Cover letter for response paper

Dear Blog Reader,

I feel the need to write a cover letter about this paper as the story behind is so utterly enthralling. So here it goes.

So, before spring break, after we finished Slaughterhouse-Five, Mr. Mitchell wisely advised us to jot down some notes about the book so that we would be able to write about the book after a whole, wonderful week away. I, being the conscientious student that I am, did jot down a couple ideas in my notebook. Unfortunately, when I returned from the sun and sand of Costa Rica to the cold, clouds of Champaign, I revisited my notes only to find that I had completely forgotten all points supporting the theses in my notebook. (The relaxation of the week had a poor effect on my mind.) So that was pretty frustrating because I had a bunch of ideas that had remained incomplete and useless.

I decided to revisit the book to try and refresh my memory and look at passages I had marked and notes I had scrawled that could aid me in my quest for a topic. I needed a starting point for my search and cleverly chose the first chapter because it is first and because it is a really unique way to start a book. I marked a few passages and jotted down some observations but nothing struck me. I continued through different sections of the book that stood out in my mind and proceeded similarly. When I was done, I had four passages marked and a bunch of scattered notes, but one passage that I hadn't even marked continued to stand out to me.

I read and re-read that passage in question but I was unable to articulate what it was about the passage that made it seem significant to me. Then the idea hit me: I would do a passage explication. Thinking back to the days of Sophomore English, I remembered my Paradise Lost paper that explicated a section of the epic poem. That paper not being my best work, I was hesitant to start writing this paper in the fear that I wouldn't be able to come up with enough interesting, relevant observations about my extremely short passage to fill accomplish the page requirement. My other fear was that a passage any longer would lead to an lengthy paper with little focus. Finally, I concluded that I was a year more experienced and much more interested and, though explicating passages has not been my forte in the past, I wanted to just go for it. One gets bored of continuously producing response papers of the same style.

The paper is finished and the ordeal over.

Sincerely,
Juliana Trach