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Jathzeel Olivares
Professor Stephen Topf
English 114 B
May 9
th
, 2014
My Portfolio
I have never considered myself a great writer. Most of my written work has always lacked
something such as theses support, strength of introduction, concrete detail, research, structure,
revision, and not following the requests of a prompt. I personally believe that my writing work is
very mediocre and just weak overall. But I strongly believe I have certain strengths such as deep
analyzing skills, and being able to relate items to outside sources or events. But the problem is I
have a hard time putting those strengths into a paper. Every semester I improve as a writer but I
feel the progression is too slow. I should be at a higher writing level but obviously I am not due
to the fact of past teachings.
Overall English has never been one of my subjects; it has always been a struggle. It goes
back to my middle school and high school teachers. I was always taught the 5 paragraph
structure and once college came around it completely changed. Professors started telling me that
there was no specific structure, that I could write as many paragraphs as I wanted. The transition
from a specific format to no format at all was difficult for me. That is why structure is a huge
problem with me. Structure is probably the most difficult part for me when it comes to writing a
paper it is the number one issue. I cant put ideas together; everything gets scrambled and just
comes out as a mess. This semester our professor was clear on what he wanted from the students,
but he gave us the freedom to structuralize the papers how we wanted them to. But that just made
it more difficult for me; for so long I had teachers telling me exactly how they wanted it to be
done and now I had freedom. The freedom of being able to write however I wanted to made me
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panic a little bit. I feel that every paper I turned in lacked organization skills but I believe that in
improved as papers went on. I just hope to keep improving because if I can properly structure a
paper writing the paper will come easier to me.
Another great weakness of mine would be the introduction or starting a paper. And this
goes back to being told what to do and suddenly having ultimate freedom. Teachers would
always tell me to start off with a hook or something to captivate the reader. And now I had the
option to do whatever I wanted as long as I followed the prompts. In every single paper or piece I
have written, starting it was just so difficult. This was a constant struggle through the semester
and I firmly believe it always be a struggle. Even in High school I had a hard time with starting a
paper even though I was told how to do it. As I progressed through the semester I found out we,
us, you and I are not acceptable and that was always a comfort level. Using we and I were words
I used when I didnt know how to continue, but since they are not acceptable I had a really hard
time with introduction. I was always good with papers about myself such as this one. I have the
ability to write in a way that sounds good and that just flows. But without the you, we, I and us
there was a high level of difficulty. I would get stuck time to time and it showed in the way I
started my papers.
Since the start of 10
th
grade I have always procrastinated. I believe procrastination leads
to many other problems of mine such as lack of research, grammar and punctuation errors, lack
of revision, and citation issues. I tend to wait until the last minute for a big assignment but
because I need pressure to help me write. This writing tactic bit me in the ass this semester
because I failed to turn in a rough draft for the first paper. Because I did not turn in a rough draft
I ended up getting a really bad grade on the paper which impacted my grade dramatically. And a
big issue with this is that this semester our professor needed research for each paper. But since I
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procrastinate, the research was always weak and lacked purpose. Since I did my research close to
the end I would always get very low quality information. I deeply regret that and professors have
always emphasized research strategies. This is something I really need to work on because
college is basically research. Every class will require some sort of research and I want to
improve on this. Since I delayed my research I would also have errors in my citations. Honestly
easy bib was my best friend but I cant rely on that. Even with the use of easy bib I would still
receive point deductions because of errors. Since I waited until the last minute, most of my
papers would lack revision. With the lack of revision I would always have grammar or
punctuation errors. But thats what rough drafts are for and like the idiot I am sometimes I
wouldnt even do one. I thank professor Topf for making them mandatory to write a rough draft
because Its something I need to get used to. As a writer, revision is a great friend. As I progress
and continue to write I will make sure a rough draft has to be done. Barbara Anne Sen who wrote
a journal about self-reflection mention that Reflective writing has shown to have a positive
relationship with a number of outcomes, academic learning, the need for self-development,
actual self-development, the ability for critical review, an awareness of ones' own mental
functions, support decision making and empowerment and emancipation. This whole paragraph
Im critiquing myself, but Im aware of how I can make myself a better writer.
I believe we all have strengths even in an area that we dont do so well in. For example,
writing is not a strong area for me but I show glimpses of great writing from time to time. And
there are areas in which I excel such as breaking down ideas or even thinking outside the norm.
Breaking down ideas comes easy to me but once again putting them into a structure is difficult
for me. I can easily break down literature and analyze it. For every reading that was given I was
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able to understand it and even for each paper. Project Space came easy but it was a different
process.
I have many flaws in my writing but throughout the semester it improved and I learned
new tactics and ways in which to better my writing. My professor focused heavily on rhetoric,
something I was not very familiar with. In my previous English class we talked about rhetorical
use here and there but we never actually got into detail. If I recall, the first week or second week
of the semester we were already into rhetoric. Persuasion and ways to appeal were something I
captivated. Persuasion is not easy to some but when it is broken down into ethos, pathos and
logos it makes everything so much easier. I am not a credible person yet, but I can get
information to help me out. There are multiple ways I can appeal the audience based on emotion
and I can also include details or facts. It was very helpful on my writing style because now this
adds some sort of structure for me.
Something professor Topf focused on was the viewpoints of others. Yeah he wanted us to
make a claim or argument but he wanted us to appreciate the opposite claim. This was a huge
impact on me because my writing can now be easily accepted or at least easily understood.
Readers do not have to agree with my claim but they can understand what I am trying to portray.
I also progressed as a critical thinker because the professor made his students take notes
on what they were assigned to read. Taking notes on a piece of work allowed me to easily
integrate the piece into my work. It allowed me to understand the piece and made easy for me to
break it down. This tactic was also applied to other classes and was very helpful. During the
readings of The Post Mortal, this tacit of note taking was very helpful. I have never understood a
book that clearly in my life and it allowed me to write the Project Text paper with more ease.
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This is tactic that I will continue to use and has greatly impacted the way I do research which
will end up helping me with my papers.
Like I mentioned before my style of writing is very weak and it was shown by my work
over the semester. I received an F on the first paper and D on the second paper. The biggest
factor was procrastination but I think the problem with the first paper was the understanding of
the prompt. I could not understand the prompts that were given which caused a poor
performance. I didnt turn in a rough draft for the first paper and I needed revision in order to get
an idea of where I was going. I had no idea what the prompt asked for, it was clear prompt but I
just could not process it. I felt like the first paper was total shit but then again thats on me. I
should have used my resources more wisely.
I chose to do the Project space paper as a collaborative paper and it was way more
difficult than I thought. Two heads create more ideas but two heads also have different point of
views. My partner and I couldnt agree on anything and constantly changed the format of the
paper. Sometimes I believed that my ideas were better and I am pretty sure he thought the same
about his ideas. We had the same topic, we viewed the same spaces but our values were
different. Since our values were different we could not come up with a thesis statement that
pleased us both. We argued back in forth about what each space meant and how their values
were defined by the space itself. We couldnt agree on anything and I believe that is why our
professor didnt see much of the values in our paper. I felt that this specific paper would be easy
for me since I have an ability to break things down and see them for more than what they
actually mean. So if I had chance to do this paper over I would choose to do it by myself, it
would be more work for me but at least I would have some guidance.
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English 114B was a very different English class. We focused more on tactics and tools
that will help students write better overall. I took all those tactics into consideration and I feel
like I progressed as an analytical writer. I have a vast majority of problems I need to fix with my
style of writing but I did progress this semester. Barbara Anne Sen who wrote a journal about
reflective writing said that, The process of reflective writing itself enhanced the students'
awareness of the situations, experiences, themselves and others involved. And it is true, its not
easy to point out flaws within your work but through reflective writing I was able to easily find
the problems. I was able to identify what I did wrong and in some way my awareness increased.
She also said that, Reflective practice is not a clear concept to understand at first. Teachers
always ask for a students self-reflection about their writing and last semester I couldnt really
reflect on myself. But for some reason this particular paper came easy even though it was
reflection. I clearly knew what my faults were and I just need to work on them. I will progress as
writer there is no doubt, but in order to do I must put in effort and I think that is my major flaw.








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Work Cited
Sen, Barbara Anne. "Reflective Writing: A Management Skill."Library Management, 31.1/2
(2010): 79-93. Journal. 5 May, 2014.