Table of Contents:

1. Home (The Final Portfolio Essay)

2. Final Drafts (Multi-Genre Projects)

a. Developing Curiosity

b. Midterm Assessment

4. Writers Notebook

5. Blog

6. Annotated Bibliography

Final Portfolio Essay

Creating this ePortfolio has been an interesting experience. I have learned a great deal about

writing, my topic, and myself as a writer/researcher, with the last being perhaps the most important

thing to learn about. Before I began working on the ePortfolio, I imagined that the bulk of my

education in this class would consist of discovering new writing techniques and grammatical

improvements. In reality, I mostly learned about how I think as a writer and about my research process.

My first assumption upon hearing about the ePortfolio was that the most difficult part would be

finding a topic that was both interesting enough to research, and simple enough to gain a solid

understanding of within the time frame of the semester. I figured that once this task was complete, it

would be relatively simple to do the research and build the website to frame the information discovered

by that research. What I did not anticipate was how easily I found a topic, then changed it, then refined

it, then changed it again to suit my needs, and how much difficultly was added to this process by my
lack of understanding for what I wanted my final project to look like. Finding a general topic was easy;

picking a direction to go with it was hard.

The process of me constantly shifting my focus led me to realize something important about

myself in regards to the inquiry process, my comfort zone is not static. I typically dont mind writing

that much, nor do I prepare a lot when writing. I usually try to jump right in and let my thoughts

structure themselves around a particular passion or interest. This results in two consistent effects: one, I

am quick to abandon a project in favor of working on a new more interesting idea, and two, I usually

have a lot to say about a topic in the beginning, but I dont always finish strong. I have become aware

of this second effect over the years which has led me to work more consciously toward the final

product of any project.

What is so important to me about learning how I approach writing is that now I am more aware

of the potential pros and cons of such an approach. I mentioned earlier how I became conscious of my

tendency to lack enthusiasm towards the end of a project before this class, but now that I have a more

complete understanding of my approach to writing, I can better evaluate some of my other strengths

and weaknesses. For example, now I know that one of my major strengths with writing is flexibility

and that a major weakness of mine is my tendency to over-look crucial information while reading or

writing for the first time. Because I am aware of the latter, I can now use a technique that I improved

this semester, revision, to better account for this weakness.

In his article on innovation, Henry Doss wrote, Learning about yourself is perhaps the single

most important outcome of a powerful educational experience. Self-awareness can lead to an ever-

increasing authenticity.... That line got me thinking about my authenticity as a writer. Did I do my best

to write papers based on what I felt should be said, or did I focus on expressing my feelings accurately?

After a semesters worth of writing reader response letters and blog posts, I have found myself to be

firmly in the latter category.

 I absolutely cannot talk about revision without mentioning Anne Lamonts article about the

topic. Before this semester I had always imagined revision to be more of a refinement process where

the writer adds minor improvements to an otherwise finished work. After reading Lamonts, Shitty

First Drafts as well as Richard Straubs, Responding--Really Responding--To Other Students'

Writing, I learned that my preconceived notion of what revision was fell short of the actual process.

These articles helped me with a major problem that I didnt know that I had before reading them. That

problem was that I used to write my first draft of anything as if it were the final draft. While this

initially seemed logical to me, what I realized that I was actually doing was allowing myself to think

that my first drafts required little revision, and putting a lot of pressure on myself to get things right the

first time.

All of the artifacts in some way helped me improve my writing process. The first drafts of my

Developing Curiosity essay, my annotated bibliography, and my multi-genre project all served as

excellent starting points for their final products. The feedback that Ive received over the semester has

helped my identify that my tendency to aggressively pursue a curiosity can sometimes lead me to bite

of more than I can chew. The reader response letters helped me identify traits that I enjoyed in other

peoples writing that I could later emulate in my own. Of all these various artifacts thought, I think the

most helpful were the blogs.

Honestly I thought for sure that the importance of my artifacts would be reversed and that the

blogs would be less helpful that all of the others, but the questions that each blog post posed were very

relevant to where I was at that point in the writing process. The first blog post, simply titled Blog

One, helped me really investigate what I wanted to learn about, as well as what rhetorical skills that I

should be consciously developing this semester. All of this information could have come free without

requiring me to write a single word, but as I mentioned earlier because of the particular way that I read

and write it helps me a lot to put my understanding and ideas on paper several times before I actually
begin to make a final product. This helps me develop a clear picture of where I want to go without

being betrayed by my natural tendency to skip important details.

My second blog post, No One Writes Alone: What I Learned from MIT and Straub, helped

me understand just how important the peer review process is. I am always tempted to write alone so it

was good for me to be reminded of the importance of many different perspectives when writing. The

idea in the post worked in tandem with the one following it, Revising My Revision. The ideas in this

post might have been the most revolutionary in regards to my writing out of all the other concepts that I

learned about this year. I have already mentioned in the paper the paradigm shift that took place after

reading Lamonts article, but the degree of this conceptual leap can not be overstated. Before this

semester I didnt feel like a first draft could be so easily abandoned, but now I know that not only can it

be, it should be in many cases. This has totally changed a major step in the writing process for me and

allowed me to enjoy that first draft much more knowing that I can disown it at the drop of a hat. As Ive

mentioned, I do enjoy being flexible with my writing.

My favorite blog post by far though was my round table discussion titled, The Discussion of

Morality for Machines. The reason why I like this particular post so much is that it really allowed me

to excite my passion and see how much differently I write depending on my level of interest. This is

not to say that I didnt find all of the other writing interesting, but because the prompt for this post was

so open I was able to combine and explore multiple topics of interest in relation to AI. It was this article

that really revealed to me just how easy I find writing when I write about a topic that I find intriguing. I

have also learned not to pressure my writing to argue for one side of conflict or another. I believe that

this is due to the fact that investigative writing is the form I enjoy the most, and I am less interested in

producing a persuasive argument for an audience than I am in finding the truth for myself.

Writing this fourth blog post actually led me writing a paper for a separate class on the same

topic. I felt like it was important for me to include the first draft of my fourth blog post alongside the

later draft of the paper that was derived from it in my writers notebook. Together they are a good
example of what Ive learned about the way that I write. As I described in my developing curiosity

essay, Why I Did I Want to Research Artificial Intelligence, a big part of my inquiry process is

stumbling on a topic that interests me by chance. In this case I stumbled on the concept of moral

consideration which led me to the topic for a separate essay.

Other good examples of my writing process that I included in my writers notebook were my

first two mini research research projects, The Future Economy, and Is the Future Really Darker?.

These two short essays depict the direction of my research and opinions heading into the multi-genre

projects that would come later. Writing about my research to that point let me take stock of my

perception of the topic and helped me avoid confirmation bias when my research continued. I included

the culmination of my research, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Computer, as my

wild card artifact to be assessed with those process works.

In my midterm I ended up mentioning four key concepts, two of which were concepts I had

initially flagged as weaknesses at the beginning of the semester, one that I originally picked and still

felt uncomfortable with, and a final weakness that I discovered later in the semester that I wanted to

improve on. The first two that I mentioned where getting out of my comfort zone, and making

connections. Based on what I have learned about my writing process being very fluid, its clear to me

that getting out of my comfort zone might not be that big of an issue. I cant say that I have a solution

to the problem as much as I can say this is an unlikely problem for me to have, as my comfort zone

shifts around so much its hard to imagine a situation in writing where I would be forced to leave it.

There is one such situation that Ive discovered, but that goes along with the third key concept that I

mentioned in the midterm.

In my midterm I also mentioned that making connections had actually turned out to be one of

my biggest strengths, and I dont see any evidence now to the contrary. Its somewhat difficult to

imagine why I might of thought of this as a weakness originally. Maybe it is because I hadnt had too

many courses to date where connections could easily be drawn, but this semester is absolute proof that
not only do I make connections, but I really enjoy doing so. My performance in this class and my

critical thinking class were improved by my presence in both. So many rhetorical concepts came up in

one only to have the point driven home in the other. In the blog post, Revising My Revision, I

specifically named a book that I was reading in critical thinking that dealt with the very same topic and

said a lot of the same things as Lamonts article. That connection between the two classes continued

when wrote the essay for the other class based on the blog post that I did in this one.

So I am comfortable with making connections and for the most part I feel reassured that my

comfort zone is kinetic enough that I wont have to write outside of it. However, one concept that I am

still not comfortable with is multi-modal composition. I initially found the multi-genre project to be the

most difficult assignment this semester. This was, in part, because I prefer writing as a form of

communication. I probably need to find a few more genres that I can identify with and learn to work in,

but it still seems to me that writing is the most efficient way to exchange complex ideas. I stubbornly

avoid any medium outside of writing when I go to express myself. This is probably that last remaining

comfort zone problem for me and can be seen in How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the

Computer, where I used more text and fewer pictures than I tend to see in similar presentations. It is

obvious that I will have to continue to work on multi-modal composition in the future.

The last of the key concepts that I wrote about in the midterm was critical reading. I have

learned that this is by far my biggest rhetorical weakness. I am amazing at deriving the big picture of

any article or conversation and absolutely terrible at mulling over each detail. I am not too disappointed

with this weakness however, because I believe that we all think differently and while some people can

offer the world a detail-oriented brain, I cannot. My mind is structured for malleability and curiosity

which makes inquiry easy in a broad sense, but difficult when I need to recognize bits of information

that do not see as important. To overcome this weakness I have learned that I simply need to read and

write about something multiple times and prepare to hear criticism when I have missed the mark
because of my lack of attention to detail. I honestly dont mind doing this, which is why I dont mind

having this weakness at all.

I organized my ePortfolio to optimize the viewers insight into my writing process. I added

hyper-links throughout this document so it is easy to transition from my comments here to the work

that I am referring to. Im a bit disappointed that the hyper-links open a new window each time, but I

am happy that I was able to put them in such an ideal place. If the amount of work that I put into this

ePortfolio is evident, then I believe it deserves an A.

I am glad that this class has helped me see how I write so that I can be vigilant of my

weaknesses going into the future, and I can also be confident in the skills that I possess. I have been too

type A when writing in the past because I tend to want to accomplish things with my writing that are

outside of my scope. I dont say this to say that I should avoid difficult writing in the future, but to say

that I will be more aware of what comes easy to me and what doesnt. Specifically, my future writing

process will include more drafts that consist of less structure and more authenticity. That way I can

systematically revise until all details have been covered and all requirements met. While this process

might sound like it could lead to a lot of unnecessary writing, that idea no longer intimidates me in the

slightest. I enjoy writing and I dont mind changing the entire content of a paper in favor of developing

a different idea. This is a process that suits me well and can help me account for the way that I tend to

miss the finer details in my reading and writing.