Dear Portfolio Committee,

My name is Elizabeth Purdy and I am a nursing student. I am a new mother my daughter is now four months old and I took my first class in the hospital 2 days after my daughter was born with my nurses telling me I’m crazy for starting school with a brand new baby. If I wasn’t nervous enough they didn’t help make me get ready to do this but I looked at my daughter and realized, I need to do this so I can give my daughter the best life possible. I live in a homeless shelter and I want to someday own a home. I also am a recovering addict with one year clean and I am very grateful for this opportunity to change my life. I was nervous to start this English class because I struggle with spelling and punctuation. I also struggled with research papers because I could never tell what a reliable site to use was and what wasn’t. I knew with a good teacher and some guidance that I would do fine. I lucked out though, I got an amazing teacher that was very helpful and willing to guide me right to where I needed to be. That is why I am glad to show you the three essays that follow.

 

My first piece which is my favorite is “family and relationships”. This was the one of our first assignments but it was the best. This assignment was better than any counseling appointment I’ve had. I was able to give my classmates some real insight on people that battle addiction. I was able to show my classmates that addiction is a real problem and not only does the addict suffer but the family does too. During this essay you will read some of the harder thing I had gone threw in my life and some that don’t seem so bad but they bother me still to this day. You will read about how my family disowned me and how a year later we will are building a strong healthy relationship. I used to ask myself all the time why things would happen to me that were so terrible and now today I know why. I needed to go through those things to be the best woman I am today. I hope you enjoy reading about how addiction destroys people’s lives and how things can change, one day at a time.

 

The second essay I would like you to read is about my fiancé, Michael. It’s called “Ethnography Plugged in”. I enjoyed writing this because this was a question I always had in the back of my mind. He would constantly be plugged into his phone and always be listening to music and I could never figure out why. I was forced to ask when this essay came along. To no avail I found out. I will leave it to you to read this paper and figure out why he’s always listening to his music. I describe his what he looks like and what his routine is like from day to day and also what he chooses to listen to. I give you as much insight as he would give to me. When I was interviewing him for this paper I felt as if I was a dentist trying to pull a tooth but I believe I captured this as best I could. So please read on and find out why Michael is always plugged into his phone listening to music.

 

The final essay was the most difficult. It was a research paper called “Human trafficking.” I struggled finding reliable sources until I found BBC news. This paper is on how human trafficking in china is at an all-time high and how the government does nothing about it. It gives you a vivid image of how gangs steal children and make them slaves to sex and drugs. It was difficult for me to write this because as you know I have a daughter and I couldn’t even imagine doing some of the things these people do to innocent children. I almost got sick reading some of the articles I found. But I want people to be aware of the things that go on in other countries, and I hope to someday be able to help save some of these children from the gangs and terrifying things that people do to these innocent children. So I wrote this paper to make others aware of this ongoing issue. I hope you learn something from this paper and maybe one day if you have an opportunity to save a child from another country you do, because who knows what is going to happen to that child next.

 

I feel I have become a strong writer from this English class and I hope that these writing show how much I have improved. I feel my spelling had drastically changed and my research paper was done well. I feel like I finally know how to do a research paper properly and that’s all thanks to this class. I am grateful I had the opportunity to take this online English class especially during the hard times I have been endouring but I feel it’s all made me grow to be a strong young woman who is ready to pursue my dreams of being a RN. I hope you enjoy my writings just as much as I enjoyed writing them.

 

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Purdy