Final Portfolio

I would say that I have really expanded my writing ability after this semester in English 102. I took an English class my last year of high school that was equivalent to an English 101 class, so I guess I could say I already had some college writing experience, along with my engineering class. I honestly thought that English 102 would be more or less along the same line as my previous English classes. For example, I figured it was going to be about researching and structure at the college level, with lots of essays. I was pleasantly surprised at what it actually was.

My previous English classes taught me how to effectively write and get my thoughts onto paper in an understandable way. I’ve been told that I’m an excellent writer, to my surprise, so I was actually counting on more of the same thing in this class, what with English being among my personally least favorite classes. However, I felt that the class wasn’t aimed at how to research and write, but more about who we were researching for and writing to. Looking back on my other English classes, I realize now that most of my essays weren’t built around focusing on my audience as much as what I was trying to say. My engineering class last semester started teaching me to focus my writing to a particular crowd, but I would definitely say English 102 was much more focused on that. With the Blog and the Website, my audience wasn’t just my instructor, but my classmates, the Service Learning, future students, etc. In using the web as a medium, I also had to use new methods of organizing my writing. I’ve been used to the standard 5-10 paragraph essay, with the occasional 5-7 page paper. That was just paragraphs, organized the same way as far as presentation goes.

In this class, though, I got to change things up. For example, the website was great for this. With the website, I could organize everything even more than just the next paragraph; I could create an entire new tab devoted to one aspect of my topic, and in that one tab multiple, separate and titled paragraphs supporting that topic. Using what we read over in the book, I also started thinking more about visual messages. Since this was a website, I didn’t need to only use words. So I would definitely say this class challenged me to think outside the box with my writing. I had to think more about my audience, and how to present to that audience. I would have to say the website was a definite challenge for me. As I said, I’ve been used to the standard method of essays and papers, so writing my topic in this way was much more complicated. While it does require more effort for a quality website, it definitely makes for a more appealing topic than a few pages of text. This, combined with my engineering class, has really got me thinking about new ways to present my information.

I would have to say that the thing I was the most proud of was the revision of my website. The first version of it was, admittedly, terrible. I was sick at the time, and could barely get out of bed a few days, but I’m still disappointed in what I called a website. Now that I got a chance to revise it, I took the time to make sure it was what I wanted it to be. I went back to re-organize a few things I was unhappy with before, added images that I was lacking, and just overall improved the entire website. Now it is at a level I would be proud to say I made. While not perfect, I know, it is much more to my own personal expectations.

Overall, I have learned a lot in this class. I learned about how to better organize my writing and change my focus to the audience, thinking outside the box more. I also learned that communication is very important. In the Service Learning Project portion, communication became critical, and I was given the responsibility to get information from our Service Learning agency, the Discovery Center of Idaho. This included getting answers for our interview beforehand so we could formulate a script, as well as making sure everyone was informed of any change of plans or schedule conflicts. Our plan for the video changed drastically as we began, starting with me taking over half of the filming, something I wasn’t even supposed to do in the first place. This wasn’t due to anyone’s fault, just difference in availability. Being able to effectively communicate what needs to be said to everyone was very important, and after not accomplishing that a couple times with the people at the DCI, I quickly learned that.

As far as how I can use these learned lessons, I can easily see why I need them. Since I’m planning on being an Engineer, either Civil Construction Management, these lessons will be critical in those fields. Effectively getting a message to people could be the difference between a successful product and a disaster. In that field, I can easily see myself needing to know how to structure my writing to different audiences. For example, I would have very different write-ups for fellow engineers and design teams than I would for company executives or non-Engineers. It just calls for different writing, and I would say this class definitely showed me some methods to accomplish that. It at least opened my eyes to new ways of writing, seeing as I’ve kept to the same style of writing through high school. Also, I thought you might be interested to know that, now that I got to be involved in a Service Learning class, I will plan on looking for other Service Learning classes for next year, and am thinking about possible volunteering anyways. Thanks for the great semester.

Website URL

http://re-dsicoveringdiscovery.weebly.com/private-education.html