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Benjamin Daniel Poole

Ms. Ingram
UWrite 1101
11 November 2014
Final Portfolio Essay
These next few paragraphs will be my reasoning behind what I think I should get as a
grade. Let me start by saying that this website and paper are for educational purposes only and
its sole purpose is to receive a good grade. I am a very humble person and always rate myself
lower than others, whether my work is actually better or not. I hate picking my own grades
because, honestly, who wouldnt pick an A for themselves. So, Im going to give a range of what
I think my grade should be. I believe my grade should be between a B- and an A-. I think all my
work that has been done has at least been average. I dont think I have put extraordinary amount
of work into the class either, Ive simply just written what is on my mind. I have tried to take
away information on things I struggle with and learn from what I think I lack. Im sure this
sounds like I am sucking up but it is just what is on my mind. If you need convincing or further
information for your opinion on my grade please continue reading and exploring my website and
papers.
Lets start off by talking about how I chose to set up my website. Throughout the website
you will notice three modes of communication visual, linguistically and spatial. First off, you
may notice that everything is blue (visual). This may be because it is my favorite color but there
is also a deeper meaning. While writing this year I discovered I love talking about my ideas and
thoughts. I am now constantly trying to learn more and more. You may or may not know that

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the color blue represents calm and intelligences. This is something that I think my friends have
come to know me as, a clam and intelligent person. I thought it was pretty ironic that my favorite
color was blue and it represented how I feel, thus I have made the website mainly blue to show,
visually, a glimpse into me. The structure of the website (spatial) is rather my personal taste.
Everything can be accessed no matter what page youre on and you can start anywhere. There
are links to important information that relates to other pages found throughout the website and
everything is the right distance from something else. For example, there are links in my
narrative and portrait of me essay sections to my artifacts section because the artifacts section
contains all my edits of the essays. The website seems to flow nicely and make sense. My main
papers (linguistic) are easy to find and edits are linked directly on the same page. All other
personal writing is located under the more tab, like my wildcards and artifacts. All in all, I
thought the website did a nice job representing me and staying simple.
Now onto why added what I did into my portfolio. Lets start off with the artifacts, I had
a hard time picking these but in the end I think I picked the ones with the best reasons behind
them. For the four process work artifacts I chose two edits for my portrait of a writer essay and
two for my literacy narrative essay. I thought choosing two for each essay would allow be to
show my writing process for each paper. The two process work artifacts I chose for the portrait
of a writer essay consist of a paper that I edited and reviewed and a paper my peer and teacher
reviewed. So, why pick these? Well, I chose the one I edited (#1) because I thought it
represented how I broken down my paper and went about thinking through it. For instance, it
showed how I classified parts of my paper like the closing, body and supporting sentences. I
chose the other (#2) to show how other people might go through my papers. I also found the
feedback on the peer/teacher edited paper very good and greatly influenced my final draft. For

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example, I got good input on where to add examples and be more specific because people said
Add an example here or These are huge genres. Break them down some more. The two
process work artifacts for the literacy narrative are greatly different. For this essay I chose the
focused version (#1) (talks/focuses on a small period of time) and the narrative version (#2)
(covers my whole life). Why do this? I did this because I ended up combining the two and
thought that readers should know where all parts of the final essay come from. I also thought
adding an early version of the narrative version was good because you can see how far the paper
came in the end. Now onto the feedback artifacts. For these I actually used my portrait of a
writer essay that I edited again. I did this because I thought it showed my thought process, how I
broke down my paper and I thought it was my best self-edit. The other feedback I chose was my
second to final draft of my literacy narrative. I thought this had great advice on it given to me by
my peer and teacher. For instance, my teacher said show us some conversations so that we can
finally hear Mrs. Smith voice. I ended up using their ideas to improve my paper for the final
draft and thought it turned out much better because I got to go more into detail and describe
people. Lastly lets talk about what and why I include for my writers choice. I included the
essays I wrote for global connections on Ebola and Palestine Israel relationships. I did this
because my portrait of a writer talked about how I write about information and topics I like. In
these essays I thought it really backed up my portrait of a writer paper. I got to write about my
opinions and display information and I really enjoyed writing these papers. Lastly lets cover my
two notebook artifacts. For this I included two RRLs that I thought helped and influence my
writing throughout the class. The first RRL I chose was the one that covered tips for college and
understanding writing. This RRL helped me understand and improve my overall writing. The
reading also gave me some good tips such as how to overcome procrastination. An example is

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when author said give an hour to complete your assignments, but do it a week in advance. The
second RRL I included was hearing voices. This RRL helped me determine what voice I should
be writing in (conversational) and when it was appropriate to use my own voice. For example,
the author said you write like you speak, as if having a conversation. He also went on to say
that for academic and public writings you might not be able to write with your own voice as
much. I found both of these papers very influential for how I write. All in all the papers include,
I believe, show my qualities and my thoughts when writing better than any of my other writings.
Key concepts that I think I really engaged in this year were intellectual growth a maturity,
getting out of my comfort zone, and curiosity. Throughout the year I have felt that I have been
growing intellectual and because of this my maturity has also grown. I have noticed that my
writing has become much more focused and clear. I feel that I finally started to recognize the
types of reading and writing that I like. I think this is largely in part to the Portrait of a Writer
essay. For me I think this essay was my turning point of climax. I got to figure out my ideals for
writing and really make sense of everything I learned through high school. At this point I
realized how much more I knew than before. Writing down how much I have learned or realized
is hard for me to do. I feel like it is something I cant put words with, I just feel like Im that
more intelligent due to the papers I wrote. My comfort zone is something much easier to
explain. Before this class I hated to speak in front of people, whether it was my group or the
whole class. Now I feel I can easily talk in front of my group and not be nearly as nervous when
talking in front of the class. This is something I knew I would grow out of sooner or later Im
just glad its sooner rather than later. Due to all of this I think my curiosity has been expanding.
Without becoming more curios I dont think I could have s expanded my comfort zone and
intelligence. Because I became curios about how I can talk in front of people better and how I

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can improve my writing my comfort zone and intelligence has grown. I think this classed has
kicked off a change in my social aspect and from here on I will only grow.
When discussing how my writing has grown throughout this class I feel like it should be
an easy answer, it should have obviously grown. I think this is true to an extent but I dont think
it is anything major. If anything I have grown more in how I view writing. What I mean by this is
that I have started to think about my writing different by writing more conversationally. By
conversational I mean that I like to write down literally what Im saying in my head. An example
of this is in my portrait of a writer essay where I like to ask questions to myself then answer
them, Who am I as a writer? I struggle with the question who am I enough and looking at who
am I as a writer is just as tough. I use to just write something plain like I am the type of
writer. but due to this class I think I finally get how I like to write. I use to take my thoughts
and try to make them sound academically appealing but now I feel it is better, most of the time,
to just write what Im really thinking. I think this has been my main change since I started the
class. This change is shown nicely in my blog post. This is where I first started experimenting
with showing my true opinion. I started off my early blog post by always agreeing and acting
like I liked the readings. But my latest blog posts I started putting in my true feelings and saying
things like this reading was a little bit confusing or I just had a hard time focusing. There
are also little things I have improved on like becoming more confident in my grammar and my
overall writing abilities because all the papers I have written this semester. I dont think there
are any good examples of these it is just something I started to feel mentally due to time and
practice.

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I hope in the end you can see, based off what I added, what my grade should be. In the
end, no matter what I get, I honestly think this class was good for me and even though I may
have found it annoying I have learned some important things to help me later in life.