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Cover Letter Having worked as a journalist for almost two years, I’d thought of myself as a good writer. My feelings towards the class were not of intimidation, but of wonder – how my writing would be to the teacher and how I needed to improve. As soon as the class began, we were given many small assignments that broke us into the class and gave everyone an introductory perspective on where they stand in terms of their writing. At this point, my performance was perfect as per the teacher. My growth truly started when we started on our first major essay: the textual analysis. We were given very interesting, stimulating stories to analyze so the test was truly in the writing, not in whether the student was able to get the amount of needed information from the stories. I wrote the analysis and found my first shortcoming: the fact that I tend to summarize more than analyze when it comes to analyzing a body of text. I promptly improved upon this, adding to my writing skills. This is when my writing grew the most because prior to writing this particular textual analysis, articulating a balanced analysis was always a challenge for me. The next two essays were the opposing arguments essays. I’d been a skilled argumentative essay writer prior to writing these essays, so it wasn’t as much of a challenge for me as the textual analysis was. Still, while writing these two essays, my writing skills grew further because my instructor pointed out many fine-tuned problems that my essays reflected of my overall writing skills. At this point, after everything I had learned, I felt the strongest as far as my writing was concerned – I had conquered writing short, strong, and convincing arguments. I was then faced with the final research essay. At this point, I’d become sufficiently confident in my writing because argumentative essay writing and research had always been my forte and that my ability as a writer had grown exponentially as the class progressed. When writing the essay, I found myself articulating sound, strong arguments more

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naturally and in-flow than I had done before. I had not only grown instrumentally as a writer, but I had also boosted my self-confidence in my writing. Overall, in my academic and professional life, I not only feel better equipped than before when it comes to producing a well articulated piece of writing, it has also made me more confident in my ability as a journalist.