Zachary+D.

Portfolio

As the school year began, I was not too excited for another English class. I was not great at writing and thought I was in for more failure in writing. I had issues with researching for papers, and arranging my ideas onto the page correctly. So as this semester went on, I am glad to say I have worked on fixing these flaws. I am still not a perfect novelist, but with some help from my friends in the class, Joshua Welk, Brittany, and Allison, as well as the teacher, Professor Hartman himself, I am at least able to make a paper that does not make someone want to burn upon reading. I had not realized the growth of understanding I had received from these people until my research paper was created. As I have stated before, researching for papers is not something I have ever excelled at, but after this semester I feel much more confident about where to look for information and how to go about putting it in a paper. I believe my biggest problem is still procrastination. I leave deadlines to simmer until they are far too close before finishing up what I want to complete for them. I hope that getting used to the college environment helps this, and I give myself more time for revising in the future.

Papers: 1) ﻿ I chose this because it is my first paper in the class and sets a good baseline for my work when I began the semester. It is set up so it does not need much creativity in where each part of the paper goes since it is a story, but even so, I believe there are places where I did not order my thoughts quite right.

2) I decided to add this paper because it is my research paper for the class and as such, I believe it shows improvement on my part of figuring out where and how to add information from outside sources. The fact that I had help finding sources gave me great examples of the process.

3) This paper is in my portfolio because it is not done for English 103 and gives an example of my papers for other classes. It is short but provides good details from text and has a fair amount of insight. It does need work on being more interesting though, and could use some polishing on wording and voice.

4) My multi-genre paper is long and awkward. I believe it is my best example of my shortcomings when it comes to styles of writing I am not used to. I had never done a paper like this before and it shows. It is sloppy and unrefined. Also, I was unsure how to tie the genres together and they do not seem to connect well.

5) The open letter assignment threw me for a short while, but once I understood the idea, I was off. I had no problem coming up with things to talk about and feel that I expressed my opinion with passion and quite effectively. Organization was my only real foe here and I do not believe I ever quite succeeded in arranging my paragraphs they way they work the best.