Rose Wickler

Portfolio Essay
Second Draft
12/18/2015
My growth as a writer has seemed to culminate in my education at Loras College.
Looking back now, I see how Ive grown as a writer throughout my life, rounding off in
my education at Loras. I see the varied impacts that my education has had on how I learn,
how I think, and how I write. When I write now, I see how my thinking has changed with
the evolving of my learning.
To start, I must talk about my love of reading. I spent my childhood reading with
my grandma, sitting on the brown couch in front of the picture window in the front room
for the best light, shed say reading Heidi, or Swiss Family Robinson, or whatever
new book she got me for the most recent gift-giving holiday. I saw these characters going
to far away lands and having adventures, and I wanted that too. Thus spurred my interest
in imagining stories. I could go to wherever a book went or I could go to whatever
illogical world I thought up. A deserted island with pink grass and blue trees where the
sky looked olive green for some reason and I could eat giant cookies with Scooby-Doo? I
was gone in a heartbeat.
In elementary school, I spent a significant amount of time in the library. I wasnt
alone there but it was a quiet sanctuary where students worked by themselves and I could
find new books to imagine myself away too. I had so much fun over the years imagining
stories like that, so I started writing down my own in middle school. I didnt show
anybody these stories for fear of them being bad or stupid. And when I finally did show
one to some friends, they laughed about the plot and called it stupid. I stopped showing

people what I was writing for years, and even slowed down how much I was reading after
that, until my love of reading was re-established in high school.
My British Literature class was the one that got me reading extensively again. To
be specific, Aldous Huxleys Brave New World. I had still been reading kids books they
allowed me to read a whole bunch of books in a short amount of time and some young
adult books but I looked at the books in that class as being big kid books. They were
like the books I read with my grandma. I was reading like an adult, and even better, I was
reading assigned books and liking them.
I started spending most of my time in the library again, so much time that the
head librarian knew me by name. I even won a prize giveaway for the most books
checked out at the school library because I visited it so much. I continued reading for fun,
planning my future through a high schoolers eyes, blissfully unaware that my interest in
writing was just about to spur its head again.
A few months later, I was attending community college, in a composition class
and loving it. The teacher said a specific paper of mine should be entered into the
schools writing contest. I mulled over the idea for a while and submitted it at the last
minute. I didnt think anything of it until I got an email saying that I had won. I hadnt
been that happy in years. I was ecstatic, my heart raced in a good way. In that moment, I
realized that there might be a future for me in writing.
Then came my time at Loras. I realized that I wanted to become a writer and
enrolled at Loras College as an English major. While at Loras, I came to learn and think
in a different way. Considering these as a Loras student, I have seen the most positive
change in myself surrounding those two topics, learning and thinking. This change is

most evident to me concerning how I learned, thought, and wrote even just a few years
ago versus I am now.
I see myself growing most significantly as an active learner and a reflective
thinker through my writing at Loras. I wouldnt have considered myself an active learner
before I came to Loras. But soon I discovered myself treating everything like an
educational opportunity. I learned, even small things, from everyday situations, like
answering a question by researching into it. I learned more of education, life, writing, and
the human spirit while at Loras than I think I did in the rest of my life.
I saw my writing change before my eyes when I interned in the Loras library as a
grant writer. I had been a Loras student for just over a year when I wrote that at a table in
the corner of the main floor of the library. I wrote papers for classes before this but this
felt different. I was doing this for school credit but not for a grade. Writing this was
personal, and it made me feel like a proper writer.
That semester I was also tasked with writing a paper about gender preferences for
my first religious class. My own world was fast-paced. This class, my education,
everything around me seemed quick and important. I was learning things in a different
light than I had before. I was thinking more actively, intently. Loras was changing me,
and it seemed like it was for the better. At least concerning my writing.
I found myself also thinking reflectively, writing sentences, paragraphs, and
papers about my growth in individual classes and school in general. It wasnt just an
individual class that was changing my writing, all of my classes were, and they were all
telling me the same things. I saw this throughout my classes over time but only realized
that it was effecting my writing in May of 2015. My writing was changing for my future,

school was preparing me for a career, any career, unlike what I had experienced. The
local community college taught me the basics of education and high school kept telling
me to be prepared for the future, but Loras was preparing me for the careers that I am
likely to obtain, not just the general idea of work.
Even my classes were making me aware of my working future. For a reflective
paper at the end of one class, I wrote about hoping that a potential employer would find
interest in my creative writing pieces. I found myself then, sitting on my green plaid
couch with my Great Dane beside me, realizing that it wasnt just the school that was
preparing me for my future but the individual classes and teachers. They were gearing me
for the life Im going to lead after being an English major.
I was able to write in a fun way as well as academically. Fiction writing class got
me writing fiction for fun and for class. And if my imagination was on vacation, story
prompts were always there to help.
I also found out that writing can be hard when it concerns a difficult topic. I had
never had to deal with this before; I hadnt written anything of a difficult topic and the
only grim thing that I had read was Elie Wiesels Night. Then I was writing and
determining for the first time that analyzing something of a difficult topic can be one of
the hardest things that a writer can do.
There was also the expanse of writing throughout my classes. When my science
teacher told us that we would be delivering our experiment results to him via a paper, I
didnt quite see how that would work. But through some introspection on my trusty green
plaid couch and gearing by my teacher, I completed the paper.

I was writing for my non-major courses as well. These were the moment when my
couch came in handy. The green put me in the mood to write about Ireland and grass
covered hills. Writing like this showed me that writing is for more than just fiction, fun,
or analysis. Writing is powerful, connecting ideas or developing them, the writer is in
control of the reader, if even for a short amount of time.
I wrote for professionalism while at Loras. This is arguably the part that will come
in the most handy for my future career. Professional writing is supposedly the most
important writing capability in the working world. I learned professional writing along
the way but I was able to test it out while interning in the school library where I wrote
thinking about that experience and what I learned from it.
I also wrote for fun while at Loras. This is the part that I enjoyed the most. I got to
do what I enjoy so much, get feedback on it from my peers and professors, get graded on
it, and get college credit for something that I enjoy. I got to work on my wording,
character development, everything that is so important in prose writing, and enjoyed
every moment of it. I wrote stories, my fun hobby, for schoolwork.
The most valuable learning experience in relation to the Loras dispositions, is
definitely active learning. I treat every situation as a learning experience and, as I
continue with this through my life, will surely see further growth in myself outside of
school. This will affect me in my future extensively, especially concerning my future
career. Loras helped me become an active learner first by presenting myself as an
interested and efficient student in possible learning situations just to discover that there is
learning potential in everyday life.

I cant say that I see my future holding a certain career, or that Ill be living in a
certain city, or what major points of my life I will have lived through. But Im sure that
my interest and perspective of writing and reading will grow. Ive seen it grow and
develop over the years and feel that it will continue. It may grow from a future career or
whatever my future life holds, but however it grows, Im interested in seeing how it
affects my life and my future.
Ive seen my interest and ability as a reader and writer change over the years,
rounding off in my education at Loras. I see the varied impacts that my education has had
on how I learn, how I think, and how I write. When I write now, I see how my thinking
has changed with the evolution of my learning. I see a drastic change in how I write. My
growth as a writer has culminated in my education at Loras College.