Now that it was the middle of the quarter, I started to fall somewhat behind in the course because I was trying to keep up with my other classes. I failed to turn in a lot of the ungraded work for the AP, and this part of my ePortfolio is going to suffer because of that. I didn't submit the initial draft work, and I even missed my conference appointment with you due to unforeseen circumstances.

Figure 1 shows our email exchange of why I missed my conference appointment with you (that day really sucked).

Truth be told, I didn't begin work for the advocacy project until we had to do our presentations (you can view mine here). The presentation really helped me to organize what I wanted to discuss in my essay and acted as an outline for my project. While I can't show you my original prezi because I changed it based on your criticism, my presentation itself improved a lot after I followed your feedback. Originally, there was a lot of text in my slides and I still struggled with its chronological order. 

Figure 2 shows the comments you had to offer for my presentation draft.

After listening to your suggestions, I ended up getting a "B" on the oral presentation, which is not a bad grade at all. I found that my organization improved significantly but my argument suffered as a result. My prezi was well structured but my advocacy position was very hazy and pretty weak. It frustrated me that I could never have clear organization and a strong argument at the same time, so in the following weeks to come, I took my time to carefully research shackling advocacy and learn about the issue as much as I could in order to develop a strong thesis. Eventually this hard work would pay off in my final draft.

However, when we finally met for our rescheduled conference appointment, I was still confused as to what my advocacy position was. I kept focusing on trying to find other advocacy positions to criticize, but I realized we were all on the same boat: push for better legislation at the state level. Because I had no other advocates that differed from me, I thought that was a bad sign and briefly decided to change my topic because I felt stuck. 

 Figure 3 shows my original thesis and advocacy position that I had in my presentation.

Figure 4 shows the brief change in the direction of my topic, to which you struck down and told me not do go down this path.

During our conference appointment, you told me that broadening my topic was a mistake, and doing so would make it so much harder on my advocacy. By simply communicating with you and talking about my ideas, I gained a new perspective and was eased of the stress and anxiety that came from this big project. You told me that writing does not always need to follow strict guidelines and that a good project shows well-research evidence. Although I still did not know what my exact advocacy position was, I knew it was very similar to Michelle Alexander's in The New Jim Crow, which is "starting a conversation" or "bringing awareness" to the issue at hand. After our conference, I followed this outline you laid out for me for the workshop draft:

Figure 5 shows my AP outline.