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Mavett Medrano

Ms. White

AP Literature and Composition

18 November 2020

Portfolio Reflection

During the past four years, my classes have challenged my way of thinking about myself

and everyone in the world around me. I have learned about different cultures, belief systems, life

experiences, perspectives not only in my English class but also in my math, science, history, and

language classes. I have been able to put aside my ego and grow to meet my teachers’

expectations and to exceed my own limitations. I have seen myself succeed despite feeling

overtaken by the challenging nature of my courses, and it is proof that I am capable of learning

and then applying that knowledge. I structured my portfolio to illustrate this journey through

high school, acknowledging my weaknesses but also celebrating my hard work and progress.

The first section contains all of the work with poetry that I have done this year. I decided

to include my notes, my rush writes, and my final drafts of my poetry responses for the three

poems I selected: “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats, “Because I could not Stop for Death”

by Emily Dickinson, and “Como Tu/Like You/Like Me” by Richard Blanco. I wanted to show

my thought process when it came to writing analytical papers so I included my notes and my

rush writes to show my initial ideas and thoughts. Then, by seeing my final draft, one is able to

see my ideas changing and/or becoming more refined. I chose not to include my first draft for my

poetry responses because the edits I made were not that drastic, rather they were to make my

analysis clearer. I believe the final draft says exactly what I intended it to, and so it is easier to

understand as a part of my thought process.

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The next section is labeled “Growth”. The change in quality and content of my

assignments provides the best evidence for this section. The first set of assignments that I chose

were my notes on “Night” by Elie Wiesel, from my sophomore year, and my notes on “Catcher

in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger, from my junior year. In my “Night” notes, I took notes mostly on

the plot and what was happening in the story in general, very surface-level. However, in my

“Catcher” notes, I noticed that I focused more on the characters and their motives, and even on

theme, than before. The next set of assignments are all essays, both narrative and analytical. The

two first analytical essays are from freshman and junior year. My “To Kill a Mockingbird” essay

had allowed me to pass, but now, I feel that the theme is too cheesy and doesn’t really discuss

anything about humanity. In the process of writing my “Bless Me, Ultima” essay, I remember

asking my teacher how to make the theme less fluffy and cliche and to instead reveal something

about the human experience and its universality. I think that shows that the way I think about a

theme changed and that I had a desire to push myself to delve deeper into more complex ideas.

Also from junior year, I decided to include the almost final and the final draft of my comparison

between a book and a movie. Seeing the notes and reminders on my almost final reminded me

that even right before a final draft of an assignment, I still have room to grow and things to learn.

The last two writings are both narratives. The first, from freshman year, I am proud of, however I

am not of the second narrative, which is from junior year. I didn’t want to show that I got worse,

rather that it was not an exponential rate of growth that I went through. However, just because I

might not have done well in the middle doesn’t mean I wasn’t still growing. Lastly, I included

two group presentations, both from sophomore year, to show that I grew a lot even within a span

of a few months. The first one is very crowded and dark, so we made the second one to be easier

to see and read.

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The last section in my portfolio is “Excellence”. I included the assignments that I was the

most proud of and that I felt I did my best job on. My notes on “Jane Eyre” from senior year is

the only set of notes included because I really liked reading this book, and I think this is why I

took a lot of in-depth notes. It made me see the book in a different light, as well as slowed me

down so as to fully digest and understand what the book was saying. The first writing is my first

ever research paper done in sophomore year. I got a really good score for my first time doing a

research paper and I was very proud of my accomplishment. The next three writings are

discussion-type assignments and so are less formal. However I feel that these showcase my

ability to work with real-life topics while also analyzing them to discover their meaning, even

when it is not a formal analysis paper. My last writing is my college essay completed in senior

year. I am very proud of passing this assignment. Although it was a personal topic, which made

me more vulnerable to feedback, I was able to accept and apply the feedback that I had recieved.

I remember being less openminded about feedback in freshman year and so I can see that I have

grown more mature about it. Lastly, I included one presentation from junior year and one from

senior year. For the junior year presentation I have shown both the script and the slides so that

our analysis and visuals are both presented. I had a very good experience working with my

partner for this project, we worked well together and we also got a good grade on this

assignment. I also felt that I had a good group to work with for our “House on Mango Street” art

project, and so I was also proud of our final piece of art that resulted from our syncronization.

Sadly, the pictures don’t give the actual 3D model file justice but it still looks really good.