Portfolio Reflection

Hello readers, my name is Audrey Gorman. To get a better feel of my portfolio I will
introduce myself a little bit. I am currently in the middle of my freshman year at UNC Charlotte
where I am a Business Finance major. This document will serve as a reflection for my portfolio
and time in UWRT 1103.
Throughout this course we focused on defining the term human experience. Through
our novels, mini projects, lectures, and my continued growth as a human I have been able to
shape my own definition of what a human experience is. It took myself a while to fully grasp the
concept of a human experience. At the beginning of a semester I took this term as a joke.
Beginning the practicum my thoughts were, a human experience is just a persons life so why is
Mr. Brown making us do this incredibly long biography on someone. I did not invest time in
finding the real definition of what a human experience was until I started meeting with my
sponsor for the practicum. Once I began to delve in my sponsors life and work I began to form
my definition of what a human experience was. To begin I looked into the life of my sponsor, a
guidance counselor at a high school. Through her passion and excitement for her job, students,
and life in general I opened my mind up to the term human experience. I started by breaking up
the term. When I thought of the word human I jumped to just a living person that breathes and is
a certain gender and other characteristics of a living person. Once I looked into my sponsor I
found a much deeper meaning for the word human. Yes a human is a person, but the term
human can also reach much deeper by characterizing the way a person acts, talks, thinks,
speaks and lives. By looking at the term human like this we place a greater value on the term.

When I began to think about experience it was easy to define. Experience is just undergoing an
event or something. You can even expand that to make it more philosophical by defining it as
your perceptions or understandings on a certain event. As I progressed through the course,
grow mentally, and were given more assignments that made me reflect I was able to form my
own definition what human experience means. A human experience is much more than just
someones life, it is the way people feel, think, and react to certain events or ideas. Human
experience is the mistakes made, lessons learned, and guidance given. This semester has
played a part in my own personal path of having a human experience by encouraging me to
think deeper into the meaning of different ideas, and explore my perceptions on things.
UWRT 1103 was critical through the course of defining my human experience.Through
this course I have learned a lot about myself as not only a student but a person. I have learned
that college is hard, and the adjustment is even harder. I have learned to manage my time, work,
and feelings in this short amount of time. Instead of bottling things up I have found it is much
easier to deal with them. I have learned to not procrastinate on studying. Most importantly for
the time aspect, I have learned what the latest time I can leave my dorm and arrive to class right
on time. I have also learned how to balance my workload, or lack there of. As a student in
higher education, and a member of English 1103 the most valuable thing I have learned is to
analyze every topic or subject in great detail. One simple topic can mean so more if you think
deeper into it. I have also leaned the value of reflecting. Reflecting is a chance for me to express
any feelings, whether positive or negative about something. It also gives me a chance to sum
everything up. By completing an e-portfolio I have furthered my media skills, which I will use in

almost every aspect of life. I have also been given a chance to look over my work throughout the
semester. As I am on the verge of completing the semester the one thing I have learned the
most is how stressful finals week are. I am currently running off no sleep, and losing my sanity.
Thank you college.
In conclusion, I hope the readers grasp my personality, and they too think about what
their human experience definition and value is. Now that this term is over, I will probably not be
exposed to any critical deep thinking about life considering I am a Finance major. I hope that as I
grow and mature I will think back to my definition of human experience and live out my
aspirations for it.