Burwell 1 Elizabeth Burwell Susan Ingram English 1101 22 November 2013 Portfolio Essay When looking at my portfolio, I feel

that the organization is very easy to follow and understand. I organized it with each piece on one page. Putting the final draft along with other drafts, brainstorming, outlines and class work involving the essay. I think that organizing my portfolio this way has made it a lot easier for you to see the writing process of each piece. Since this course has really focused on the writing process and how to make your own writing process better, showing this in the portfolio is an important thing. I believe that every piece I have written this semester has a different writing process. I guess you can say that is my writing process. I dont believe that I do the same thing for every prompt given. I take each prompt as it is and brainstorm the best way for each prompt. Thats why showing my writing process helps you understand how and why I got to the final product. I feel that I theme throughout most of my writing is history. Being a history major, of course I love history. My main focus of two of my writing, the literacy narrative and the gene study, talk about my days in my high school APUSH class. I write about this class so much because it is the reason that I choose to be a history major. I believe that if I would have not taken that class and had the experience I did in it, I would not have changed my studies to history. I think that my writing throughout this semester has shown my love for history because I wrote about it so much. Writing about my learning experience in my literacy narrative showed

Burwell 2 you how much I both hated and enjoyed history all at the same time. Analyzing a prompt I actually wrote from in APUSH showed you how taking the course improved my writing. I will talk more about this in my gene study paragraph. Literacy Narrative When looking back to the high school literacy narrative at the beginning of the semester, I am truly proud of this piece. I really enjoyed writing it and reflecting on the times I had in that class. I put this piece as one of the first things to look at because I wanted to show you how good my writing can be. I wrote about my APUSH class because I believe that I really learned a lot from this class. This essay shows the reasons why I am in college studying what I am studying. As I talked about in my theme paragraph, if I would not have taken this class and done so well on the exam, I would have never changed my major to what I am now, history. I think that through taking this class, it prepared me a lot for college. I choose to write this paper in a diary format to show the feelings I was having each and every step of the course. It shows my anger, my excitement and even my despair. I feel that I could not have explain those feelings in any other format. Writing the paper in present tense also adds more emotion to it. Using action verbs that put you in the moment with me makes you feel like youre there listening to my every thought. As she jumps right into the invasion of Poland Im right there with her, I know what shes going to say before she says it. Somethings throw me off guard because I hadnt heard them before but I continue to love every minute of this lecture for once. Im answering every question she asks, practically completing her sentences. Its like Im on Adderall or something. Im so focused on what shes saying. This piece from my writing shows how putting it in present tense make you feel all my emotions This is my favorite piece of writing from this semester because of the format. I am so proud of myself for getting out of my

Burwell 3 comfort zone and writing in a way I have never written before. This paper was a part of my risk taking in the course. I did something different that Im not used too. This writing has truly helped me understand myself not only as a writer in college but I writer in general. Gene Study The next assignment that you see on my blog is my genre study. Throughout writing this paper, I was thoroughly confused and had to continue to look of the guidelines over and over again. I didnt understand how I was going to put these two completely different topics into one paper. Reading over the assignment sheet helped me understand each step of the paper. I think that my writing process for this piece was different than any of the other ones. Since we had questions that would help us write the paper, I choose to answer them to gather my thoughts and think about what I was going to write for this paper. I put this on my portfolio because it really showed my brainstorming and how I analyzed each piece of writing. I didnt do this in any other writing. I think having the questions there really helped me analyze the writing. I didnt know how to analyze anything before this assignment. If it wasnt for the assignment sheet and the questions, I dont think I could have even gotten started on this paper. As I stated in my theme paragraph, I also wrote the first part of this paper on the subject of history. I choose to analyze a prompt from my APUSH class. Describe and account for changes in the American presidency between 1960 and 1975, as symbolized by Kennedys Camelot, Johnsons Great Society and Nixons Watergate. In your answer, address the powers of the presidency and the role of the media. When taking the class, we were asked to answer the prompt in 35 minutes. It was to prepare us for the exam. I had done this many times before and not been happy with my writing. After writing this prompt, I felt great. I knew that I had gotten all the things I needed to down in the time given. This was one of the favorite writing

Burwell 4 experiences in high school and Im glad that I choose this prompt to analyze. It made me really think about why the writers may have chosen this prompt. It also helped me reflect on what I was thinking about as an audience to the prompt. Actually answering the questions for this prompt was a very difficult task. Since it is such a short writing, it was hard to find the answers to the questions within it. I also think this brought difficulty to my writing of this paper. When choosing my college writing to analyze, I decided to write about one of my blog post. I think that analyzing this really helped me understand why we wrote the blog post this semester. I think that the process of writing my paper helped me understand the "Shitty First Drafts" method. This method helped me get all of my thoughts and ideas out and onto the paper. Revising this paper was easy because all I had to do was add detail and organize it better. This quote from one of my blogs reflects my literacy narrative. Writing down my thoughts about how I have always had a hard time with writing and how I had improved it in this paper helped me continue to improve it. Midterm When looking back at my midterm assignment I now understand how it was so helpful to do. Before, I didnt understand why so much reflection was necessary. I think that reading the paper has actually helped me write this essay and put together my portfolio. Throughout the rest of this course I think I also want to inquire some better writing skills while also learning how to help better influence my peers writing. I think that the best place for me to better my writing skills is with revision of my papers. I think that if I could better understand how revising a paper works my papers would turn out better. This quote has really helped me grasp the reasons for this portfolio. It has also helped me write this essay. I think that learning to revise after writing this helped me now when putting together the portfolio and revising all of my

Burwell 5 papers. The reflection of the class thus far in the semester helped me understand why we did the things we did and how they had helped me become a better writer. Since some of the questions were about the syllabus, I can now understand how helpful the syllabus was in this course. It not only professionally told me what to expect in this course but it also gave me ideas to help improve my writing. Blog The Blog has been one of my favorite assignments this whole semester. As an incoming freshman experience everything college has to offer for the first time, reflecting on it all through writing has been helpful. When I begin to write a paper, I feel that just going at in head first works. I try to write all my ideas out in a brainstorm and then just go right into the paper. Sometimes this works for me if I have a good idea as too what I want to write about and sometimes it takes so much longer because I have no clue what to write about. This is one of my favorite things I wrote about in the blog. I was discussing the literacy narrative. Talking about my writing process during this time really helped me understand my writing process all together. I understand now why this assignment was so important. It helped me not only think about things in this class but also my freshman year as a whole. I have always wanted to blog but I never stick with it. Being focused to write about things made it easier the keep up with blogging. I really enjoy looking back at it now and thinking about the struggles I was having at the beginning of the year and how I have grown thus far as a college student. As I look through my portfolios finished product, I can see all the hard work and effort I have put into it. Spending countless hours revising my papers to put them in tip top shape and more countless hours putting them onto my website has been a real challenge. I can see how much I have grown throughout this semester and how my writing process has changed. I believe

Burwell 6 that because of the hard work and effort I have put into not only completing my portfolio but also understanding the reason behind things we did in class and the key concepts we discussed, I deserve an A on this assignment. I think that my website is A worthy because how organized and neat it is. I believe that my layout is easy to follow and really shows the reason why I put assignments where I did. After spending so much time on this assignment, I am really proud of all the work I did this semester. I am glad to share all of this on my portfolio. I believe that all of these papers and essays reflect my writing growth throughout this semester.