Jestene+Lilly+Reflective+Portfolio

= Reflective Portfolio =

By: Jestene Lilly
**Cover Letter** -[|finalcoverletter.English103.odt]

**Memoir "Taking the Leap"-** [|EnglishMemoirFinal2.odt]

I chose to include my memoir in this portfolio because I felt that it was my best piece in English 103. I felt that the emotions expressed along with my word choice made this essay very intense and interesting to the audience. The fact that I was able to tell a story from a personal standpoint and got to choose what I wanted to write about, made the process of writing a lot easier. It took a while to go through all of the major events in my life and pick the one I thought would be best to write about. All of my thoughts came down to the fact that the main events in my life occurred over a period of time, whereas me "taking the leap," happened in just one evening, making it easier to write about in only a short essay form. This memoir took quite some time to get everything just right, but in the end it was not a hard assignment, in my opinion.


 * Persuasive Essay "Bullying Letter" **- [|persuassiveletter.odt]

I found the persuasive essay to be a little more difficult then some of the other papers we were assigned in this class. Bullying is something I have a very strong opinion towards, which made my main point easy to establish, but explaining it was what I found tough to do. I had to go through all of the different ideas of how to persuade teachers and staff of what they should do to take action for those who are bullied. I found that organizing all of my thoughts and figuring out potential objections to my persuasion, helped me to better understand and think of a way to get my point across. I have personal experience with bullying and so I knew what to tell the teachers they should do, but finding out how to prove myself right was difficult. I did not want to tell all of my stories and get into all of the things from my past, but at the same time I wanted the audience to understand that I was not just someone looking from the outside in, but that I had actually been in a position that gave me a right to feel the way I do about bullying.


 * Satire "A Week in the Life: Jersey Whore"- ** [|satire.odt]

After turning in this paper I literally said, "I have never done so awful on a paper before." I felt like there was so much pressure while writing this satire. Satire is supposed to be comical and make readers laugh, but what if mine was dull and only made people laugh because they were laughing at my stupidity. The thought process was terribly hard. I did not know how to write my essay, what form I wanted it to be, what exactly I was going to write about, everything was just very difficult for me to begin with. I finally decided to do my paper as a journal entry, making it from the perspective of someone stupid, who better than the cast of Jersey Shore. I started off only doing one entry but then I ended up doing a whole week of entries about a week in the life of the girls off of Jersey Shore. It was hard to do this because they literally do the same crazy, stupid, things every single day, and it was hard for me to say the same thing over and over. I thought for sure I would get a D or something like that, because of how awful I thought it was. Surprisingly I did not do too bad, but still I just felt like I threw something together really fast that was not going to turn out well. I had my friends read it over for me and give their opinion, but I still was not confident about it. This was definitely one of the harder essays, that I felt should have actually been easy.


 * Multi-Genre- **[|"Zumba Fitness"]

This project was by far my favorite. I was able to make a website about something that I love doing, ZUMBA! When beginning this project, I was beyond intimidated. "How are you supposed to incorporate all of those genres in one paper, and still make it flow well?" That was my reaction, even after reading examples. I was confused and scared that I would do horrible. I did not even know all of the different types of genres there were. By the end though, I was very happy with how my website looked, and I felt like I had a lot better grasp on the whole concept of a multi-genre essay. I was very happy that we got to make a website or write an essay, because I would not have been able to do an essay as well as a website. I have never done a multi-genre project so it was something new and interesting to me. I was able to think of many different ways to explain ZUMBA and show all of the different things incorporated in it. My purpose is introducing ZUMBA to those who do not yet have an understanding of it. I also want to persuade people to take a ZUMBA class and experience for themselves! I would not have a problem doing this type of project again.