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Amanda Mercereau
UWRT-1104-029
Ingram
15 November 2016
Final Portfolio Essay
When entering this writing course, I was honestly dreading it. In the past, I have come to
understand that writing is a horrible and dreadful task in which the teacher assigns the class a
research topic, one in which most of us are completely uninterested in, and forced to write a
reflective essay that summarizes our research and how it applies to the class. However, in the
past fifteen weeks, I have come to the conclusion that those assignments were nothing more than
busy work and filler assignments given to ensure we pass the class; writing is the process in
which you connect your thoughts to paper. I think that the main reason I have always dreaded
writing is because I was forced to write about topics that I had little-to-no interest in. This being
said, I quickly learned that writing is not as dreadful as I once thought, because our very first
assignment was a personal inquiry essay in which we were allowed to choose our topic and
research more about it.
I also think that my writing has improved a substantial amount, because of the writing
processes that we were taught how to use. Before this class, I would sit down to write a paper
and not plan out or make drafts of papers. I always thought this was the easiest and most
efficient way to write because I could knock out the entire process in one sitting and I would
usually receive an A or at the least a high B on every paper I handed in in high school. However,
once arriving to college, I learned that this is not feasible and not practical whatsoever. When

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assigned a six-page inquiry paper, you cannot sit down and write it in its entirety in one sitting
and expect superb work.
This course has taught me that in order to receive the best possible outcome, you need to
break down the process to make it easier on yourself as well as produce your best writing. In
high school, I never really believed in the first draft, second draft and final draft process because
I felt as if they were very unproductive as the teacher would only fix grammatical errors and tell
you good job, keep it up. t was very unhelpful and left me more confused than before as we
were not provided feedback that was actually usable in drafting the final essay.
If I was only able to take away one thing that I have really benefitted from in this class, it
would be peer review. I have found that peer review is not only beneficial in receiving feedback
about your own papers, but also in reviewing others work it can allow you to see other ideas
from different perspectives and provide you with different insights to include into your own
paper. Another aspect of peer review that I really like is that it is more of an even playing field,
for lack of better words. Since we are all students in the same class going through the same
writing process, we have a deeper understanding of what is being asked of us and therefore can
help one another in a different way than the professor can. Peer review has also helped me in
adapting to working with all different kinds of people; people with different writing styles,
personalities and work ethics- something that will have to be used in the workplace after college.
In the first draft of our Exploratory Essay, I think that the peer review feedback provided really
helped shape the way I developed as a writer in this course. In the margins of my first draft, one
of my peers wrote, It is very well thought out and you did a great job flowing all your thoughts
together!. Continuing from there, another one of my peers stated that they wished I wouldve
elaborated more on what I thought about world religion. From this, I gathered that I was strong

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at writing transitions and connecting my thoughts together, but I can continue to work on
explaining and giving more detail about the topic I am writing about.
Most of the revising and editing that I have done this course has a lot to do with my peers
and peer review. I think that receiving feedback about your work from four new sets of eyes
rather than just one can open up your paper to new and fresh ideas. I think that peer review had
given me a way to have a guideline of the direction my paper is going, versus the direction my
writing should go. The feedback that my peers gave me helped in the sense that they were
coming from an unbiased perspective and gave me helpful advice in how to better my thoughts
and words.
During this semester, there were a few key concepts that I found myself struggling with.
The first of these is multi-modality. Like I stated previously, in high school, writing was taught
as 400-500 words on a paper summarizing your research; I had no idea that it could also appeal
to you visually as well. Relating to that, I think that stretching out of my comfort zone was a
huge struggle for me. Appealing to the reading using the 5 modes of communication was a
stretch out of my comfort zone, because I was unaware that writing could be more than words on
a paper. Lastly, I think I also struggled with the actual writing process in the sense that before
this class, I had no writing process; I would knock out an entire paper in one sitting. Spacing and
planning out what I want to say and how I want to say it was new and unfamiliar to me, but I
think that it is something I have become more comfortable with during this semester.
I think that the reason the blog post assignments as a whole are significant to the ePortfolio because they are a self-reflection of what is going on in the course, from week 1 up
until week 13. I sort of viewed these blog posts as a diary, because it was more about connecting
your thoughts and ideas with the reading of that week.

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Next, I think that the Exploratory Essay was very significant to the portfolio because it
was one of the first major writing assignments that we completed. It also allowed us as the
students to have a greater appreciation for writing and sway our minds from what we believed in
high school, that writing was a chore, into something that is enjoyable, as we were allowed to
choose our own topics to write about. Being that it was the first major assignment, I think that it
shaped the way we viewed the rest of this course and the writing process overall.
After the exploratory essay came the bibliography. While it was important in this class,
as it showed our research, citations and how they all correlate with one another, it also prepared
us for when we leave this class and are required to write more annotated bibliographies. Since it
was broken down and taken in baby steps, I think that it made the task less daunting and more of
a reflective way to understand how one source led you to continue research into another source
and how they all connect.
Following that, I think the midterm was very useful as a way for us to check in and
track our progress that we have made during this semester. It was reflective upon how our ideas
about writing have grown, as well as spotlighting what we hope to accomplish in the latter half
of the course. I think that the midterm was beneficial to us because it allowed us to debrief our
time spent in this class and understand where we were, where we are, and where we need to be.
Lastly, I think that the Multi-Genre project was very important to our writing process and the
final portfolio. It was vital to this class as it allowed us to see the many and varying forms of
writing; that writing is much more than a six-page research paper, but instead contains factors
such as visual, aural, linguistic, spatial and gestural appeal. Writing also appeals to ethos, logos
and pathos, and can be found in many varying forms and styles.

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For my Wild Card artifact, I uploaded my Inquiry Project from my International Seminar
course that I am also taking this semester. The reason that I chose this particular paper for my
wild card because I think that this essay is reflective upon how I have developed my writing
skills in this UWRT course and connected it to other courses. Next, I uploaded Blog Post #1
from Module 1 as my Module Artifact. I think one concept that I have taken away from this
class was peer review and how it is critical and beneficial to developing your own writing skills
as well as understanding different writing skills from your own.
For the two Writers Notebook Artifacts I chose RRL #1 and the Multi-Modality
Worksheet. I chose the multi-modality worksheet because in this class I learned that writing can
be more than just words on pages; it appeals to one visually, aurally, linguistically, spatially and
gesturally. I chose RRL #1 because it talks about the difference between high school and college
classes. Since we wrote this reading response letter in the beginning of the semester when we
first arrived to college, it is reflective upon how we were all feeling during our transition. This
class has helped me grow from being a high school level writer to a college level writer, and this
artifact shows my initial thoughts about this concept. For my Feedback Artifacts I chose two
different drafts of my Exploratory Essay- the first and the final peer reviewed draft. I think that
the progression shown between the two and the comments provided by my peers best shows my
progress and work from the beginning to the end.
For my first Process Work Artifact, I chose the Genre Analysis Questions worksheet.
This worksheet helped me to understand how to analyze a text more in-depth and ask questions
about the purpose of what you are reading. This was the first step in many of the papers we
wrote, and this artifact guided me along the analysis process. Secondly, I chose the Inquiry
Project freewrite as my next artifact. This artifact is what we developed our inquiry project

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questions from, as we reflected upon topics that we were interested to know more about. I think
that being able to write about a topic I was interested in helped me to see that writing and writing
processes can be enjoyable. Lastly, I chose Freewrite- Guided Inquiry Questions for my final
Process Work Artifact. This was one of the first freewrites we did in this class, and at the time I
was not comfortable with freewriting and it was clear in this work. I think that over time, I have
come to understand that freewrite is purely your thought flow and should not be pre-meditated.
The design of my e-Portfolio is very reflective on my personality; I like things neat and
organized, but I also want it to be interesting. I found that when going through the example ePortfolios, they were far too busy and way too distracting from what I was supposed to be
focused on; the writing. Many of them featured bright colors, patterns, unnecessary images and
other factors that took away from the actual content of the portfolio. After browsing through all
of these, I decided that I wanted to keep mine clean and concise by having a simple theme and
font, but also incorporate an aesthetically appealing design element- the floral background. I
think that my layout appeals to visual and spatial modes of communication; it is colorful and
pleasing to the eye, but it is also organized and concise- there is nothing unnecessary included
in my blog.
Based on what I have presented and according to the e-Portfolio grading scale, I think
that my work is deserving of an exemplary grade. I believe that I have met all of the
requirements of the 80-90-point work, and I feel as if I have grown this semester. This course
has brought me from a high-school level writer up to a college student level writer, reader and
thinker. However, like we have read in our book, grading is subjective and what I would
consider grade-A work might not be grade-A work to another. I also am a firm believer that
there is always room for improvement, and I know that there are some aspects of my e-Portfolio

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that could use improvement, such as my Multi-Genre project. If I had the time, I really wouldve
liked to taken Ms. Ingram, Nico and Anjels advice into more serious consideration. They
suggested that I go through my slideshow presentation and narrated the final product as if I was
giving the presentation to my audience. I think that this wouldve greatly improved my overall
product.
In future courses, I think that the writing skills I have developed this semester will be
very beneficial. I know that in my college career, I am going to be writing a lot of papers. This
course has taught me that instead of viewing writing as this horrible and daunting task, that it is
enjoyable and a skill that is essential if you want to be an effective communicator. Writing is a
basic life skill that you will continue to use for the entirety of your life, and something that you
should continually be growing with. This class has also taught me that when reading writing, it
should not only appeal to you linguistically, but also visually, aurally and many other ways;
writing is so much more than words on a page. Writing has the power to connect people and
connect thoughts and ideas between one another. Being that I am a communications major, I
know that writing and being able to communicating via writing is going to be a crucial part of
my career. This class has taught me how to not only be a better writer, but how to also enjoy
writing as well as the writing process.