Jon Stephens

12/2/2015
URWT 1103
Ms. Ingram
The Last Essay
Wow. My first semester of college is already almost over. It feels like it was just yesterday that I
stumbled across campus trying to find room 153 in Cameron, yet here I am writing my final essay in this
class. When I first heard about the E-Portfolio, I cant say it sounded like the most viable learning option.
But looking back now at all my past writings in this class and my progressions through all of my drafts, I
can see exactly what the purpose of the portfolio is. Ive realized there is more to the portfolio than just
being a folder to contain all of our works, in its own sense the portfolio itself is also a work that we had to
mold into how we saw fit.
The first mold I made onto my E-Portfolio, besides the blog, was adding my About Me page.
Although it seems minor, I saw that not only was it a good way for my classmates to learn a little about
me, it also gives readers of my blog a little insight into what type of person is writing. It may not be an
extensive backstory about everything Ive done since middle school, but by my small excerpt about my
hobbies and when I say If you read my exploratory essay, I either draw the reader to go read my
exploratory essay or establish a small connection with the reader. It may be subtle, but I feel like these
things establish a slight sense of pathos. The About Me page is my least extensive page naturally, but it
creates a personal relation to the reader, making him/her feel a bit more comfortable about my works and
understanding just a bit more about me.
Speaking of my exploratory essay, I think this essay was a very important essay for a multitude of
reasons. The first reason being that throughout its drafts you could see my work increase exponentially. In
my first draft of the essay, the majority of my work did not flow whatsoever. It seemed as if I was
extremely uncomfortable writing, which Im not, and had to write the essay within 30 minutes, which also
was not true. After reading it over, I noticed that I could expand on sentences I had, such as so I would

often be in shoe stores, such as Foot Locker, Champs and Dicks, to buy new cleats or sneakers. Which
brings me to my first high-end sneaker, The Jordan 11 Breds. At the time I knew nothing about shoes or
their value, once I out grew them and a buddy of mine said he needed some shoes, I gladly gave him the
shoes that are now valued at $275. Woops.. Although I said everything I needed to say there, I easily
could have elaborated more than just saying these are the shoes I had first and essentially gave them
away. This is why my first draft of the exploratory essay was one of my Process work artifacts. It may be
shameful to read and acknowledge its existence, but the first draft of this essay really shows how deep in
the dark I was when it came to writing.
This also leads to one of the key concepts in the class I feel I utilized. Getting out of my comfort
zone has been a key factor in almost every assignment Ive completed in this class. In past writings Ive
never elected to write a paper that couldnt be backed up with facts. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer to
write a good ol standard paper with classic boring, but inquisitive, title that has the standard intro
paragraph, three body paragraphs, and an ending paragraph in that specific order. This semester has been
different though, writing a paper based solely on opinions and making a Multi-Genre Project have been
wonderful experiences. My paper on the condition of the rap industry (the opinion based paper), was a
little tough to actually research on initially, but once I got over the fact that I dont need to have fact
based resources it became a lot more enjoyable of a project. Also with the Multi-Genre Project, I only
elected to create it over the essay because the essay had to be eight pages, yes Im lazy, but it ended up
being extremely fun and useful for me as a writer. It allowed me to understand some of the different
modes a little better by incorporating them into my projects, such as the use of visual and spatial modes
which were both used in my infographic. The use of these modes allowed me to force the attention of the
reader to certain areas of the page and group together similar concepts.
Backtracking to my exploratory essay, that project was helped out by an assignment we did in
class which also happened to be one of my writers notebook artifacts. I dont recall what the name of the
assignment was, but it was where we closed our eyes and envisioned a pivotal moment we talked about in

our exploratory essay. Through doing this we were supposed to visualize the scenery around us so we
could show the reader how much of an iconic moment it truly was. This was a fairly important activity for
me, mostly because my papers have had a lack of imagery in the past so this really helped put the reader
in my perspective.
Something that I feel made me aware more as a student rather than a writer was one of my
feedback artifacts. The artifact Im talking about is my midterm feedback. I say more of a student,
because although I did all the assignments and received +s on all of my assignments at the time,
you still said if you were handing out grades youd give me a B. Now, as most students would do, I
pondered on the logic applied there but after a while it started to come together. Looking at my
exploratory essays first draft, it definitely had problems in it that shouldnt have been there to begin with.
After reading over my peer evaluations and grammatical errors, its safe to say I truly didnt put my full
effort into that draft and could have cared less about the grammatical aspect of the paper. This news flash
showed me that I need to be responsible for learning on my own, because although I can do all the
assignments and papers, it wont truly be GOOD work that helps me farther than the classroom if you
dont delve deeper into the assignment. I first started trying to learn on my own when I looked up ways of
making my essays more interesting. I found a plethora of ideas that would only be reinforced from things
we learned in class, such as envisioning yourself in a situation to describe it and word choice when
talking about certain topics. Id like to think that after writing numerous blog posts, essays, etc. that I
understand how to convey a message properly, write with correct grammar, and also convey messages
well. In the grand scheme of things Id like to think that my midterm feedback in junction with my
exploratory essay first draft was probably the most helpful feedback I got throughout this course.
Speaking of my first exploratory essay draft, my second draft was a big step up from my first
draft, which is why I decided to put it as one of my process work artifacts. In my first draft I decided that
imitating a robot when telling a story would be the best of idea, saying sentences such as The shoes I

painted were my old Air Force Ones, and I painted them Red October, inspired by
the Nike Air Yeezy 2 which were extremely popular at the time. The whole process
costed me roughly $40 which is immensely better than paying $100 or $200. When I
couldve got in depth about the process or whether I preferred the process or not. I mostly spoke about
what happened in my life that was sneaker related, as my exploratory essay was about sneakers, so rather
than go into further detail about how it made me feel, the appeal, etc. about individual pairs of sneakers, I
simply said I liked these and that was it. Of course, I more than likely was finishing up the assignment
last minute so I couldnt exactly pour my heart into the initial draft, but after I got the chance to actually
sit down and go more in-depth with what I said it became a MUCH better essay. Naturally, the essay was
still not perfect, but thats why it wasnt the final draft. When writing my final draft of the exploratory
essay, I didnt necessarily expand on any of the stories or experiences I had, I aimed more to smoothen
out the essay and make it flow more. In the end, hopefully the essay sounded more like a story that youre
eavesdropping onto rather than having a computer read it aloud.
Another draft which was beneficial to me was my first draft of my multi genre reflection. As most
students probably thought, I wondered why I had to reflect on my creation. How is the reflection going to
benefit my multi-genre project? Well after actually writing my reflection it started to dawn on me how it
helped. Since it was research based, there was a fair amount of opinions and viewpoints that couldnt be
shown within the project, but with the reflection some of them could be stated in a way that still revolves
around the project. Also reflection in itself is a great thing to do to understand exactly what it is youve
created. Through critical reflection, we can see our faults as a writer, our strengths as a writer, and what
needs to be improved. For example, in my draft of my multi genre reflection I said . Of course, there
are things that will raise questions such as artists like Iggy Azalea and young thug
being relevant in the rap industry, but thats more a problem with the mobility
music has gained through the internet then anything. Which is a very valid point, however
it has nothing to do with my multi genre pieces which is why it didnt make it into my final draft. On the

other hand, I could argue that the change in mobility of music could stir up the amount of songs that make
it to the public, thus possibly influencing the top tracks that were displayed on my timeline.
Another one of my process work artifacts was my brainstorming for my multi-genre project. I
already knew I was going to do a timeline for one of my pieces since it seemed only logical. For my other
decision I had to decide how radical I wanted my project to be. Initially, my plan was to write poetry
since rap started off as poetry, whether people believe it or not, but I realized that making an impactful
message while spewing facts AND making it a decent song may be more difficult than it seems. So I
simmered down my crazy ideas and ended up making an informative flyer as I said earlier. I then ran into
the problem of trying to figure out what the best things to put on the flyer was. I had ideas ranging from
showing only how bad past rap has been and go into the psychological factor of only remembering the
good songs, to the other spectrum of showing why rap nowadays isnt all that bad and its only seems bad
since we are comparing it to a different time period. I ended up doing the latter and showing how bad rap
has been and the misconception of rap currently. Rather than say one was necessarily better than the other,
I elected to show how similar both actually are. This was where I used another one of the key concepts
and had to start making connections between the past and present. It was actually somewhat shocking
how similar some genres of people are in the industry, from the white rapper to the guy who just screams
things into the microphone, rap truly has had some of the same characters for years. Although its usually
against my way of writing, making this paper of possible things to put on the flyer was very helpful. Since
theres an unlimited amount of possibilities I could have put into this genre piece, it was nice to narrow
down which would be most helpful.
Next up on the list is one of my writers notebook artifacts, the genre analysis questions. Initially,
I thought to myself that this didnt really matter and identifying genres werent going to make me a better
writer. After doing this assignment my opinion changed, I understand now that identifying genres is more
than just identifying genres. By identifying your target audience through the genre that will target them
the best allows you to use rhetorical knowledge to speak to your audience the best. For example, if youre

writing to middle schoolers about science its probably a bad idea to go in depth to the point where they
wont understand what youre talking about. On the other hand, if you use your rhetorical knowledge you
would know you need to dumb down your lesson with the middle schoolers so they can follow along as
well. Also, at the time ethos, pathos, and logos all confused me as to why they mattered. It all made sense
when we were required to actually analyze them within text and see why which may be more appropriate
depending on what genre youre using. My group had the emergency card, which appealed through ethos,
pathos, and logos, but it mostly appealed to logos because emergency cards focus more on having quick
information rather than establishing credibility emotionally. Yet, you could still argue that because its
providing safety information that it does comfort the owner emotionally and has a strong sense of pathos.
Another big thing we did this year that I havent done ever is our bibliography. Yes, I have made a
bibliography before, but I had never made one in the three column notes fashion or made citations in
IEEE. I thought it was an interesting way of creating a bibliography vs. the traditional way, because I
already had notes on the subject and my own thoughts, so once I went back to look at my citations I didnt
need to re-read the article. For this reason and many others I decided to put my bibliography as one of my
wild card artifacts. I dont know if Id say I preferred it, but actually creating your own bibliography
rather than plugging links into a website like EasyBib and saying thats your bibliography.
For my last artifact, I elected to add the round table as my second wild card artifacts. As a said
before, figuring out your target audience is really important and something I never had thought about until
this class. Trying to figure out who would actually care to know about the rap industry and how to contact
them the best is an actual real world application of things Ive learned in this class, which is something
that many classes Ive taken havent been able to provide.
All in all, I think this class has been a good asset to me as more than just a writer. Grade wise, I
think my grade is hovering between an A and a B. Previously, you said if you were handing out grades Id
have a B due to the extensive work that needed to be done to my exploratory essay. Well that patchwork
has been done and as far as I know Ive done better than above average work. On the other hand, I cant

say I know exactly how well my work is and its only my humble opinion. As I said earlier in the paper, I
feel as if I could have tried harder on different projects during the course, and although I think the end
result came out nice, the process could have been better which is why I hover between an A and a B. Still,
if I had to give a clear cut answer of what grade I believe I deserve I would say an A. Mostly because as I
said before, the end result is whats being graded and my end result came out fairly well.