Statement of Accomplishment

Dear Professor Griffith,

I think, quite possibly, my favorite part of the course was the excuse to write about myself. The very nature of the writing we do in Print and Electronic Journalism II is opinionated, and I have a lot of opinions. In choosing to take this course as my practice of the arts general education requirement, I was pleased and excited to start writing about topics of my choice again, instead of thirty page papers about the founding of the country of Liberia (etc).

I know that my tone as a writer is extremely informal and I am constantly struggling with that in scholarly endeavors. If anything, having a semester to use contractions and write about Twitter probably even set me back. And I’m essentially terrified of Print and Electronic Journalism I in which the writing will be expected to have less personality (I have a lot of personality). But I feel that familiarizing myself with the process of producing works for publication in a setting that I’m much more comfortable with was an extremely smart decision.

As it was, the first two pieces we did were the hardest for me as they were more factual. I clearly need to continue to become comfortable with facts, interviews, and things of this nature. Even attempting it was a great improvement on my part, in my opinion, but there is no doubt that development is needed. Another area I struggle in, clearly, is promptness. Effort exerted cannot be gauged until the pieces are submitted, and doing so in a timely manner is imperative. I know it, I just don’t practice it all the time.

As for the actual writing, I have a tendency to reuse similar words over and over again. When I attempt to replace the words with synonyms I always hate whatever the new sentence is because my immediate reaction is that “I wouldn’t say that.” This sort of artistic selfishness could be a general result of my informal tone, but I generally need to make my writing more broadly relevant. This also applies to my subject matter. Writing about things that interest me isn’t enough direction for something more official later, I’d think. Particularly when so many things interest me. Random: but titling my pieces is also apparently quite difficult for me.

I was particularly pleased with how much I learned about so many different topics. I understand that it wasn’t the main goal of the course to recommend me teeth whitener or learn about German cities and their BYOB sofa clubs. I still think that reading about what other people found interesting was so enjoyable and often a little surprising.

So here I present for your judgment my final portfolio. If you click on the label “FINAL” you will be directed to every updated piece of work.

Respectfully Submitted,

Elizabeth Young