Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, who deserves the best grade of them all?

Dear Dr. O’Rourke,

When I first entered this class I saw it as a basic English course that I needed to get out of the way so I could continue on to my higher level courses. It being a Gen. Ed. didn’t motivate me much either, as everyone on the campus would be taking it sooner or later. All in all, I honestly wasn’t expecting much. However, dear old English 106 proved me wrong. What you expected from us was high level work, and I was completely lost at first, having only written prompts to novels my entire senior year of high school. So being asked to write an academic paper that didn’t rely on just a single book made my head spin a bit.
My portfolio reveals my understanding of being able to compile a large amount of information into a single, well synthesized essay. I’ve noticed that my grammar has gotten better as well as my ability to summarize, thanks to the annotated bibliography. I think overall my portfolio reflects what I wanted to write. I admit that it isn’t my style as much as I wish it would be, but being a research paper leaves very little room for passive voice.
I chose this topic because I myself am interested in going into journalism as a minor. What better way to prepare for a field of knowledge than to research all of the little bits and pieces that go in it? Ever since I heard about anonymous sources I’ve always been curious about why they were used. Why couldn’t the people just say their name and be done with it? I learned a lot though from working on my topic of anonymous sources. Going into the paper, I believed that anonymous sourcing shouldn’t be used at all in any circumstance. I didn’t see any benefits from it, just people who were too scared to allow their name to be used. If that was the case, then the person shouldn’t have volunteered information in the first place! Now though, I’ve come to understand why people prefer to remain anonymous. It’s not just a matter of being scared; it could physically threaten them, they could lose respect, lose their job… all for trying to share something with the public. In that sense, their idea of hiding shouldn’t be seen as cowardly, but as courageous for even daring to put forth information at all.
There are so many little facets that I’ve worked hard on for this portfolio. Tracking down valid sources of information for my topic took quite some time, since many articles on the subject wouldn’t be considered scholarly. By that, meaning most of the articles I found were from editors of newspapers reflecting on the use of anonymous sourcing.