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Carson S. Barrow

UWRT 1103

Ms. Suzanne Ingram

3 December 2015

Final Portfolio Essay

This paper will be an overall reflection of my e-Portfolio project that I have slaved over

for countless hours during this semester of college. There are many different documents and

helpful things that must all come together in order to create a final product that is worth taking

home. All of the assignments that have been completed this semester play a crucial role in

building the skills needed to hit this project out of the park. The formatting of the e-Portfolio

must also be presented in a way that keeps the reader going through the material and continuing

forward with reading the things associated. Keeping in mind the Key Concepts of writing was

also a useful tool in the progression of this project. The subheadings to follow will discuss

different categories of the process of making this project and how they are conducive to a

creative atmosphere in the world that is writing.

Organization and Formatting:

The organization of my e-Portfolio was a simple, yet navigable design. The ease of using

Wix to organize the information has been a major plus to the construction of the project, as I said

in one of my Writer’s Notebook entries. I also discussed some initial bugs that turned out to be

user error, where I said, and I quote: “I had trouble initially getting the Scribd HTML document

converter to work.” and “I had some initial problems getting my embedded documents to go on

only the page I needed them to show up on.” I was eventually able to fix these problems without

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trouble after getting accustomed to Wix and Scribd. I chose the way I set up the website as an

extension of my own personal preference. Nothing bothers me more than a website where it is

difficult to access the information that is being searched for. The University of North Carolina at

Charlotte’s websites are on this list of pet-peeves, but that’s a story for another day. I know the

requirements, I know what is needed to complete the project, and I know what the reader wants

to see: an organized, finished project. Therefore, I placed the required documents of the e-

Portfolio all under a single tab in order so they could be accessed. In these components, I

preferred to use text analyses in the form of captions beneath each embedded document in order

to convey my thoughts on each piece. I found this to be an organized and simple way of

communicating the info. On my “Home” and “About Me” pages, I included captioned and

uncaptioned pictures of myself and other important things that define who I am this semester. I

also introduce the topic of the research paper on the homepage where I said: “My research topic

is on the effects that video games can pose onto human beings.” This gives the reader an

understanding of what the biggest piece of the e-Portfolio will be about early on in exploring the

pages. I believe that pictures will catch the eyes and the attention of people who come across the

site, further enticing them to click on the other tabs and navigate through the content. Generally,

I am not a person who enjoys using pictures as a way to convey my thoughts, living by the

motto: “The pen is mightier than the paintbrush”. This is at least in my personal experience. I do

realize and believe, however, that other visuals are very important in pulling the dryness out of

any piece of work.

As far as the formatting of the documents goes, I got plenty of experience with doing that

in another class of mine this semester, Intro to Latin America, from the Latin American Studies

department. In that class we had a group that we had to work on papers and projects with. My

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job each time my group did an assignment was to format and organize the information and write

intros and conclusions while they wrote the body information. We all agreed that this was one of

my strong points compared to the others in the group. In doing this, I learned how to take all of

the information within a paper, give it a starter, and conclude all of the information contained

into a final paragraph of closure. That class gave me significant experience in picking out details

and errors in documents and gave me significant editing practice. One of the paragraphs in that

project that had been written made little grammatical sense whatsoever, with randomly placed

words and misspelled words throughout. I was able to fully edit that whole section and the rest of

the paper, giving us an “A” on that project.

Two Valuable Lessons from the Get-Go:

In the beginning of the course I had come straight out of high school, having just finished

my senior research paper on teachers in the education system. Throughout high school, we only

had one major writing assignment each year in the form of a research paper. Because of this, I

only received real formal and professional writing experience once a year. When I arrived to

college, I immediately began to see how UWRT 1103 was going to help me improve these skills

from the very first paper, which was the Exploratory Essay. The Exploratory Essay was the first

real college writing assignment that I had. Although short and simple, I realized from this paper

that I was going to have to pick up my game if I was ever going to be a successful writer

throughout the course, because, as I found out, we would be working on writing something at

almost every point during the course. One thing the Exploratory Essay did was bring me out of

my comfort zone, which is actually one the Key Concepts of the University Writing class. We

were asked to pick a couple or a few things that we were passionate about. The first thing I had

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to learn was what the real meaning of passion was. I determined that “a passion is not simply

something that one enjoys but rather something that someone has a strong belief in or a strong

effort put into.” It wasn’t the act of knowing that specific definition, but learning to learn the true

meaning of words I once thought I knew the meaning of that was the first step toward becoming

a better writer. Next I had to figure out just what the heck it was that I was even passionate

about. I will admit, it took me a little bit to come out of my shell on that one. I found it hard to

bring up any touchy subjects or real passions of mine because I was a bit afraid of what others

may think of me or that others would delve too much into my personal life after reading my

paper, violating my privacy. This is where I learned that writing is an extension of one’s own self

and mind. The pen, or in this case the keyboard, is a significant tool in expressing oneself from

the inside out. Not being comfortable with writing what I really wanted to say led me to

understand that if you can’t put it on paper, you are uncomfortable with yourself and denying

what you think. That in itself is an inhibitor to the flow of creation and the creative process. It

can soil quality work, and I didn’t want that to happen. A similar assignment was Blog Post #3,

where were asked to name interests. That Blog Post helped me to formulate real ideas about

interests and passions. It was here that I began to ease into the writing world. Learning what

passionate or passion really meant also drove me to understand that when I am writing, it is

important to be clear, concise, and understand what words mean if I am going to use them. This

of course applies to any word the writer can’t bring out a real definition for. There are many

words that people have no idea what they mean. Sometimes writers like to just spout out

enormous words in hopes that this will make the paper sound more vigorous. But to the educated

mind, using big words in the wrong context is a definite no-no. Just the Exploratory Essay alone

taught me these two valuable writing lessons, and this is only page 4.

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The Drafting Process

In the e-Portfolio, I included four drafts from different assignments this semester, each

with no fully significant reason of including them. In this section I will discuss not quite how

each individual draft contributed to the assignment, but rather explain how the drafting

PROCESS aids in the successful completion of the assignment and aids writing skills as a whole.

In the past, I had never been one who believed in drafting. I always enjoyed writing out

the entire paper, reading it over a couple of times, and making critiques where necessary. The

results were never of low quality. Even in doing this, I never saved different versions of the draft

as a separate file and I never was one to organize things as well as I have in the route of this

course. I have always hated outlines and planning sheets. In Blog Post #6, we made an outline

for our paper. It was all I could do to formulate one because I had so many second-guesses. As I

knew would happen, the final paper deviated a bit from the outline, a big reason why I hate them.

I have always hated taking advice from others, although I always enjoyed Ms. Ingram’s warm,

constructive responses that I received on assignments, such as in the Midterm feedback where

she said “A thoughtful and reflective midterm Carson….If grades were due today, you’d have an

“A”. Keep it up!” That takes my stress levels down a few good notches. I have always hated

doing anything other than typing out information in one sitting because I believe that is how I do

my best work. Although I still believe this to some degree, one thing I had taken for granted in

the past is the ability reflect upon what a paper was like in the early process versus what it turned

out to be. Having different drafts spanning the course of the paper’s construction until

completion allows the writer to reflect upon his budding works and analyze what can be looked

out for in the future writing process. It provides a visual representation of the creative process;

something that the writing mind can benefit from. In the Bibliography Draft, it can be seen that

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the bibliography was not finished and did not include enough sources. Sometimes, going little by

little and having yourself and a few people evaluate the progress is all that is needed to bring the

paper to a nicely sealed close. Learning where that creation resides is an important part of the

writing process. As I taught myself or at least learned somehow over the course of this class, the

creation is there. It’s within. It’s the writer’s job to bring it out. When drafting the Research

Paper, we went through our papers individually or in a small group with Ms. Ingram. In the

Feedback Artifacts, the draft that Ms. Ingram and I went over with her writings and critique can

be found. During the meeting, we read through my entire paper and each added our own

concerns and comments, with Ms. Ingram writing notes and comments along the way. Just the

little comments like “you said this sounded redundant” regarding a certain area of text and “As a

reader, I’d like to see the whole system” regarding where I mentioned the ESRB ratings system.

The feedback helped me identify the issues within my paper and formulate my own ideas on how

to improve them. This was all without Ms. Ingram attempting to write sections for me or tell me

how to write the paper. As stated above, the creative process is there, sometimes it just has to be

agitated.

A Little Analytical

I can honestly say that before this course, I had never made a 3-column notes form of a

bibliography. It was an entirely new process for me, as in the past, I was only asked to cite my

sources, not summarize them and then explain how they will be useful or what I had learned. The

biggest thing that I could take out of this portion of the project was how beneficial that process is

to completing a paper. Going through many different sources, reading the content critically in

detail, and visually documenting the findings is very helpful to the enrichment of the mind. I

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found that through summarizing the different sources myself and then being forced to think

about the many ways they are useful to the topic and paper itself, the information I needed was

already embedded into my head when the time came to start writing my research. This prevents a

lot of picking back through the internet to figure out where you learned certain information and

makes the process quicker and more efficient. My Latin American Studies class showed me a

little bit of how to do a bibliography like this for the first time, where we had to put down the

sources and then write a paragraph of information based off of them. It also introduced us to a

computer application called Zotero Standalone that can be downloaded from the internet. This

program allows you to add your sources to a database on your computer with one click of the

mouse. After adding them, you can write an abstract for each source and then compile them into

a word document in any citation format you choose. I only used the database portion to keep

track of my sources and put them into a correct citation format.

On another little note, the writer’s notebook assignment I have placed on the e-Portfolio

where we were asked to close our eyes and think of a situation in our past in sensory detail was

an assignment that helped me personally write about things in greater detail. That assignment

had us think of smells, sights, sounds, and emotions from a situation that was prominent in our

memory. This gave me greater ability to reflect and pull facts out of a simple piece of

information or situation that I didn’t before think I remembered in that much detail. The process

somehow improved my ability to add flair to my sentences in the research paper, which is

probably how some of my sentences end up getting so complicated. Even from the very

beginning with Blog Post #1, not only the reflective process, but just the process of asking

questions about what is read can be a catalyst for the creative mind. In that blog post, we were

asked to come up with questions or inquiries about Ms. Ingram’s syllabus. This was a key step in

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learning to analyze documents and works in greater detail. It also promotes the ability to really

think and formulate great questions for use in papers like the research paper, where inquiry was

an important subject. Blog Post #3 adds to this as well, this time the questions being formulated

from our own personal interests after formulating a list of them.

Reflections

As I learned in Writing and Inquiry in Academic Contexts, looking back over the

conglomerate of work that one completes in order to come to a final product is very important in

the learning process and in the development of a writer’s mind. In Blog Post #7, I reflected over

the past semester and wrote about what I could remember. I said in the post that “The experience

has been great for me and I feel like it has helped me learn to become a better writer and

organizer.” Critical reflection upon work, such as the type that this very paper provokes, can help

the writer uncover strong points and weaknesses, areas of improvement, and also a place in his

heart to admire or reject any work that he has created. In my midterm, I said “I feel that my

ability to critically reflect upon my own work or something other than my own work is one

of my stronger points”. In my personal experience, the e-Portfolio project has allowed me to

learn who I am and a significant load of writing skills as discussed above, including the ability to

reflect. In Blog Post #7, I said “There was also the goal of making connections amongst each

thing, which is one of our Key Concepts.” I learned to make connections throughout the

semester, including in this very paper. I learned that even if it’s your own work, it makes

everything seem just a bit more credible. And now, as I reflect upon this project, I would say that

although I very much need an “A” on this project for the course, I think I can fairly say that I

deserve a “B”. After taking a look at what I have created and what ended up online, I can say that

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I am till not totally satisfied with my work to the fullest extent, and I feel that I could have done a

better job on many of the assignments. It may be my inner motivation and drive inside that tells

me that, but that is what I think. I feel that I fell short of what was expected in the Midterm and

even the Exploratory Essay. And although I don’t think I could possibly put any more into the

research paper, I still feel like it didn’t contain everything I wish it would have. This being said,

the class was a great experience for me, the people were great to bounce ideas and laughs off of,

and I look forward to what the things learned in “U-Write” will help me do in my future college

endeavors. It has been a great semester for me and I think that this class will make all the

difference for the three years to come and even the rest of my life.