Amanda+Hickman+Portfolio

=Final Portfolio for Amanda Hickman=

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Before taking English 103 with Professor Hartman, my papers, essays, and writing projects were much different than they have evolved to now. In high school, my idea of a writing a paper did not consist of free writing, brainstorming, or outlining, and it didn’t consist of zero drafts, peer commentary, or any form of planning and steps. I would be assigned a paper in which I would write on the last day of the time allowed to do the entire writing; I would procrastinate until the last minute. I found writing a burden and actually found myself hating the section of my day in which I would attend an English class. I would love my classes of Math and Child Development and so on, but I would dread English. However, English should be a topic that I love, right? There is not a single minute that passes that I don’t use some form of English/writing. Perhaps it was the neglect of the proper teachings of the topic, but I found it dreadful.======

After taking Professor Hartman’s English 103 course, I have become much more rounded on the subject of writing. I have had many doors opened to me to show me that writing is by no means as dreadful or boring as I had thought in the past. Professor Hartman led the class through steps to helps us to prepare for each paper. I went through free writing activities to help me to simply writing down my thoughts with no particular order to them. It helped me drastically to compile all of my thought as they came to my head. I used these thoughts to branch of into topic ideas for different parts of each paper I wrote. There were days that the class would bring in their writings and we would trade within the classroom with different students. After reading each other’s papers, we would comment on them to the writers in order to give suggestions using peer commentary. I had not used peer commentary in any way to help better my papers prior to this. Now, I know that this strategy is very helpful and will help me in order to sharpen my writing. Another form of feedback that I appreciated very well was the feedback that I received from Professor Hartman. Not only did I receive helpful advice from peers but also advise from the professor, himself. I found it extremely helpful to have a professor be involved with the students one-on-one in order to help the learning process. Seeing the devotion from Professor Hartman caused me to open my eyes more to realize that writing isn’t just an assignment, but it is something of more value. That when I put thoughts, feelings, and work into my writings that I will be a great deal more satisfied with my outcome resulting in my appreciation of writing to rise.

Memoir
The memoir was the first piece of writing that I did for this course. I really enjoyed writing this paper because it was just like writing a story. Telling stories has always been enjoyable for me. Whether I am being told the story or and telling the story, I have always loved them. When writing this memoir, I wrote a very short version of the story. After writing this short outline, I went through it adding detail to it creating a story.

Public Letter
The Public Letter was the second piece of writing that I did for this course. When receiving this assignment, I was very surprised in it. I had never heard of a letter as an actual paper in a class. I had never thought of writing a letter addressed to a person that would be open for the public causing it to not only be to the person to whom I wrote it to but also to the public. I found this very interesting. I had not been able to think of many topics to write about for this type of a paper, so I contemplated ideas that bothered me or caught my attention. Out of these topics, I chose one that affected me in a way that caused me to desire to write about it. After writing the first draft, Professor Hartman read it and gave me feedback as to where I might have been weak and also as to what he found to be strong in my paper. I used this feedback to edit my paper and turn it into the final draft.

Research Argument
This was also the first time that I had ever worked with a group to come up with a topic and find research together. I have not been particularly fond of working in groups in any form to do any particular project. There always has been some type of downfall to doing this for me. However, I very much enjoyed working with the group I was in for this paper. Frequently when I have participated in group projects, some members would not do their part or finding an appropriate time and place to meet was always a downfall. With Professor Hartman’s idea of using a wiki page for our groups, we were able to put our ideas together on our own time when it was convenient for each of us. This was very helpful. We decided on a topic that would be universally known throughout many people, the real cost of college textbooks. We researched on the internet to find our sources and facts to support our individual papers. It was helpful to have other students help to find adequate sources that were reliable. It was also helpful to be able to discus with the other members of my group idea as to what to include in my paper. This helped with peer commentary. Professor Hartman’s feedback on the first draft also helped my in the revising of paper.

Multi Genre
Although this paper was far different from anything I have ever written, I enjoyed it very much. I had never even heard of a paper written in this form. Using different types of genres to show the reader the feelings that can be involved in my topic was very interesting to me. It didn’t just consist of writing an essay or a certain type of writing about a particular subject. Instead, it helped me to think and contemplate different ways of putting my different pieces together to make them flow. Although the pieces were so different from one another, I still found a way to make them flow together. This was very interesting to me. I enjoyed creating the different pieces and writing them down with no order. I then went through the pieces and put them in an order that satisfied the point that I was aiming to make. With the help of Professor Hartman’s teachings, I used a certain type of genre to tie the entire paper together with the repeating genre ===[|﻿Blog]=== I found that writing the blogs for this class was very helpful. It helped me to practice my ability to freewrite. I enjoyed sitting at the computer and letting my mind roam until I passed a topic that I felt that I should write about.