their families. Hopefully some part of this experience can move you the way it moved me on that warm spring evening.

My next essay is titled The Creeping Consequences of NFT Art. This was the most difficult essay I have written by far. There is something to be said about the ability to gather all the facts and present them in a compelling and digestible way for readers. I am not so sure if I have mastered this skill yet, but that is what courses like this are for. I had to navigate through the many databases the college has to offer in order to find, not only relevant scientific articles, but also ones that were recent enough to have any barring on the state of things today. I poured through a lot of articles and journals, far more then the number that made it into the essay itself. My biggest struggle was trying to take this complex web of information I had gathered and weaving it into a presentable lace. I believe in the ideas and fears that I put forth in this essay. Perhaps some of it got mixed up in that web, but at the very least, I shall take this experience with me into my next research paper, and the next one after that.

My final essay Art for Art’s Sake is another essay that holds a very specific place in my mind. I was tasked with reading the article What is the Point of Museums? and putting together a response to the ideas put forth in that piece. I have never done such a thing. Writing a response to an already published piece of literature, it seemed so strange to me. I now realize how cathartic an experience it can be. I had to take this article and break it down to its core elements, summarize them, and formulate some sort of response to the ideas put forth in the writing. It is my passion for the arts that compelled my fingers to dance across the keys in this essay. I truly believe art is such an integral part of being human, of being the social creatures that evolution has made us out to be. In this essay I go further into this point and use the article to help guide my thoughts as I try to understand the original author and their own thoughts on the matter.

I suppose, by the end, you should have some notion of the person I am after going on this little dive into my thoughts and words. I wonder what that notion of me will be. Perhaps it will be my creativity, or my lack of elegance at times, or maybe even my thoughts on our impact on this small speck in space we all live upon. Whatever that notion of me is, I hope it illustrates how far I’ve come on this journey towards my first degree. It is a long road, but the lessons I have learned in this course will help me along the way, of that I have no doubt.