The artifacts I would want to showcase are, the letter, Pecha Kucha, a blog post from early in the year, one from later in the year, and my final paper rough draft and final. I feel like these artifacts would show my growth as a writer throughout the year and would also highlight the assignments I enjoyed doing the most.

Outcome 1:

My portfolio will cover a wide selection of genres displaying diverse forms of writing. This will show that I am an open author not limited to one form of writing. The letter will show the creative side to my writing and it will demonstrate how I can closely analyze a character and adopt their persona. My letter is interesting because it continues the story but also incorporates my own writing elements. My Pecha Kucha is a unique form of rhetorical analysis. This will exhibit that I can closely analyze an image or idea and break apart its arguments. This genre is extremely unique because presentations are not usually considered as writing, but the same analysis goes into both. The Pecha Kucha was my favorite assignment of the year and I feel like it most adequately depicts me. The blog post is a new and unique genre as well. Our blog posts reveal that we can follow a prompt and still incorporate our own ideas. Most of the blogs required us to use the “they say, I say” method, which is one of our major class themes. Finally the final paper is most important because, although it is not as creative, it takes all the skills we learned throughout the year to do. The paper showcases our ability to, research, analyze, respond, and to craft a paper. This assignment takes the most work and represents us the most because we are arguing our own individual opinions. I think that my portfolio will present me as a diverse writer capable of analyzing a topic and composing a presentable argument.

In my cover letter, I am considering showcasing my blog post 4, blog post 5, proposal and annotated bibliography, rough draft, and final paper to show my growth as a writer through writing as a process.  My blog post 4 was the comparison of an image in Patrick Ness’s The Knife of Never Letting Go to the never-ending stream of data and lack of privacy and how that affects identity in Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story. The use of a secondary source in comparison to Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story is found in blog post 5, where I brought in Melissa Nilles’ article, “Technology is Destroying the Quality of Human Interaction” to relate the technological detachment found in the novel to today’s society.  Both of these blog posts gave me ideas to build off of and inspired my topic for my final paper.  My proposal and annotated bibliography in comparison to my final paper will prove how much my ideas have transformed through the writing process.  From their simple origins, my thoughts for my final paper started out with a very large scope as seen in my proposal, and slowly narrowed back down to my original analysis of Super Sad True Love Story.  After getting the basis of the ideas for my paper, I like to write them down and add bullet points of subtopics that I can think of off the top of my head. At this point, I tend to just ramble on about my topic to a willing listener, so that they can give me feedback if any of it makes sense without context.  Then, I tend to go back to my sources and look for specific passages that pertain to those subtopics that I can use to quote and expand or refute my claim.  I then annotate the sources, so that I can come back to them at a later date, and still have specific notes and examples to easily pull from when I begin writing the actual paper.  I generally don’t like outlines, because I tend to restrict myself by only sticking to them instead of letting the creative thoughts flow naturally on paper.  Once I have my general topic, subtopics and specific details, I am able to start writing my rough draft where I throw all of my thoughts down on paper.  I tend to need revision of the organizational aspects for my papers and specific wordings, because occasionally I struggle to get my thoughts to make sense on paper rather than just in my head.

In my cover letter, I would like to explore in particular the artifacts that led me to developing the larger components of my final portfolio. My primary considerations are my blog posts regarding the Staten Island bar scene of Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story (blog post #2), the Grey’s Anatomy ad as my Pecha Kucha artifact (blog post #3), the literary analysis letter and reflection, and choosing Super Sad True Love Story to be my literary text for my final paper (blog post #7).

I have chosen to focus on Learning Outcome #3:Writing as Process in this blog post. My researched argument has already undergone an editing process, from proposal to rough draft to (soon to be) final. My proposal became an outline before it became a rough draft, and the rough draft underwent a reverse outlining process during peer editing in class. This process was extremely helpful, as when I tend to compose rough drafts, my paragraphs tend to run on until they run out of directions to go in, rather than ending and starting new paragraphs every time I switch directions. Yes, informal kinds of writing managed to sneak into the process. I’ve talked out my paper ideas with friends who were unfamiliar with the text in order to get the opinions of unbiased, uninformed audience members. They weren’t much help as to interpreting the text, but I was able to figure out how to tackle the part of the paper regarding technology’s influence on social interaction with the help of outside opinions. Ultimately, I intend my final paper to be the best product of my previous drafts possible, and I continue to use all the available tools to produce this work.

One project that underwent several changes was my proposal and annotated bibliography. It was born out of Blog Post #7, a post in which I researched an article relating to Frankenstein titled “The Monster in a Dark Room: Frankenstein, Feminism, and Philosophy” and the potential arguments I would make with it. However, I still had ideas that I jotted down on my computer, from class discussion points that stuck with me to ideas swirling in my head, that I wanted to explore. In order to contemplate these ideas, I met with my professor outside of class and bounced ideas off of her until we finally came to a solid idea with which I could manage. When I began my proposal, I still had to contemplate which ideas I had accumulated with my professor were cohesive and formed a proper argument. To aid with this, I began researching sources before completing my proposal. As I researched sources, I developed arguments and counterarguments that I could potentially use, then cited them and annotated them as I incorporated them into my proposal. The proposal itself slowly focused in on what I wanted to write about, but even when I finished some things still weren’t clear. I had been sure to focus on writing techniques that we had discussed in class, such as a “They say, I say” statement for my objective, but peer-reviews allowed me to see what I needed to clear up for my rough draft. My professor also gave me feedback independent of my peers, which highlighted other aspects of my proposal that were good and that were needing revision. This one project was a long process, but was necessary in the scheme of my final paper.

While I do not have a concrete idea of how I want to present my final portfolio, I feel its definitely important to display a visible progress and improvement. Thus, I most likely will be including my first blog post, “Eye in the sky” and whatever my last blog post may be. For the “Eye in the sky” blog post I only suggested my opinions on the subject matter without really taking into consideration what others may think of the topic. This is a technique we thoroughly learned in class and one that I believe I have effectively utilized in my later works. With these two blog posts as a starter, I will try and find blog posts that truly reflect the progress I have made during this course.

As for the one of the three outcomes that I want to focus on, I would like to put emphasis on outcome 2. Much of this class has been devoted into learning how to strengthen my own argument by acknowledging and at times rebutting what others may say about my argument. This has included finding works of other scholars to further support my thesis or present a counter argument and denounce it to further validate my points. So I will try and include blog posts where I effectively incorporate the use of the “I say They say” model that has been emphasized so often in class. I feel that the assignment that best reflects this is the researched argument on Frankenstein. Here, finding, analyzing and evaluating the works of other scholars to better support my own argument is a critical element and I strongly feel that this paper will be the best embodiment of my ability to incorporate the ideas of others into my own writing.

For my final portfolio, I would like to put my literary analysis letter in cover letter because of how much I enjoyed creating a letter in the mind of Eunice. There were a lot of critiques about Eunice’s personality, and I wanted to show in my letter that while she was conforming to the personality that her society wanted to see, she is more intelligent and mature than she wants everyone to see. As a result, out of impulse, she expresses signs of maturity rather than her normal juvenile behavior. I would also like to like to put my Pecha Kucha presentation in my cover letter because it was the one I worked on the hardest because I wanted my artifact to be as deeply analyzed as possible. It was really cool in my opinion of how I was able to make something scary and turn it into an inspirational artifact that shows tactics that the United States still use today. I would also like to include my proposal and annotated bibliography because of how well thought out the paper was before actually writing it. I would also like to include my final paper to show how much I have grown as a writer by the end of the class.

For Outcome 1: My portfolio contains a literary analysis letter in the point of view of Eunice in Super Sad True Love Story. This literary analysis letter allowed me to write as if Eunice is writing in a letter format and not through email. This allowed her to show some of her true inner feelings without technology interfering with it. I also selected some word choice that would show some of her juvenile and also some of her mature side so that the audience can also see a different side of her normal personality through Lenny and technology. The portfolio also contains blog posts where I am either analyzing or getting more information out of a certain topic. The portfolio also contains the Pecha Kucha presentation which is an oral format of participation. The Pecha Kucha presentation was important because it taught me how to plan to make sure that I fit in the time constraints. The genres of my literary writings were mostly analysis because of how this class is based on how you can make up something different from what everyone says. I will include everything but the lesser blog posts that are just summaries because it doesn’t say anything interesting about my writing. The other genres are included because it shows how my writing style changed through the course of the class.

I have yet to decide which blog posts I shall choose to use for my Final Portfolio. However I feel like it would be important to show how my blog posts have progressed and improved over time. With this in mind, I will definitely be choosing my first blog post “eye in the sky”. From there I will choose four other posts that I feel truly reflect how I have improved over the course of the term. From there I feel I will display everything but my literary analysis letter as I feel this work best shows my skills in writing. Of course, as I haven’t handed in my final paper or received commentary on my first draft this isn’t certain. However, I feel that even if my first draft doesn’t receive great feedback I may include it to contrast against the final paper, which will hopefully be much improved.

The section I would respond to is section 3: writing as a process. In the preparation of my rough draft I went through a long series of steps. I already had the outline of the essay and the broad idea, however, I decided it would be important to reread Frankenstein in its entirety with my chosen topic in mind. After that I reread all the suggested sources I had planned on including on my essay. During all this I kept a series of small notes on my phone with page references and ideas that I felt would be helpful for my rough draft. Before I started actually writing I spent an hour or so fully planning the essay and deciding upon its final structure. I then left it for a day before I began writing. The reason I left is I feel that I write better essays when I have had plenty of time to consider them and think through any potential ideas I need to include. When I started writing I wrote the entire paper in one go, before almost totally rewriting it as I went back over every section to ensure they made sense. I then edited it twice more before handing it in for submission.

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart was one of my favorite reads this semester. The novel expressed the story of “post-humans” in an ultra-developed world, where technology dominates environments and corrupts the idea of being human. Through the different diary entries and correspondences such as instant letters and e-chat conversations I was able to learn about different styles of writing and expression. Through these mediums, I was also able to have a deeper understanding about the underlying feelings which people may convey through their writings. In Super Sad True Love Story there isn’t necessarily crafted a unique argument, but different characters write to present different stories, opinions, and feelings.

For this semester’s first assignment, the Literary Response Letter, I had to be creative in trying to convey one character’s point of view through a different medium. The purpose of the assignment was to practice my critical thinking skills and my ability to synthesize and evaluate the idea of others with a focus. In the story, Chung Won Park (Eunice’s mother) writes to her daughter through a series of e-letters. In these messages, Chung Won Park shows a side of hers that is particularly insipid- one that reflects her traditional self. In trying to always encourage her daughter to succeed while trying to update her about happenings at home, Chung Won Park conveys her persona as one who is trapped, unhappy, and lonely. As a result of my curiosity to let a different side of Mrs. Park’s personality free, I decided to write her thoughts in the form of a diary.

In the diary entry that I created for Chung Won Park, I tried to incorporate elements that she had mentioned in her original message but also statements in which she would try to release her tension or anger about her complicated family situation. In her letters to Eunice, she does not mention the subtle disappointment for Eunice which she is trying to express. For this reason, I try to voice this disappointment in my diary entry. In my letter assignment, I write “She is burden in chest” or “How will she do alone, my girl with no ambition?”. Further, I try to voice a more rebellious side of hers. Statements such as “I no listen when he speaks, I no want to be with him” or “Oh Diary, I confess, I jealous of Eunhee” reflect that Eunice Park’s mother is truly willing to fly away without being capable to. These mentions show my ability to understand the underlying purpose of written communications and embedding it more clearly into my own writing.

Ultimately, assignments like these have helped me to be more attentive about what authors such as Shteyngart intend to convey. This has made me realize that the process of coming up with novel ideas based on available texts is more challenging than it seems and also remarkably satisfying. In my personal work, I showed a side of Chung Won Park that is not necessarily evident in her original writings. I also showed a clearer purpose to what she sends to her daughter. This has allowed for the crafting of creative writing and an interesting twist to a beautiful story.

I’ve learnt a lot from this course. One of the most significant outcomes is my critical thinking ability and also the ability to either validate or contradict others’ ideas. I would like to refer to one of my previous blog works: a reflection on “Eye in the Sky”.  In that blog post, I briefly summarized the content of the podcast “Eye in the Sky”. Based on the summary, I then took two perspectives and wrote two comments which intentionally contradicts each other. It is the first time I’ve tried to contradict myself. Through this learning process, I was thoroughly inspired. By contradicting myself, I found it especially easy to see the frauds in my own statements. In addition, I learnt that summarizing and understanding others’ ideas before making a comment or analyzation. Otherwise, it is likely to misinterpreting others’ ideas and thus confusing readers. In this specific blog post, I implemented several templates I learnt from our text book “They Say I Say”. For instance, I contradicted my previous opinion by saying “he argues that people should not implement this surveillance system because of the potential risk it creates regardless of its efficiency on solving crimes and keeping the city in order.” In this sentence, I summarized my previous opinion not only to demonstrate that I understand the previous passage, but also prepared myself to refute the previous opinions. Instead of using pale statements, I refuted the previous examples used in the previous passage by pointing out the frauds in those examples. It is doubtlessly easier for readers to follow my article this way since I created an interacting structure. Readers can easily go back to the previous passage and compare the differences between these two perspectives. Furthermore, after providing examples, I had my own explanation and analyzation afterwards. Writers, especially beginners like me, tend to assume that readers will understand their ideas; however, this is usually not true. It is significantly important for writers to include a concise explanation and framing about every example they pick from other sources. By summarizing, analyzing and also framing, writers can vividly portray their ideas to readers.