Dear Reader Letter

Hello viewer! You have come across the English 98 e-portfolio of Rick Hartelius. I was born and raised in the great state of Washington and have no plans to ever move away from this beautiful state. This is my first quarter back at Everett Community College (EvCC) in about 5 years and im really happy that I made the decision to come back to college. During my first go around I had just graduated from high school and the only reason why I was going to school was because all I had for years was people pounding in my head that I had to go to school, there was no choice in the matter. So I didn’t really give it my all and my grades reflected that. Shortly after I started my mom and I found out that my dad had cancer and that took a lot of my attention away from school. After the spring 2005 quarter I decided to stop pursuing my college education. Over the next 5 years my dad passed away and I just kind of hung out not really doing much with my life and finding a little place in life where I could just make some money and just be happy doing that. In November of 2008 I lost my job and realized that I didn’t want to be doing crap jobs for the rest of my life so I decided to finish what I started and get my college education. My goal is to get my two years in here at Everett on the Business path and then transfer to either the University of Washington or University of Washington Bothell campus to finish my 4 year degree.

Starting back at college I really wanted to take some refresher courses since it has been a long time since I have written any type of academic paper. So I signed up for English 98 and im really happy that I did. English has never really been a problem for me. I can write a decent paper, not a good or a great one but a decent one fairly quickly. My goal with this class was to try and get back into the college mind set and learn how to write a really good if not a great paper and I really wanted to learn how to write a good paper on a subject I’m not really interested in. There will be times in my upcoming college career that I will be asked to write an in depth paper on a subject that I would probably have no interest in outside of class. I’m one of those people where if I read a book and I don’t really like it I will struggle with it and have a hard time remembering anything about the book and I did run across that in this class. The book Three Cups of Tea I tried to read but I just could not get into it. So I did struggle with it and solution I found was to take it in smaller chucks and do a little of it at a time so I can remember more of the story. The other book we read was The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and I really enjoyed this book and was not a problem for me at all. I think its important to be able to write a good paper, especially since I’m going into the business field. There will be times I will have to write reports on whatever they ask me too and I will need to write a good, clear, concise paper that looks well organized and easy to read.

Now I am happy to show you four pieces of writing that I have done of the past ten weeks of this quarter that I think reflect my best work. I think these four pieces show how much I have learned and how much I have grown in such a short time. The first piece I choose is our Major Writing Assignment 3 (MWA) the argument essay which I wrote about the controversy of the Keyarena and I think this reflects the passion I have when im interested in the subject. The next piece will be out MWA 2 paper were I had to write about one word and I think this shows how my analysis skills have come along. The next piece will be the MWA 1 paper which I think will help people realize that the UW is so much better than WSU and my last piece is a paper I wrote for my DevEd course where I had to take to ideas from a book and apply it to the movie Iron Man.

Although this class is only ten weeks long I think that I have learned a lot from this class. I feel more confident going forward to English 101 and English 102. I believe I have developed better writing skills and better analyzing skills. Now enough talking on my part, just sit back, relax, and enjoy the writing.