Portfolio Process Assessment

The process of creating my portfolio provided a comprehensive experience of reflection.

I was able to integrate and synthesize my overall experience and help making meaning of the
past two years. The first major takeaway from this experience was not to discount my academic,
in-class room experience. As a heavy kinesthetic learner, I have been pretty adamant about my
disconnect with many of the ways we have approached learning in this program. The constant
dissection of theory and reflection usually left me feeling disconnected and not at my prime for
learning. But through this process, particularly Artifact E, I have realized that there has been a lot
of interplay between my action-oriented work, like my internships and assistantship, and my inclassroom learning.
A second major takeaway has been my commitment to Housing and Residence Life. I
came to this program with the intention of pursuing a careen in Residential Life, but I have
definitely had significant doubts in this since then. At this point last year, I was confident that I
was not cut out for Housing and that I wanted to pursue something different. But in looking at
my experience in an overall, summative way, it has helped me realign my focus towards this
venue of Student Development. I love housing, and I think it is clear through my articulation of
my experiences in my portfolio.
My third takeaway is a concrete understanding of the intricacies of the Student
Development Administration programs learning outcomes. These were pretty foreign concepts
to me, even when I was taking SDAD 5900 Student Development Capstone Seminar. But this
reflection through the lens of dissecting these outcomes into how they come into play in my
academic and professional life has allowed me to really analyze the progress I have made over
the past two years. Ultimately, this portfolio experience has allowed me to not only demonstrate
my competencies and education, but also my personality and professional aspirations.