Cover letter

To the portfolio committee:

English 0097 with Professor Daniel Sansing was one of the greatest online class experiences I have ever had. Professor Sansing has always mentioned that writing is a process and it takes time, which makes students feel better when writing that they can make mistakes and get his great feedback to revise in further assignments.

In this class we had three projects, starting with project one which is an analysis of three texts or more, it is your choice. I did not know how to start or what to write at the beginning, however, explanations and examples provided by Professor Sansing were helpful enough to get started. My goal for project one was a thousand words, even though I was not sure if I can get to five hundred words.

However, as I started to write, I was pleased and sort of proud about how I can manage my writing and how I can pull ideas one after one, I got to the point where I can keep going for days I had a lot to explain and write, I thought something is wrong and that I wrote a lot, but afterward, I had a chance to ask about whether giving a lot of details is helpful at all, Professor Sansing responded with “For academic writing, it can be a very good thing! Of course, you want to develop plenty of detail, and make sure the writing isn't "fluff," but it can be helpful.” thus, these words made me feel good and confident about my writing.

I had some issues expressing my thoughts and ideas directly to the keyboard, when we first started to do reflection I hated it, I could have reflected on each period with a couple of sentences but that would not sound like I am trying to improve in this course, so I took the time to learn how to write reflections which is an easy assignment now for me.

I felt worried about summarizing non-American or non-English based novels or poems in this class, I mean it is English class I thought you should summarize Shakespeare or The Great Gatsby, but I was not really familiar with their purpose and genre I read them probably twice and forgot about them, so I summarized a poem by Mahmoud Darwish and a novel by Ghassan Khanfani both are Palestinians.

I used Kanafani’s novel in project one which impressed Professor Sansing as I saw when reading his feedback, said “I find the discussion of Kanafani and that text quite interesting, and enjoyed your analysis. You have done some outstanding investigation of your texts.”

This and other feedback made me feel confident to express my thought and I felt positive summarizing another poem by Mahmoud Darwish, in addition, this class was helpful where I learned how to write in MLA format, how to take notes, paraphrase, how to use sources, and how to give credit for authors by using in-text citations and adding work cited page.

Finally, I value the time you are taking to read my cover letter, and of course, all respect to you for considering my projects and other writing I have done throughout the semester.

Sincerely,

Bashar Mashal