Kristopher Warren

WRDS 1104

Professor Malcolm

30 April 2022

Final Reflective Letter

This portfolio is a website created by myself with everything I have worked on this

semester in my WRDS 1104 class. There is also a lot of reflecting in this from myself explaining

the processes, what I have learned, what were my favorites, and some difficulties I had with

some of these. When you first click on my e-portfolio you will see my home page, which is a

simple page with the title that is kind of unique to me. Since this portfolio is meant to show my

writings over the semester I wanted to add in something that most people first see on me and that

is my long hair. So that is how the title “The Writings of Long Hair Man'' came about. After my

title I wrote a small greeting and a description of what the portfolio is about. Under that there is a

button that links you to my school email and under that button is a button that brings you straight

to the “About” section of the portfolio.

With the link that brings you to the “About” page, the first thing you see is a small

slideshow of two pictures of me that will go back and forth between the two. Since I needed

people to know why it says long hair in the title that won’t read this I needed to show that it's

because of my hair. I made the background a darker background to let the pictures pop out more.

This is the only page where the heading isn’t at the top. Below the big heading “About” I have

written out my name and under that there is a brief description of what I am doing in college,

what I am going to try and do after college, and some things about me as the author. On the left
there will be the names of the sections that will show you all of the pages I have prepared and if

you click on one of them it will guide you to that page.

My third page is titled “Informal Writing”. This was a page consisting of three pictures of

journal entries we had at the beginning of every class during the duration of this semester. I

picked my favorite three that showed the best thinking and analysis that I could write down.

Under each one there is a brief reflection/commentary of why I selected it to be in my portfolio.

The fourth page of my website portfolio is the “Studios & Lit Lounges” section. This is

the section of this portfolio that shows the reflections of the four studios and lit lounges we had

throughout this semester. The reflection consists of myself talking about what I learned, which

one is my favorite, which one gave me the most difficulties, and some processes I did to do the

assignment.

The fifth page of this portfolio is the “Literacy Narrative” section. This was the first big

assignment of the semester for us. This section has an embedded PDF of my own created literacy

narrative with a reflection under it. The reflection is mainly me talking about the enjoyment and

a tiny set back when creating the writing. Also, it tells people why this first assignment of mine

was important to me.

The sixth section of this e-portfolio of mine is the “Questions Proposal” part. This is the

assignment that started us on the upwards journey that led us to the end of the semester with our

topic we wanted to research. This page consists of an embedded PDF of my work with another

reflection below it. In the reflection I go on to talk about what gave me the idea to do this certain

question to research. Also, I talk about what my original question was before I got set on the one

I went on to research.
 The seventh page of my personal e-portfolio is the “Annotated Bibliography” This was

the set-up towards the big research project. This page I have embedded my annotated

bibliography and have a reflection under it. This reflection goes on to talk about the difficulties I

had at the beginning of this assignment, along with how Purdue OWL can help me in the future

with citations.

The eighth section of this website is the second biggest of them all which is the big

research writing assignment of the semester. This one wrapped up the three assignment saga . It

also involves the “Revised Narrative Introduction” which we did to add to this portfolio. Both of

these assignments are embedded into the page with both having a reflection under both of them.

The “Research-Based EIP” reflection talks about everything I learned from and about my topic.

Also, it talks about how the inquiry process helped my progression. The reflection about my

“Revised Narrative Introduction” talks mainly about the process and how difficult or easy it was

for me. Also, if this new introduction made my project better.

The last and final section of my portfolio is the “Final Reflective Letter” which you are

reading right now at this moment. This section is just going to consist of an embedded PDF of

this assignment which is me talking and reflecting on this whole portfolio and semester in all.

Writing I learned is in everything and I have found that out this semester. Writing is the

base of everything that deals with being social. It changes the way we view ourselves and our

work. While it is also how we communicate with others whether it be texting, sending snaps, or

even communicating with people through our writing. Writing also reflects on what we think and

can help with other things like critical thinking. By being able to reflect and write things down it

causes you to remember and help learn better. I also wrote about this in my Research-Based EIP.
 The different assignments all helped me in different ways whether it be small or big. The

journals were there and helped me be able to write down fassinating perspectives that I got from

these different prompts or pictures, for example the first journal that is up there in the “Informal

Writing” section. It also helped me be able to just write what I was thinking whether it is about

the prompt or like some days I would write how I was really tired and wanted to sleep. The

studios tested me to really be able to reflect even though I wouldn’t say I am the best at it.

Reflecting is a big part of this assignment since you have to react to what you read and

summarize. As a learner it did help me pay attention more to being able to summarize what is

being read or watched even though one may be difficult, for example like how I talked about the

studio two in that section. Critical thinking is a big part of what I learned from a lot of these

activities. The literacy narrative really helped me with being able to show instead of just tell the

difficulties I had with reading and understanding what was being read. Trying to find out what I

was gonna put in was difficult but I was able to get there. The question proposal was a different

experience for me because I have not done an assignment where I looked up a question like that

and found information like that before. Also, being able to find sources was kind of difficult. Just

like for the other two assignments like the annotated bibliography and the EIP really challenged

me to actually go searching for information at a place I actually would go finding it at. Speaking

of the EIP and annotated bibliography, since I have no experience with citations it is a thing

where if you get one thing wrong it messes up the whole citations so both of these assignments

really helped me be able to citate things for the future. The annotated bibliography really

wrapped up on my development to summarize and evaluate on my sources. Since I have been

doing all of this evaluating with studios and the questions proposal, evaluating started to become

easier than it was before and helped me be able to evaluate and reflect more in detail I think for
myself. The Research-Based EIP is one of those assignments where I have done something

similar but didn’t have as much impact on me as this one did. After I was done with it it really

had me thinking about how much we write and use critical thinking without even realizing it.

This assignment really developed a curiosity in me as a learner to learn more about these

different things that we do that we didn’t know were considered this or that.

Peer Review was a very different experience for me because I haven’t ever done that

before in my life. I don’t even know what I do wrong in my papers let alone know what other

people did wrong in theirs. So when I did my comments I went for mainly the obvious mistakes

if I found any at all and I commented on the things that I liked about my peers' works. I would

say that it was helpful but not that much because I still don’t know things about grammar and

stuff like that. I did learn that when people review your work that there are a lot of things that I

make tiny mistakes on and I need to fix that.

I think my most important work in the class isn’t even the research assignments. I think it

is the literacy narrative. This is probably the most important because of a couple of reasons.The

first reason is because I don’t really express the difficulties I have with certain things so being

able to share those difficulties I had was really nice for me. I think being able to reflect on what

has happened in the past and share what I have done to make it better created a good story to

show. I want to be able to write more like that and share experiences so that maybe other people

including myself can read them.

I don’t think I have a strength in writing or thinking because I am not that good at

anything in particular. Although, I know for a fact that one of my weaknesses is being able to

think about the right words and how to express myself well in writing. My brain starts to go
blank and I tend to forget when I start to think and write. I try to find ways to better myself at

being able to express myself but so far it hasn’t really improved much.

While creating this E-Portfolio I wanted to reflect and wonder about all the things I have

learned and taken from this long but short journey of a semester. From everything that I done and

took from this semester I wanted to create this letter and portfolio to be able to share my

experiences with writing in new forms of writing I haven't done before. The conclusion I can

draw is now matter the difficulties. The more you can think, reflect on those thoughts, write

down those reflections, and be open to learning. You don’t need to be good at anything to create

something to be proud of. This may not be the best conclusion I can make about all of this

semester but that is definitely what I can take.

This class has made me think more than any class I have ever been in. What I can really

say I can definitely take from this class is that being curious and creating more questions from

established questions to gain more information is really good. Also, being able to reflect on that

information created for you to think critically better and write better from that information. This

class was very interesting for me. I was able to learn and grow as a writing like I didn’t know I

could do.