JakobBoyerPortfolio

[|My Final Cover Letter] "My Last English 103 Piece"
Yeah, this is here because... well you know why, just enjoy the read!

[|My Multi-Genre Project] "Gates of Hades"
I felt that the Multi-Genre Project was one of my best works, and my final. It is a very interesting work, it is also a fun read and was a great experience to write. I believe it to be my best work to date, due to the fact that my grammar has improved dramatically this year. The Multi-Genre Project was a task in which one must create a work which included multiple genres in your project, if the title didn't give it away already. You can switch between poems, dialogue, plays, to a plot line, to tell a single story from multiple perspectives. It was fascinating in the sense that I could portray my ideas in so many different lights and make it truly amazing. It allowed me to further blur the line between fiction and reality. This is by far the best work I have created, I felt that I was apart of something meaningful the whole time, slowly pushing towards one giant finish line. It made me feel like Binaural Beats could change the world, especially with my mental interpretations.

[|My Unfamiliar Genre Project] "Manifesto of Metal"
"The Manifesto of Metal" is when I really started getting into my writing and understanding what I was doing. I feel like I had a massive break through half way through where I understood what writing organization was. Before I would just write randomly and switch topics a lot, focusing on minor details. Rather than focusing on the main point, I would ramble on and on, not quite finishing my sentence; making it a horrible run on sentence, much like this one. I like my Manifesto of Metal, and how it turned out, but I feel I wasn't deep enough in emotion. My Zero Draft and Memoir (posted below) appear in the same fashion. You can see my writing progression from top to bottom, just slowly getting better.

[|The Zero Draft of my UFG] "Zero Draft: 'Manifesto of Metal'"
I included my Zero Draft of my Unfamiliar Genre Project to show how much I progressed between my Zero Draft (which often became my final draft), to my final project. You can clearly see where I made a lot of editing to grammar and organization. You can see my thoughts clustered together, where I attempted some different styles of organizing between sentences and paragraphs alike. You can also see where I made all my cuts, and touched carefully on certain touchy subjects.My sentences are more spaced out, and portraying more topics like a Zero Draft should, so you can get all of your topics. But, you can easily see in my final draft where I cut out some bad ideas, reworded them, and made it better. Progress is made!

[|My Memoir Project] "Tandem"
Here is our first real writing project, my mistakes and disorganization are clear, but overall I did pretty well on for a first project. What I lacked in writing ability, I made up with intensity and emotion, in spades. However during the writing of this I had made several revelations on how I could organize it, and where I could make the story more intense, thanks to peer reviews and my teacher's comments. I did not have an official title for the piece until the day it was due, because I realized I could not call it 'Memoir'. I did however feel that Tandem was a necessary title after reading it, I feel as though it has a strong ironic meaning, and complete relevance all at the same time. I tried to ironically tie the first paragraph to the last paragraph, in the sense that you can get in deep shit by being in the wrong place and time; and avoid all the law enforcers in the world while committing as many crimes as you want. I did not trying to show a story of how life balances itself, it is a personal story about how cruel fates can be sometimes in an ironic turn of events.

[|My Highschool Informative Speech] "Punk Rock History!"
This was the first speech I wrote for my Junior year speech class in High School. I used the method chronological order we were taught, because I was trying to focus on how punk adapted and came to be through time. It was when I first noticed how much organization in your paper really does matter. The biggest problem with this speech is that my topics are all over the place, and sometimes thing are not even in chronological order. The organization reminds me of the old method in which I would write; I would wait till the last minute and write is as fast as I can, knowing my information on the subject would carry me. For the most part the speech is in order, but some of my topics lead into tangents of only slightly-relevant information. However, these sentences only hurt the flow of my speech, allowing the audience to fade into boredom and zone out. Just because I can jam a lot of much information into a single time-limited speech, doesn't mean the audience is going to listen to every word. That is the point of writing, isn't it? To have an audience, and a certain way you want them to retain the writings before them. This speech let me realize that almost any and every speech or statement is just a way to persuade us to change our mind. Who is to say we have not been brainwashed since the advent of the TV?

[|A Free Writing Exercise] "Weekly Wednesday Thoughts"
I did this during class on Wednesday(12/7/11) when we were supposed to be free writing about something involving our portfolio. I feel like this was more creative and it helped me relieve some personal stress. I did not think of putting this piece in until last minute, and I believe it is a great addition too see something I completely delved my thought process into. I was feeling extra-sober that afternoon, my emotions were pouring onto the paper like marbles on the glass. My thoughts came, and I wrote them, no editing, pure free writing, I found bliss. After I go through a bout of depression, the right and left side of my brain conflict with each other. I formulate stronger images, play more emotional music, and my writing becomes more articulated with each passing day. Maybe one day I'll learn to combine the engineering thought process and. I came to the conclusion many years ago, that darkness is a natural part of life. This shows that pain does pass, and give way to rational thought. There is a vicious cyclic rotation, though, you must be wary. My thoughts did eventually go back to the discussion at hand, but this is my most recent writing (beside the cover letter).