Nicholas Wilk Portfolio Essay English 1102 4/24/13 Becoming Healthier Through My Hand Every year throughout my education,

I have been accustomed to the fact that an English class was going to be a part of my curriculum. I enjoyed writing aspects of these courses because there would be opportunities to learn from the research assignments of our own choice of topic, compared to other students whom dreaded them. The courses were an opportunity for me to learn something from my own interest, rather than understanding Shakespeare. However, in past years, I would worry about English classes due to its oral assignments because I would not have much confidence to speak, considering that I am not fond of my own voice. I have realized that my voice condition causes my voice to sound sickly, scratchy, or pubertal. Having these things said to me many times before, it took a toll on my confidence for oral participation during classes. It made me seem as though I didnt want to hear myself, which made me even more nervous. In contrast, as I explained in my Whats It Like To Be You? essay, the camp of Ionian Village helped me to achieve a great amount of confidence and allowed me to understand who I actually am. This is why I have become more open in ENGL-1102-063. After writing essays, having discussions, and doing workshops, I truly have become more open with my life within my essays. It has helped me to grow within my own writing capabilities as the course examined argumentative, self-reflective, and progressive work. The arrangement of my e-portfolio began with creating pages on Weebly. The Home page will include this essay because it acts as a pinpoint for the progress of

this semester. The midterm assignment was put into its own page because I felt that it stood out as an important assignment to recognize. The other final drafts of assignments were put into the Embedded Documents tab. They are organized by order of due dates. All scans of process work, daily assignments, and other required work that helped spark ideas and other thoughts for the assignments were neatly placed in the Progress Work tab. The blogs were given their own privilege of being placed in the Blogs page. Hopefully, the website is easy for navigation. The first embedded document that the class wrote began with a topic that brought all of the students to stop and think about our own lives. What is it like to be you? was a question that was originally asked by David Seidel. He is the author of the book, Peace, Butter, and Jelly, that is a self-reflection of his own life through three different expressions; recipes (relating to family tradition), poetry (description of his events through life), and novel (his progress to who he is now). While writing my first draft, I was skeptical to discuss religion because I did not want to deal with peers judgments. When Seidel taught the class for the day, he included a meditation session. He asked us to think about who we are and what was thought during the silence. I prayed during the meditation for God to give me strength. This was the point I needed to include religion within the paper. I also received comments stating that I should include more illustration that regards my story. Pictures help to let the reader see what the author sees. They are not merely space holders but memories of ones life that explain, yes, I actually did this or I include this picture because it is essential to my life. I carefully chose images that would entangle into the story. Besides pictures this included one of my original city

drawings and original lyrics. An example of one of my lyrics is a current song discussing Ionian Village has been put into my W.I.L.T.B.Y. essay. It follows, This love is mystical The bond has brought me to my knees Have never felt this special Chosen for the eternal blink of an eye As I look above, I see the sun always has its light Im seeing in vivid color, stronger Ready for the broken world Dialogue was also necessary because I mentioned how Greek culture is a large influence on my family. I added a typical phone call with my yiayia (Greek for grandmother) and a story about how I first became involved in the architecture interest. As for my faith, I revamped my paper by deleting paragraphs such as school sports. This was done because it did not transition well with my focus in the W.I.L.T.B.Y., which is the growth of my relationship with Christ. When writing an autobiography, Ive learned that it does not take fitting every aspect of ones life to understand who a person is and what they stand for. The first sentence states, This life has been a journey and it still proceeds. It has been a test with awards; it comes with memories like pictures. I am very thankful to be who and where I am. In this instance, I was foreshadowing of the direction my essay was going towards. I felt that this essay was the most important of all of the projects because the author has to translate their life for a reader to interpret it. Since there is a freedom of adding pictures and other forms of creativity, it is the job of the author to make sure the purpose of the paper is functional while is entertaining. Personally, it was also the most fulfilling to reflect on my own life.

The next chapter of events was finding the main inquiry for the semester. This regarded a research topic that would touch on one of the many forms of health. My W.I.L.T.B.Y. essay focused mainly on spiritual and relational health. However, I changed gears to discover information on physiological health. After brainstorming during a daily warm-up, I found the thesis for the paper. My inquiry question was What is the necessary diet (with daily exercise) to obtain a toned physique?. The reason I did not want to go down the same path of spiritual health was because I have written many religious papers previously. I wanted to learn a new form since I already made my voice clear discussing religion. I have always had this interest about how having toned physique and what factors go into it. It was also a way to learn how to make my own temple healthier. As I wrote in my first blog, For myself, I have been interested in dietary and exercisable health. This curiosity has sprung for research because I try my best to find ways to eat proper nutrition while defining my temple. Ive realized that we need to live all of the life that God has given us, so its necessary to accomplish our goals. As the research began, I realized that I was taking a risk because I had to figure out how I can incorporate scientific and practical information for a workout enthusiast to find a strategy to obtain a toned body. I also had to revise the audience to college students that workout because my research was more suitable for students. This is because I discuss how time management and budget for food are key factors for eating properly. It could still pertain to regular enthusiasts because the nutrition quality and workout schedule is good for all educative and career levels. Also, I had to make sure that the information followed Logos (reason) for the

reader. This pertained arguing against claims that state fast results for workouts; money gimmicks with little to no results. This is where I explained in paragraph one, There are many marketed diets and claims that arouse from a consumers busy routines and or lack of motivation to eat proper nutrition. It is a slow process and laziness is not fitting for success. The balance of proper consumption and exercise, along with specific types of exercise, all incorporate to reaching the dream body. Through the research of scientific information, Ive discovered that a practical routine must be made for the reader to want to begin the persuasive idea. The scientific ideas found in the textbooks entangled with the more understandable information from the fitness websites. The ideas were put in the progress work. The ideas for the research paper began with an annotated bibliography. Instead of finding sources after discovering a topic as in previous English courses, the research for a general topic was found first. This was a challenge for me because I was not sure as to what form of exercise I should take my research to. It was a good lesson by showing me how a topic can spring up from a nonchalant interest within a topic. My generic findings began with exercise physiology textbooks, articles about fat within the body, and nutrition. As a workout enthusiast, I have been trying to find the right way to eat that would help to improve shaping my bodys figure. I wanted to see what I could do to add all of the information together to create structure of how to be successful from a simultaneous process of diet and exercise. The first original sources were not all used within my paper because as Ive learned from my W.I.L.T.B.Y., there needs to be a transition or flow between ideas that will promote the thesis statement.

This may seem to be a strange location to reflect on my midterm assignment, but I noticed that all of the previous essays were mentioned within it. By seeing what I wrote in my midterm paper, I can see the contrast of changes until now. I wrote the letter to my friend who attended Ionian Village with me because I felt that he could relate to how my faith is mentioned within writing. I discussed how I could revise the W.I.L.T.B.Y. and how the progress for the research paper was going. I was stating ideas that could be placed within the first drafts idea. I did follow some of my own advice of adding more original and creative work. The other ideas did not relate to the main thesis. At that time, I did not make the connection with the topics. As I wouldve loved to put in all of my ideas, I understand the paper had a better relationship between paragraphs when the key illustrations were put within the essay. The research progress that was mentioned how I found resources through the library workshop. This is a key fact because the workshop helped me to pinpoint where I can find exactly what will help my argumentative essay. This engaged me to find online articles through an educational search engine. EbscoHost and Google Scholar were great examples to find articles on topics like water weight and types of food to eat. I have notice that I use the same words in many essays, which is a trend of weakness because it lacks the variety to give a topic variety. I have tried with the final drafts to not recycle the same words over. Realizing that a reader can track how many times a word is reused can take away from them comprehending the essay. Now that I am reflecting on my own work and my experience with English 1102, I am discovering that I enjoying stating my opinion, writing personally helps

the reader understand who the author is, and how everything that the reader can understand is reflective of what the researcher can state valid. Our student-teacher relationship has been friendly and cordial. As we have discussed that it has been a difficult year juggling architecture and my liberal arts courses, you have been very understanding and I appreciate it. I have had days where I have forgotten my drafts and was late to my conference; there are no excuses for this manner. In any case, I still believe that I deserve an A for your course because I used the tools given to me to discover new techniques of writing and mature from my own writing. My final reports reflect all aspects that are requested of me. The progress work will explain how I put in effort to find my information as well. I will continue these efforts for communication purposes within architecture. Comparing to my field of study, this course makes me realize how essential it is to have writing skills because it is always necessary for a client or pupil to reach full comprehension of the main idea an authority brings across.