Wise 1 Diamond Plummer Wise Prof.

Ingram Portfolio Essay 12/6/13 Portfolio Essay Organization & Key Concepts My e-Portfolio will contain the final drafts of the portfolio essay first, followed by the mid-term, the genre analysis and high school literacy narrative. After that you will be able to find all of my blog entries, some feedback, process work, and writers notebook artifacts. The organization of my e-Portfolio is set up this way because it seemed to flow a lot better and more to the point. I am not a person who likes to beat around the bush much, so I did not want my page to exemplify that trait either. Moreover, being in this English class I have learned much and I have grown. This paper will hopefully guide you step by step of how I have grown as a writer. The two key concepts that I was engaged with while being in this course are risk taking and critical thinking. They were very important and imperative to my growth and maturity as a writer in this class. Genre Study (1 WNA, 2PWA, and 1FA) Even though the genre analysis paper was one of the hardest papers I have ever written, especially in this course, it was the one that taught me the most. One of the main things that these two key concepts helped me with was my genre analysis. One of the most difficult parts of my genre analysis was trying to understand what I needed to analyze: genre. In my paper I had to take the risk of really researching and getting to know what genre actually meant when dealing with high school and college. For example in my first draft, part one, of my genre analysis gave an example of genre, One of the main things that are shown through my literary analysis is that a lot of what I said is pretty much to the point. Yes, there are some details, but mostly I described what is was and directly stated what was significant about it. To add to that, I had to summarize the text once I pointed out the significance of it. Maybe you all have never had this little problem called condensing, but fortunately I ran in to it more than once. This was difficult to do, but it paid off in the long run because it showed me how to get to the point in my essays and papers Here was an example of critical thinking when it comes to the high school genre. Also, I tried to demonstrate how I understood that there even was a high school genre and how I could relate to it. In this excerpt I was able to describe how I learned how to condense my thoughts which ended

Wise 2 up helping me in the future once I got to college. Ironically, the genre study was where I actually exercised this skill I learned and this is what helped me get through the critical thinking aspect of the assignment. This skill predominately helped me in class; I was able to apply this skill to my work and thought process in class. I learned to condense responses and I learned how to condense my writing and get to the point. Another example of this would be an excerpt from my readers response letter, The only way to become a better writer is to first, not put up so many boundaries on the actual format of writing. Through my high school experiences with writing, I have never actually been taught how to write the right way, it has always been the standard format. This article has helped me realize that that is not considered teaching. For example, the three body paragraphs only give you three topics or ideas to expound upon. Thats it I had to take a risk to even write about writing in my reader response letter. The response letter was originally speaking of the 5-paragraph essay and how common it is. I was able to condense my writing and explain exactly what I wanted my audience to know. In lines four and five I explained my point how it relates to me and my writing abilities. Learning this skill was very helpful throughout my time taking this class. Luckily, you had us complete this essay in parts. Each of these was basically done one by one and each of them were to be considered drafts until it was time for us to turn in the finished product. Gladly, even though we turned in the finished product to you it was still considered a draft. Thank god you gave me feedback on this draft. This draft (not including the whole entire analysis) required a great amount of critical thinking. It was so difficult to think of how to analyze genre. I mean who can do it with ease? Yeah, the list of people who can is very few. Here is an example of one piece of the draft and following it will be the feedback you gave me, With that being said, the memoir analysis has to have certain key terms and there are certain aspects of a text that have to be pointed out such as: the authors purpose, pros and cons, setting, themes, metaphors etc The feedback you gave me was, Youve listed some rules of literary analysis here. Others? this shows some of my growth! Even though my draft as a whole was a little messy to me, I can see the growth. I had never thought of the actual rules of literary analysis and genre until then. I never really tried to think outside or inside of the box with writing, I just wrote. But this helped me understand that there are guidelines to certain types of genre because if there wasnt there would not be different genres would there? This was very helpful and beneficial to my growth in class. High School Literary Narrative (1FA & 1PWA) My high school literary narrative was the first paper I wrote in this class and it was also the most enjoyable. Even though it was a risk to write this paper, I actually used dialogue here and there in the narrative. Here is an example of some of the dialogue that was used,

Wise 3 Hello class of 2013 and welcome to your Theory of Knowledge class. First I would like to start off with an ice-breaker I need everyone to stand up and introduce themselves, give us your name, where you are from and a hobby you have. We will start with this young lady sitting in the front row. Please stand and tell us about yourself, Mr. Sherwin insisted. Well my name is Diamond, like the jewel. I am originally from Durham, but I live here in Garner. My favorite hobby is playing video games on the weekends. Yeah, so that is it! I said as I eased my way back in to my seat. Hey Diamond, is it true, wait do not take offense to this I am just asking. Do all black people really put hot sauce on everything, like chitterlings and food, stuff like that? one of the girls sitting next to me said quite loudly. This quote demonstrates one of the key concepts that I used which was risk taking. I am not too good when it comes to dialogue. It is difficult for me to format it, punctuation and if it is a fictional essay I was writing then it would have been difficult for me to come up with a random conversation. Overall, I am not comfortable with using dialogue, but you encouraged the class to step outside of our boundaries. The whole essay was extremely helpful for me when it comes to my writing abilities. You also encourage the class to write about whatever we wanted, not mandatory outline or stepby-step rubric we had to follow. This was also new to me. It caused me to think critically about writing in itself. I remember when you gave us an assignment when we had read the two passages in our book, Understanding Writing Assignments: Tips & Techniques and Tips for College Writing Success and it really helped me learn exactly what you were teaching, well letting us as the student writers figure out: writing. That is it, you werent trying to get us to write a specific way, yes you may have had a rubric, but the rubrics did not bind us up to talking about just one specific thing. We had so many avenues we could have taken as long as we got the point across. That is what made the essay challenging, but interesting I loved it. I had to step out of my comfort zone and actually do something that I was not confident enough with. I had to let my feelings and trust that I could write without a rubric, something restraining me to only one avenue of writing. Furthermore, some of the feedback that I received on my first draft of the literary narrative from my peers were really helpful comments. This was very important to me because I felt as if my points had been made and I felt as if my audience really connected with my story, for example one of my peers said,

Wise 4 Great paper Diamond, I loved how you wrote about something so personal. You also added some humor which really made the paper! You have a really good point in your paper. This gave me some more confidence in my writing. I was able to approach each paper with a positive outlook and not be negative with my writing because that can cause anyone to not do their best if they dont start with a positive attitude. Also, with this one being my first draft I was able to receive a little feedback on whether or not some things in my narrative were clear or if I had some repetitiveness in my narrative. Of course, since this was my first piece of work that was done in your class I had some Midterm & Blogs (1WNA)

While completing my midterm I realized how much I really enjoyed this class and that I am actually learning some things. There was something that I thought was really interesting in my midterm that I brought up. I gave an example of how college writing is different from high school writing, here is a piece of it, The levels and detail of writing that I am learning in college are totally different from what I learned in high school. In college, I must have a scholarly outlook on writing and understand what it is for, why it is used, how it is used and even where! College literally takes writing and breaks down all of its components, it is impossible not to know how to understand writing once it is dissected as much as it has in this class I loved this part of my midterm, it really stuck out to me because college writing and this class helped me understand writing. It helped me see that there does not have to be an art for writing it is used in every form and every shape. This was important to me because I lost my love for writing and all of the confidence that I use to have with it when I dealt with high school writing classes. But now I have it back because I know what writing is now that I have come and experienced college writing. That is what all of the critical thinking was for, it was for true understanding. Now I know that procrastination is not bad when it comes to writing, if we dont have inspiration then we just dont have it at the time, it does not mean that we cannot write well it means we may just have writers block. In relation to this, my fifth reader response letter described what a good writer consisted of, A good writer is one who is able to know how to write and express their own thoughts down on paper without having read Writing for Dummies or Writing: 101. I have always had thoughts in my head and ideas of trying to be some poetic writer that gives all of these in depth meanings of life and how the glass is half-full instead of half-empty. The problem is the more I try to do what I think is good writing the more I will not be a writer at all. The road to good writing is to writenaturally, un-natural, holistically, logically, dumbly, smartly, any type of -ly (grammar) you want because it starts with you me and everyone else

Wise 5 This describes what I learned as I completed my midterm. College writing courses make you think critically and take risks so you can understand what a good writer is. Me being a writer I have to endure difficult essay, narratives, blog posts etc. Speaking of blogs, they were essential to my growth as well. I saw them as an outlet to express myself and give other people besides my peers and you to see my thoughts. This was the first time I had ever done a blog and it was amazing. I enjoyed them and saw them to be extremely valuable to the class because Do I Deserve an A? (1 WC) In my UCOL class, with Professor Niesha Douglas, I had to write a paper describing a project that we completed in her class called a vision board. It is exactly what it says, a board with a vision on it. I put so many pictures of places I wanted to go, things I wanted to do, people I wanted to meet, and last but not least what I wanted to do when I got older. I originally wanted to become a family doctor, but I was not passionate about it. Remember when we talked about literacy and how it relates to more than just writing? Well little did I know it relates to morals and values also. Upon completing my presentation of my vision board I realized I did not know what my passion was, I knew I wanted to help people become healthier and watch them go from sickness to health, but being a family doctor was not for me. Here is an excerpt from my essay I wrote about the vision board, I decided that I still wanted to stay within the health field, but I will take a different route. Today I had a meeting with my academic advisor and I changed my major from biology to Pre-Kinesiology. I am excited to start this new health track and someday, maybe, go to graduate school studying sports medicine. I am so excited I actually think this is less of a commitment. Yes, it will still demand time and effort, but not as much as if I were to have the Primary Care Physician profession. Thank you so much Prof. Douglas for helping me find my passion!