Welcome to my e-Portfolio! Hope you have a mighty pleasant ole' time venturing through this unknown land.

Picture credit: https://wallpapercave.com/western-wallpaper Links to an external site.

The Reflective Introduction

My e-portfolio is an accumulation of all my assignments and efforts I have invested over the quarter in Writing 37. Because of the fact that I never challenged myself to advanced higher english courses in high school, I felt my background was lacking in comparison to a lot of other students. Knowing everybody entered college from different education and knowledge, I was intimidated.

(This is me struggling to catch up)

Part of me doubted success in this course, and I often felt incapable. Luckily for me, there were only two significant essays crucial for this class- my rhetorical analysis essay and rhetoric-in-practice essay. However, discouragement persisted; I initially found it even hard to understand the higher level vocabulary and comprehend their messages within assigned reading assignments.

For example, I had difficulty grasping the idea of Authorship and Genre: Notes on Western by Jim Kitses.  Having to spending on average of two to three hours of annotating and rereading per assignment (it varied depending on the reading assignment), I found myself demoralized and felt incapable. In all honesty, I even struggled understand the lessons in the Anteater's Guide to Writing and Rhetoric and avoided my book up until I had to write the rhetorical analysis essay. What we were doing in class definitely assisted in formulating a foundation for my comprehension of rhetoric and eventually I grasped the main concepts and terminology. However, it had taken a long time to feel comfortable within this class. The ideas within the objectives of this curriculum, lessons, and even genre were all an unfamiliar, space.

As a result, this visual representation represented how I felt this class was approaching me.

However, development followed. I believe that our weekly homework- mainly the critical reading and RIP exercises- refined both my skills and approach towards writing. Such assignments provided a zone dip my toes into writing without being extremely concerned with providing a correct and specific answer. To continue this positive light, I can admit that I felt visible improvement in my writing and rhetor skills through assignments and constructive criticism. Because of this course, I realized the importance of peer review and noticed that when others read your work, they discover errors and writing issues I fail to notice as the creator. As someone slow in producing essays and content, this course added to, what I felt to be, an already unmanageable amount of workload. Balancing my biology major related courses and an intensive writing course sometimes felt unbearable, especially during a time where I was adjusting to a new environment.

To be frank, I had regretted taking this class my first two weeks in college, but eventually adapted quite well once I started to catch up on my assignments. It was during this adaptation that my engagement in this class peaked.

Although group discussions are not within my forte, I found myself actively participating in class more frequently than usual. This could be because the content and readings definitely challenged my initial prenotion of the Western genre, which was revolved in the mundane period of westward expansion driven by manifest destiny- a concept I never found myself personally interested in. My visual of the western genre consisted of stereotypes, including awkward transitions of tumbleweeds floating through the desert, sobbing damsels-in-distress tied against train tracks, and a righteous cowboy that saved the day.

As my scope and knowledge of Western broadened in this class, my approach towards it shifted. You see, my prejudice against the western genre seemed to correlate with an obsolete, traditional themes. For example, reading the neo-Western romantic novel Brokeback Mountain really revealed how the western theme could be extended and more modern. Such reading assignments and sources helped eliminate my misconception of the Western genre and preconceived stereotypical conventions, and allowed me to dynamically analyze this genre. Learning about the neo-western genre that ranged from a new concept of anti-hero to plots beyond a traditional sheriff vs villain (man vs. man) was enlightening. 

I particularly enjoyed the reflective exercises portion of my assignments, because they were an imaginative medium in which I had not accessed since I was young. I was particularly proud of the first RIP assignment where we were to find a creative way for readers to learn about us. I decided to introduce myself from the observations of a cashier, portraying myself as a recognizable regular in the supermarket. This nature of this plan was both challenging but something I enjoyed. Since I was satisfied with the results of this project, I found myself more optimistic about this course.

For the second RIP assignment, I decided to test myself by doing poetry writing a Shakespearean sonnet called "As a Marshal," based on the novel Fire in the Hole. Poetry was a sphere and completely unfamiliar field and I had to do research in order to understand the patterns and structure of a sonnet. Nonetheless, reflective exercises remained riveting for half of this quarter but also set my vision up for RIP project. It solidified a foundation of creativity and I was able to come up with my project's concept almost immediately- a Youtube Q&A video from the perspective of Jack Twist. 

Throughout the quarter, my positive feelings towards reflective excercises continued when I received comments such as "excellent." In a sense, they provided security and reinforcement that I was performing decently and the standard. 

In contrast to my enthusiasm about my reflective excercises, I avoided critical reading assignments, which remained a tedious feature of this class because they were extremely focused on my rhetorical skills and analyzations of text. Because CR assignments accentuated such advanced skills, they allowed me to be more well-equipped for my RA essay. To be frank, I had little to no experience rhetorical analysis essays and a very limited confidence on a thesis-writing skills. Anxiety raised as the deadline had become more proximal, I feared that there was a definitive aperture between success in writing 37 and failure due to my essay writing skills. This is because I had been accustomed to my teachers providing specific structures and essay formats, this essay presented a lot of options and its prompt remained versatile. Reading from the Anteaters Guide to Writing provided an idea to constructing my essay, it really took alot of experimenting and readings of sample essays to allow me to fully grasp how to write it. 

In my rhetorical analysis essay, I decided to argue that morality is facing a decline, using situations and quotes to actively support from No Country for Old Men to support my point. One challenge, I encountered in writing my rhetorical essay, was creating a cohesive, organized essay. A lot of my evidence, background information, and arguments were distributed in the body of my essay in a confusing manner. With the feedback of professor Keeler, I understood my problem and I was able restructure my essay to make my essay more fluid and understandable.

Another case problem with my essay transferred into territory in which I least expected, I had to omit a paragraph in which I felt had solidified my counterargument. I argued against the claim that the world had always been immoral. Because we were told to use outside resources, I had referred back to the Opium war where Europe introduced opium to China in order to balance the inequality of trade. I intended to use this source of evidence to imply that a negative force like money and greed is introduced to deliver a diminishing of morality. According to my professor, this had been a stretch and not relevant to No Country for Old Men. To be honest, I had been confident on this paragraph as I thought it showed my context skills. However, after discussing it with my professor, I understood that this was an extensive and over-compensating attempt to support my essay and side tracked from No Country for Old Men too much.

Through peer review and feedback from my roommate and classmates, I was also able to understand weaknesses in my grammar, usage of evidence, support in essays, and how I formulated my thesis in my rhetorical analysis essay. What I learned from these reviews, I noticed that I had a tendency to summarize the plot too much, and I also gave too much of my points away at the beginning. Now that I am more aware of these issues, I believe I will be able to detect these issues in the future more quickly.

Conveniently assigned after the rhetorical analysis essay was the rhetoric in practice project. This assignment was probably the most stressful and fun project I had. I had decided to create an animated video of a question  and answer video from the Youtuber Jack Twist (from Brokeback Mountain). I used decided to do a question and answer video so Jack could interact with the audience through his answers; his answers are supposed to allow the audience to absorb characteristics of the west. My message reflects that even in neo-western individuls, we are still able to see a persistence of the traditional western genre.

All in all, the process of creating this project required a understandable (well-formatted) script, Adobe photoshop, Final Cut Pro, a drawing tablet, a massive tolerance and composure for fixing errors, pacing, and drawing. This project was a demanding, pain in the butt. Yet despite the long hours of editing, saving and restarting programs due to a heating laptop, and blurry teary eyes after each editing session, I obtained lots of knowledge on western culture (through research to answer my questions) and a sense of capability. Unfortunately, this project was due at such a pressuring time of my life and I often found myself overwhelmed. I was constantly on the edge of my seat because the final RIP project was due the day before my back-on-back biology and chemical finals. I constantly neglected my other assignments in order to complete this, but I believe that the end result is a true portrayal of what I had sacrificed for this class. 

When I finally presented a small clippet of my animation, I found that people laughed at the light humor and seemed to enjoy it. Overall, this was a reassuring turn and I felt that it was worth my stress. You can navigate through the detailed process of my RIP project. I had requested for feedback and advice on audio, which definitely helped me find more western soundtracks. 

Despite that I initially felt ill-prepared in comparison to my peers and doubtful of how I would perform in this course due to my background in writing, I feel content with the quality of the work I have submitted in this class. I was often hesitant in turning in my writing assignments; but looking back, I feel the effort and time dedicated into them is heavily reflected. I extremely satisfied with my RIP project in particular. Writing 37 promised to be a work-heavy and rigorous course but I believe I will receive an A. This has left me in adversity and often mentally drained due to my lack of confidence, but I have seen an embellished improvement on my skills these past ten weeks. This course did not become easier at all, the structure of this course will leave me primed for Writing 39C. Because of it, I understand the quality of work and have become accustomed to the pace of college assignments.