Arianna Alvarez

11/19/2015
Final Portfolio Essay
URWRIT 1103
Ingram

So, whatd you learn?

When I first got to my UWRT 1103 class, I couldnt help but think, God,
another Dead Poets Society inspired teacher not surprised, its college.
Dont get me wrong, I admire Dead Poets Society, but I simply couldnt
stomach the idea of having a quiz based on a syllabus and the vague and
non-specific, let alone writing about the syllabus for my mid-term, it was all
very unconventional. This sentence is worded strangely In a number of
weeks and questionable assignments, I started to understand. I opened my
eyes to my true literary voice and understanding to UWRT. I will look back to
the assignments (drafts, finals, whatsoever) that I was given during my time
in UWRT and Ill ultimately look at how I grew as a writer. In summary, I
deserve an A and I will explain my reasoning of my decision by reflecting to
my assignments and the online portfolio that I executed.
Moreover, the major assignments that I executed included that of the
multi-genre project, midterm paper, and exploratory essay. The assignments
guided me tremendously with my experience in the class because they were
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all different in their own way. In high school, I wrote portfolios/essays about
a literary work and the assignments never changed, I wanted variety but it
was the same thing every day for a semester. I needed a right structure,
page amount, grammar, voice and I was molded to be this writer in my high
school career. It was quite bothersome to me, but I got accustomed to it.
In transition, the assignments in UWRT are different, I can write how I want to
write and I demonstrated my excitement with the assignments that I was
given. For example, my midterm served the purpose for reflecting upon the
syllabus of UWRT, I thought it was some sort of joke because it was odd to
question a syllabus, why question a syllabus? To my dismay, when I began to
write my paper, I understood that my basic understanding of a class is the
most vital comprehensive tool that student can learn, as I stated in my
midterm, questioning assignments will be a new task of me and my plan
is to ask myself what an assignment is asking for and what questions can be
drawn. The midterm really helped me with comprehending the course, as a
whole, it aided my understanding about the purpose for it as well. In
addition, the midterm created a greater understanding with my strengths
and weaknesses within the lines of the key concept of UWRIT, thus I can
conclude that I have learned from these strengths/weaknesses. The Key
Concepts that I was interested in were
Rhetoric Knowledge
Multi-modality of print & digital texts
and making connections.
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The Key Concepts that I listed are those that I either found tough to
conquer or easy to comprehend. Rhetoric knowledge is a concept that I felt
comfortable with ever since my junior year in high school, the rhetorical
invention by Aristotle is the reason why any paper would have success. I
understood this early on. Pathos, ethos, and logos were utilized in my works
and I learned that ethos is just as important as logos and pathos, which I
didnt realize early on. What I didnt know early on, was the idea of multimodality and digital texts? What the hell was multi-modality and how could I
put this in a digital text? I saw it on the syllabus and studied these five
aspects for the syllabus quiz, but I never really got it. Upon this rude
awakening of having to understand more UWRT jargon, Ms. Ingram passed
out a hand out. It was a short poem, oddly structured, with less than tenfifteen words. I didnt understand some of the concepts before this hand-out
and after looking at the poem for quite a while, I got it. I understood multimodality and made a connection with it through digital texts. Technology is
wonderful. Speaking of connections, I had a pretty tough time with it, seems
idiotic for myself to be stumped in making the pieces of the puzzles come
together but in UWRIT, I couldnt bring myself to a complete understanding
with making inferences about assignments. I learned quickly that Ms. Ingram
wont just assign work just for the heck of it; theyre all connected with
another one. For example, the multi-genre project wasnt just a self-interest
project, it was for the purpose of utilizing a multi-modal system along with
various means of rhetoric to convey a message to an audience. You want to
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know whats funny? I didnt know my audience at all, except for Ms. Ingram.
When asked who is your audience? Who are you targeting to? I drew a
blank. Its incredibly shocking that I couldnt find the words for what my
audience is, I didnt think about it much. After a couple of minutes of
thinking, the light bulb above my head flickered. I made a connection from
UWRT towards the purpose of my e-portfolio. In addition, I felt as if it was
just the first step towards the concept of making connections. I was excited.
Before questioning and reflecting upon the syllabus and various key
concepts, I questioned what I was passionate about. I explored my way
within the depths of American structuralism.
In transition, the exploratory essay was the first assignment that I
completed without much question to the assignment, I should write about
my passion, right? Easy enough. I didnt think it would be much to think
about except for writing about my passions against the American capitalist
system that structuralizes within the top tier of the economic class. One of
my quotes from my essay was the following I am passionate about
structure. Different, right? One might say there is a structured outline to
introduce ones purpose within a paper. One might agree with structure, one
might not. Structure is great and all, but what if its just awful and
questionable? My quote not only fit my passion on American capitalist
structure, but also that of my paper. The first few drafts were brutal, I didnt
know what kind of structure I was going upon and how to really incorporate
pathos within the paper. When I was evaluated by a peer, it was marked up
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and down with black pen, I couldnt help but feel that it was a pile of dung of
a paper. I quickly learned that I needed peer evaluation because all of my
papers arent going to be golden. My peer stated many suggestions such as
I would add examples how this (Marxist Theory of Capitalism) ties to
classes in America, i.e. bankers vs. main street blue collar. Very nice
insight from my peer, Bilqees. Along with Bilgees suggestions, Ms. Ingram
noticing my comma splices in my second draft proved to be a helpful piece
of feedback. I didnt know what comma splices were until my exploratory
essay and it was odd finding about during my freshman year of college.
Moreover, finding about comma splices helped me as a student because now
I know that it is a thing to fix and to revert from in future essays. Ms. Ingram
stated the downfall from my exploratory essay in the following, Comma
Splices not ending sentences is something that will inhibit all your readers
from understanding and enjoying your work which is worth reading! You
dont want punctuation to stand in the way of your ideas. I completely
agree with this statement and Im glad the Ms. Ingram brought this to light. I
never thought I would have a problem with my grammar, Im glad I have
something to learn from this semester. Along with my final drafts from each
assignment, I also learned from the writers choice artifacts.

Writers Choice Artifacts

The choice that I made for my writers choice was a handout with a
short poem and another handout from Ms. Ingram regarding our Midterm,
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along with suggestions to take for editing the midterm. The first writers
choice was that made me think about UWRT in a different perspective, the
idea of multi-modality wasnt one that I thought I would have to think about.
What the hell was multi-modality? I didnt quite understand this until I was
given this short poem that looked rather odd. The poem had less than
twenty-five words and the structure of the poem was in a specific way, thats
when I learned about multi-modality. The poem filled the molds of certain
aspects of multi-modality which was visually, linguistically, and special. I
didnt know that I would get something out of short poem from Ms. Ingram,
everything from Ms. Ingram had a purpose, I realized that. The second
artifact was the half-sheet that served as feedback from Ms. Ingram, it was
served very useful for my learning half-way through UWRT. The feedback
was needed due to my state of being lost and not having myself a
compass, within my journey in UWRT. I needed feedback because I didnt
know what I was doing, to be completely honest. The feedback that I was
given summed up in my own words: your paragraphs are too damn long. I
agree completely. Its not like Im Charles Dickens; I cant write long
paragraphs as eloquently as he can, obviously. It can to me, then and there,
I have to stop trying to write like someone Im not. Im not Charles Dickens
and I never will be. I love his writing though, thats one thing I cant deny
that.
Sunflowers Need to Grow Somehow

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How did I grow into a better writer? For starters, I labeled the titles of
my works when I used to just label the paper by the assignment itself. I
labeled my exploratory essay, Exploratory Essay, for the longest time until
Ms. Ingram stated that I needed a title. It may seem trivial that I didnt know
this simple fact, but I grew somewhat with the titles. In the realm of my
inquiry projects, I think I grew tremendously from each project that I did. The
first draft of my exploratory essay was very textual and I didnt give my all
until page four of my exploratory essay. In my final draft of my exploratory
essay, I utilized a personal anecdote to solidify my essay and began to write
my passion upon the ones that I love, my family and the connections to
what I brought about my research. After the exploratory essay, I had to
write about the Key Concepts, I had no clue how to do this. After reading
the assignment sheet endlessly, I saw that I had to bring my own
experiences in UWRT to fully reflect on those key concepts. When I got my
half-sheet for the Midterm, there were many suggestions that I had to take in
place in order to not get a low A. In my final, I didnt mention anything about
peer review and I didnt make sure to look over my Midterm for silly
mistakes. In result, I made sure that I fixed these issues and I took note of
really reflecting on my works for future assignments. In addition, I think that
my writing has grown incredibly since my senior year of high school. I
acknowledge who I am writing to and why Im even writing something in the
first place. I never considered this prior to UWRT and Ive said this plenty of
times throughout the course. I started UWRT with a reluctant start to this
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new way of thinking and writing, but now I can fully consider these methods
of writing. Methods such as making sure pathos is the first thing a writer is
to consider when producing a work, establishing an audience, inquiring about
the work and having the knowledge to make sophisticated connections in
order to fully comprehend what you want to get out of your work.
The E-Portfolio (ariannalikestomatoes.weebly.com)
Speaking of ones work, I had all work into an e-portfolio. What exactly
is an e-portfolio? It is a wonderful online journal that keeps all of ones
written works in a proper URL! Sounds pretty dandy, huh? My e-portfolio has
all of the work that Ive conducted during my time at UWRT, those works
including: The Final Portfolio Essay (of greater importance), Multi-Genre
Project, Midterm, Exploratory essay, visual bibliography, all seven blog posts,
and artifacts. In regards to my artifacts, the way I organized them was to be
bunch together in one page, not in an individual page for each piece of my
work. I chose this because I had various artifacts that didnt correlate to my
works to a great extent (except drafts) because they all contributed to my
knowledge along the lines of writing. In addition, my process works
consisted of two warm-ups, focus questions, and a draft. The two warm-ups
helped me with brainstorming certain aspects for the multi-genre project (the
use of multi-modality) and my exploratory essay. I personally liked the warm
up that involved getting into our memories and delving into these new ways
of thinking, it really helped with my final draft of the Exploratory essay. In
addition to the warm up, the second draft of the Exploratory essay helped
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me realize that I had a lot to edit and to consider incorporating with my

essay. I found out about comma splices and I knew I needed to revise my
essay tremendously. In transition, the process artifacts go hand in hand with
feedback artifacts. My feedback artifacts consisted of my Exploratory Essay
draft #2, I used the note from Ms. Ingram from the back and a page marking
my comma splices along with Bilqees suggestions on the paper. The two
feedback artifacts helped me with knowing how and what to revise,
something I dont think I could have done by myself. The feedback artifacts
were there for a good reason, they probably changed my performance in
UWRT. I organized all of my works in one column, from the most important to
the least. The most important being FPE and the least being my contact
information. Ms. Ingram stated to me personally that I needed my FPE to be
visible as much as possible. I used to have my FPE under an umbrella for the
other works and I made immediate changes. In addition to the design of my
E-Portfolio, I made sure to utilize the multi-modality aspects that were taught
into my portfolio because I didnt want my portfolio to be some boring
website. I utilized most of the multi-modality aspects: spatially,
linguistically, gesturally, and visually. I made sure that my essay had all of
these qualities before I finally decided that it was perfect.
Multi-Modality
In the spectrum of multi-modality, I will explain how I used these
concepts into my work. Spatially, I made sure the organization of e-portfolio
was clean-cut and easily navigable for viewers by making a column of my
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important works from the most importance to least. Linguistically, in my

home page, I wrote with the typical blog tone. I wanted readers to feel
comfortable and at home when reading my blog. I didnt want to sound too
stiff so the use of diction really went in my favor when it came to writing
freely. Gesturally, I utilized pictures and GIFs to make the reader guide their
eyes to a specific region of the page. I liked using pictures and GIFS
because theyre extremely fun and easy to work with when using a blog.
Visually, the color and layout of my e-portfolio made it look, like I said, clean
cut. I didnt want to overwhelm the reader with too much color in the layout,
thus its completely white. Though, there are some words and statements
that do have different colors and fonts because I want the reader to still be
interested with my blog. I didnt want to just have one color (black) for my
whole blog, thatd be depressing.
In conclusion, with all of the work that I did in the course, I think I can
be deserving of an A. I reflected upon numerous things that I didnt think I
could before the course, wrote intensively upon numerous subjects, and got
out of my comfort zone. It was a pretty tough process but I can conclude
that with tough journeys come amazing awards. The course of UWRT taught
me things that I couldnt imagine to be taught in a college course but here
we all. It was a nice ride.

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