Best of Miami Portfolios 2001 - Units.muohio.edu

Scott Gruenbaum—Reflective Letter
Dear Miami University Writing Teachers,
I’ll admit outright that this portfolio presented me with something of a quandary. It called
for a work of fiction, a persuasive essay, and a response to a text— a balanced mix, to be sure—
but unfortunately, many of my favorite pieces did not exactly fit into those categories. Therefore,
I was not able to include several works which best illustrate who I am and where I come from. You
should count this a blessing. For some reason, most people I talk to do not truly appreciate a proper
hamster-worship, cheesecake, and/or attack-squirrel essay. Those who don’t immediately shuffle
slowly away usually end up making a few clever comments regarding medication. Anyway, after
a careful consideration of the saner pieces that actually somewhat fit the specifications, I came up
with... two out of the three.
The persuasive essay was a piece of cake, so to speak. In my Junior year, I wrote an
argumentative essay on the subject of animal testing. At the time I was totally opposed to any sort
of testing. I will not go so far as to state that writing this essay radically changed my outlook on
things, but over the course of my research, I did come to a new, perhaps more moderate,
understanding. Some readers of this and my other argumentative essays may think that I have no
real opinion, that I waver too much and don’t know what to think. Allow me to state for these
people that this is for the most part inaccurate. There may be some issues (football scores, current
fashions, etc.) that I don’t care about, but on most serious subjects, I try to take a moderate stance,
as I have so often found whether when researching animal testing or the destruction of the rainforest
that both sides have valid and important points, and any extremist view most often fails to solve
anything.
For me, the second most painful type of essay to write is a response to a text. The first most
difficult to write, of course, would be poetry. For your own sake, be glad this is a prose portfolio
(Douglas Adams fans, think Vogons...). Anyway, over the years I have written a great many
responses, some bad, some good, all quite boring. I mean, its great when Shakespeare uses the “s”
sound repeatedly to enhance his wave/ocean imagery, but writing a multi-page paper on that subject
is not on my “Lifetime Goals” list. However, as you English teachers seem to like responses, I
managed to scrounge up one on Hamlet that I personally feel is rather well done. I would expound
more on this subject, but it’s making me drowsy.
Now I had a problem. I’ve written a few short story-type pieces, but upon reexamination,
I found that none of them would properly meet the requirement. One was way too long at 16 pages,
one consisted entirely of inside jokes bashing the school’s marching band, and the third, the most
promising, was a) still too long, and b) was a little too... weird. It was meant as a parody of The
Crucible, but, as many of my things do, took on my personality:
Applegale: The rutabaga! It... it says its going to eat me! (She falls to the floor
and starts clucking like a chicken) The purple rutabaga is coming after me!
Therefore, I was forced to write an original short story. After a few bad starts, I decided to
try my hand at descriptive writing. I’ve always somewhat admired those authors who could talk so
much that it seemed to take 10 pages for anything to happen. So, when I wrote my story, I
52