1 Damarrell Alexander Portfolio Essay Ms.

Ingram

A Progressive Semester This has been a challenging but very enlightening and progressive semester for me personally, coming in as a transfer student from a smaller university isnt as easy as I imagined when I decided to make the change to UNC Charlotte from UNC Pembroke. The work that I have completed here is just a little bit more difficult than at Pembroke, including this English course. Coming into this course I knew I needed some help with my writing and I would struggle a bit with some of the assignments, but the way Ms. Ingram prepared the course I felt like I was able to work at my own pace, and actually get a better understanding of what I was actually writing unlike my previous English courses, which helped me out a lot when it came down to organizing this portfolio. In this course we took on many assignments such as the WILTBY Essay, Annotated Bibliography, Three-Sided Assignment, and an Argumentative Research Essay that got the best of me. Even though we had multiple assignments due, my topic on all of the essays was yoga and athletes. At first I couldnt come up with an inquiry question that I could find some nice research about that also stuck within the guidelines of the course, but after talking to Ms. Ingram and doing further research the only question that I felt really strong about was Does yoga benefit all types of athletes?, once I was able to come up with this question my Annotated Bibliography was a walk in the park. I would type in Athletes and Yoga and so much information would pop up on my screen about the benefits of yoga for athletes, and the types of yoga that athletes were taking part in, the information just kept coming. This brought me to a thesis statement that

2 Damarrell Alexander Portfolio Essay Ms. Ingram

seemed to fit in just right All athletes bodies arent made the same, but yoga could be an essential necessity for the mind, body, and soul of all athletes. With this thesis statement I was able to come up with some information from professional and collegiate coaches, personal trainers and instructors, and also athletes ranging from dancers to professional NFL, NBA, MLS, and Olympian gold medalist to write a Three-Sided Assignment that describes the outlook of yoga from their point of view. In my Three-Sided Assignment I used a yoga instructor from West Palm Beach that states yoga is great for athletes because of the breath work or pranayama (Shirley Archer), a Olympic Gold Medalist in womens soccer that says Yoga helps her with speed and agility on the field (Hope Solo), and also a coach from a power house football team, The University of Maryland that makes it mandatory for the entire team to get at least 2 hours of Bikram yoga (Hot Yoga) in a week It helps with their flexibility while also helping prevent injury (Coach Randy Edsall) Throughout all of my research I could only find a few negative comments on why athletes shouldnt take part in yoga exercises. Even though most of the articles that I read when it came to the negative comments of athletes and yoga were journalist making fun of jocks or meat heads there were a few articles that raised my awareness of the types of injures one could encounter if they didnt go about yoga the right way. This gave me my main topic to argue about when I started putting together my Argumentative Essay. After finding out all this very informative information on yoga that I had no idea about before, I had to write an Argumentative Essay that I didnt really want to write due to the fact that all the information I was researching was more positive than negative. With this essay I

3 Damarrell Alexander Portfolio Essay Ms. Ingram

kind of took over and put my own twist on the whole essay, I started out with a question thats normally asked when the topic of athletes and yoga is talked about and that is Does yoga benefit an athletes performance. In my research I seen a few articles talking about the types of ligament damage in your legs and arms that an athlete could encounter due to over stretching and positions that put the body in awkward moves (Washington Post 03, Aug 2011). But after reading a little deeper into the article I realized that with yoga its all about knowing what your body can and cannot do, the ones that were getting injured were the ones that were not going the right way about yoga and trying to do the most as a beginner. So after realizing that I focused on my side of the argument which stated Personally I believe that all athletes bodies arent made the same, but yoga could be an essential necessity for the mind body and soul of all athletes. This is something that I truly believe in which made my Argumentative Essay more compelling to me personally because I am a collegian athlete myself. The WILTBY Essay was the first essay we completed in this course but I have yet to mention anything about it, I have done this for a reason. I have always heard the quote that youre your worse critique, stepping into this course I honestly didnt know what I was getting myself into, like I said at the beginning of this essay I knew I needed help with my writing skills; this was me being my own worst critic. After going a whole semester with Ms. Ingram my WILTBY Essay has new twist and turns, I have found out more about myself this semester than my entire freshman year of college, some may say that I have gotten older and I look at things in a different light, others say thats just how life works. Me personally Id like to say thank you to Ms. Ingram, every once in a while someone comes into your life with no relations or ties to you

4 Damarrell Alexander Portfolio Essay Ms. Ingram

personally and makes a huge presence in your life, for me that was Ms. Ingram. The first few weeks of classes were hard for me, and death in the family played a major part in the reason why, Ms. Ingram worked not letting me get too far behind and having the opportunity of doing what I needed to do to pass this course, but not only was she understanding in that matter but also when it came down to my writing. The first week of class we did a warm up telling her about ourselves and what we would like to improve on throughout the semester. I stated in that warm up that Personally I am not a great writer but I really want to work on the structuring of my sentences and being able to elaborate more. Ms. Ingram simple wrote back We will work on this a lot, that feedback isnt the reason Im thanking her. Im thanking her because she didnt just write that on my paper and not make it happen, throughout this course we did multiple warm up where we would just write nonstop for 10 minutes just to get our brains flowing, we completed bubble charts, learned about Ethos, Logo, and Pathos, drew fish that had deeper meanings than just a regular fish. Everything we completed in her class correlated with each other, nothing I completed felt like a waste of time. I have worked hard on this Portfolio and have gotten plenty of feedback; I know my writing isnt that of an author but I feel as if I have made plenty of gains personally from where I was at the beginning of the semester to where I am as of right now. At the beginning of this semester I couldnt tell you what grade Id give myself on this portfolio, but as of right now I believe that from where I started to where I have ended is B+ work its not where you start its where you finish (Damarrell Alexander).