My E-portfolio

          First off, I am nineteen years old and still trying to figure out exactly who I am, granted that is not very old. I think one of the most important things to remember is we are all constantly changing so as one introduces themselves it is like seeing the blueprint of a house just the beginning, no structures or paint. My name is Caitlin, I am about to finish my first year of college and I feel like I haven't gone anywhere! I have taken prerequisites and I have not been as motivated as I thought I would be. I am determined to go far and accomplish my goals and dreams but at nineteen all I want is to see and change the world; but how? I have two older brothers and one younger sister, a mom and dad, and a huge family whom I love to pieces! I have seen many places, many cultures and have experienced many life events in which I find has created a strong but open mind in myself. Although, I would not consider myself a strong writer, I have great ideas and thoughts, but to write them into paragraph form is still a challenge to me today.

          Secondly, this quarter has affected me so much, I would say that my writing technique has not grown as much as my mind and world. The topics in this class and the way we included our text into our writing was a challenge at best because I was not able to create stories where my mind is the only thing leading the paper. Yes, my thoughts were what created the actual writing but the text and the themes of the writing set in a completely different comfort zone. I am more of a descriptive writer; I can create parks and stories as if you were actually there, but factual essays where real life is a persons’ own story, is hard to create because you have to convince the reader of your thoughts and ways. I have also learned a lot about myself in ways I had not explored yet. Identity was most familiar to me; it was easy to come up with my thoughts and support them but was not a well written paper. I reminded myself about how blind people are and how we all need to step out of our little boxes and see people for who they really are. For example, in “Masks,” by Lucy Grealy she tells a story about how she was made fun of because she didn’t look like everyone else, “Hey, girl, take off that monster mask-oops, she’s not wearing a mask!” (66). We all have flaws in looks and character and sometimes we forget that. The community chapter was probably my favorite to write, because it was interesting to see the way other people perceive different communities. The chapter really opened my eyes to the different types of communities that surround us, for example, I never considered a group of friends or a club to be a community but it makes complete sense. I also found it intriguing how we all, in some way, have a need to belong in some kind of community just as David Brooks explained in “Our Sprawling, Supersize Utopia, “…it becomes much easier to search out and congregate with people who are basically like yourself” (186). In other words we have a need to be around people and be with people who we have common ground with. Tradition was also fun to write. I think that was my best written paper, I feel very passionate about my topic and writing about the way our culture has changed in traditional ways which opened my eyes at how selfish and changing our world is becoming and how the most valuable aspects in our lives are right in front of us yet so many people are unhappy. I am glad, even though it was not my best work, that I had an opportunity to write in this class, being able to see so many different views and altering mine, I hope for the best.

          And thirdly, my portfolio includes my tradition paper “Family” to demonstrate my critical thinking skills. When I was writing my tradition paper I felt like I had to examine many different aspects of life and how it affects the family. I chose my identity essay which doesn’t even have a title to exhibit my revision and re-seeing skills; my paper was very poorly written and needed to be re-written. My community discussion board writing, I believe, best reveals my awareness of audience and voice by the way I interacted and voiced myself with my peers. Then for my writers’ choice I chose my first blog post, to me this was obvious, describing my wallet was a lot of fun and I tried out a new writing style. Each paper and each topic has helped me grow and look at different aspects of life in different ways.