ePortfolio content reflection

 

Dear Professor Koning, 

 

I was sitting anxiously in Bookstein Hall Room 2212 when I saw your name for the first time. I was attending the first-time freshman advisement and was so nervous when picking my classes. When choosing my English class I was between picking your class or another section with a different professor. What convinced me to choose your class was your presence as a professor. Out of all the English classes I could select from your canvas profile was the only one that had effort put in. Seeing that you were the only one who took the time to fill in your canvas profile told me that you put in effort to not only your work, but your students so in the end the decision was easy and I selected your class. 

 

As a freshman attending college for the first time, I was extremely nervous because of the many what-if questions running through my mind. What if my professors are terrible? What if I don’t make any friends? What if I can’t handle the workload? The one thing that no other professor did that calmed all my nerves was having a zoom to introduce the class and help their students navigate canvas. When the zoom ended I called my mom to tell her how excited I felt to go to English because the professor was amazing and I knew the class would be too. 

 

Going into college I had no idea what the class environment would be like. I didn’t know whether people would talk to each other or if people would be reserved. I was astonished to see the community that was built in English 115 because it felt so natural. Professor Koning, you made the class feel as if we all had known each other for so long. I think that’s one of the greatest things about your class is that community is established so early on that everything flows when it comes to group assignments and interacting with each other. 

 

When you first announced that we were going to be reading books with a book club I was nervous because I didn’t know how the dynamic would be with my group. As well, I was worried about my comprehension and if I was going to be able to understand what I’m reading. I thought back to when I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and how frustrated I felt when I didn’t understand the writing. I didn’t want my experience reading Citizen: An American Lyric to be anything like my experience with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn so I put my all and thoroughly read each line. I feel like the amount of effort I put into Citizen: An American Lyric paid off because I not only understood what Claudia Rankine was talking about, but was able to connect to her writing on a personal level

 

Being able to connect to Rankine's writing helped me write every exercise and essay with ease because I knew what I wanted to write. As well, I feel that all those exercises helped me uncover instances where my family and I have experienced microaggressions but had either buried them down or forgotten about them. My favorite exercise I did was the poem because I felt so passionate when writing it and I feel it was very well written. Also, I had never mentioned this before, but when I did the poem I had my laptop open and my little sister read it and said I was being racist toward my family. It made me feel weird when she said this because I am not purposely distinguishing our skin tones, but rather reflecting on experiences we’ve had as a family. What’s a bit interesting to note is that while I am not purposely distinguishing our skin tones my sister constantly tells me how white I am, yet was angry with me for writing about the microaggressions we’ve faced at trader joes because of our differences in skin tone. The paper especially was my chance to explore these topics further using the examples that Claudia Rankine used in her book such as the micro-narratives, metaphorical language, and images. My favorite things to write about Citizen: An American Lyric were the metaphorical language and images. I found that the images were placed strategically throughout the book and being able to uncover the deeper meaning of the images was a lot of fun. As well, Rankine's metaphorical language is so impactful that being able to break down the meaning was difficult, but it felt good. I find that metaphorical language can be overdone sometimes, but Rankine’s metaphorical language was done purposely and carried a deeper meaning that I didn’t need to do outside research to uncover. 

 

E-Portfolio Design Reflection

 

With the aid of papers and progression exercises, my e-portfolio is a reflection of my growth as a student and writer throughout the Fall semester. My eportfolio is structured as so About Me, Outside the Classroom, Blog, Goals and Outcomes, Personal Reading and Writing History, Exercises, Major Works, and Project Statement. I decided to structure it this way because I want the first thing you see when navigating my site to be an introduction to who I am. So as you go along my site you know who I am as you see the work I’ve made. As well, the blog is one of the first items on the menu because I feel my blog represents concepts or things that I either believe in or feel passionate about, therefore it’s part of me. Before you get to my writing my goals and outcomes are there so viewers get a sense of what I wanted to accomplish and then read my work.  The actual content is set up so you know a bit about my background as a writer and are introduced to smaller works like the exercises. Then the Major works are introduced so readers can see my progress from writing the exercise to writing the essay. Along with the final draft of the essay, the rough draft will be included so readers can see how I further improve on my improvements. The last section on the menu is my project statement, which I feel sums up everything on the eportfolio and is a reflection of the semester as a whole. Aside from the content inside of my eportfolio the aesthetics of the eportfolio are very simplistic, but sophisticated to make it easy to navigate. While I would have loved to theme my eportfolio I find that when it comes to a website I personally prefer when they are clean, crisp, and get to the point. However, while my website will be simple it is not boring whatsoever because of the interactive feature and the content filling it up.