Common Curriculum

This essay was written for my First Year Seminar my freshman year of college. The topic of this class was torture and its causes and consequences, which is why the theme of this essay is heavier. The essay is about the treatment of prisoners at the hand of U.S military members. Our assignment was to discuss the reasons why the soldiers in our book did what they did. The reason why I chose to include it in my portfolio is because it is a very poorly written essay. The formatting is awful, and it doesn't even have a date on it. Similarly, the content is also not great. This being said, this essay is a great example of how my writing has improved in the last 4 years. From this point forward, my writing improved tremendously. 

These 3 pieces of writing are from my common curriculum writing class, and they all form a part of a portfolio. This portfolio was created during my first online quarter, when the pandemic first began. The final assignment was to compile all the work we had done in the class. The reason I chose to include this portfolio is because it won the award for Best Portfolio at that year's Writing Showcase. From there, one of my pieces, “From Here and From There,” got published by Writ Large, a magazine at the University of Denver. I wrote these essays for a class that focused on media, which is why I use various photographs, interviews, and direct dialogue.