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Cynthia Moreno

Mrs. McCann

English 1302.201

5 May 2022

Portfolio Reflection

After such a long, tiring year, the English 1301 and 1302 saga is finally coming to an end.

This year has introduced my classmates and I to various different types of formats, topics, and

ideas that we had no experience with. Every essay was unique and different in many ways. For

instance, the first essay of this semester was an experiment, the second was sort of like a

comparison, and the third and final essay was where we were able to take a stance on the issue

that we had previously written a comparison essay about. Although connected, the second and

third essays were unique in their own ways. Compared to last semester’s, they still have a lot that

is different. Still, every essay has left us all with valuable experiences and skills that we will be

able to use in the future.

Of course, every essay has been challenging to complete. This is due to the lack of prior

knowledge we have on certain aspects of the MLA format. For example, the second essay

required us to incorporate headings into our writing. Although the headings made it easier to

organize all of the information from the sources into specific sections, getting the format correct

was a bit difficult. This was the case for essay 1 as well. My classmates and I had not conducted

an experiment we had to make an essay about before, so none of us knew how to start nor did we

know how to organize the results, methodology, and information on the source. We constantly

ran into obstacles that temporarily prevented us from completing the essay, but in the end we

were able to successfully turn in the essay on time.

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Essay 1

English 1302 has always brought new ideas and experiences into our lives. The first

essay of the semester was supposed to be an experiment conducted by the students. This, of

course, was something that we had never done before. It was difficult, to say the least. The

format of the essay was not very clear in the beginning, so it was hard to begin writing. Another

challenging aspect of the essay was picking a topic to experiment with. At first, I had considered

picking the topic of flat feet and exercises since I had previously gone to physical therapy. I

realized, though, that this topic would be a problem since it would be difficult to document the

state of my feet. Without much prior knowledge of how my feet are supposed to be positioned, it

would not be the easiest task to complete.

Sleep was the only topic that I was able to think of while brainstorming. Plus, the

experiment would be very beneficial towards me since I would be able to nap, and I would have

the opportunity to study for tests. However, there was constantly a lot of noise in the background

due to family, and sometimes it was disruptive. There were overall many obstacles while writing

the essay that really affected the quality of the essay. Although it was a pleasant experience

sleeping in order to write an essay, it was definitely not the essay I was proudest of.

The first homework assignment about recognizing peer-reviewed journal articles was of

great help. It explained how to identify peer-reviewed articles which was something that was

required apart from conducting research and the experiment itself. Finding the peer-reviewed

article was not as difficult as it seemed to be. Usually, finding a peer-reviewed journal article that

matches the topic of an essay takes a lot of time to do. However, the time it took to find the

journal article was not lengthy. With the help of our support teacher and our peers, we were able

to get through the first essay and move on to the next.

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Essay 2

One of the most interesting essays of the whole year, not just semester, was essay 2. It

was also the lengthiest essay I had written even before we were supposed to revise 25% of the

essay before we put it into the portfolio and turn it in to our instructor. Out of the three essays,

essay 2 was the best, personally. Although it was a time consuming essay, it was definitely one of

the easiest of the semester. However, it is still not the best essay I have written throughout the

year that I have been taking the English course. Essay 3 of last semester remains as the best

essay I have ever written in my life.

One of the more challenging aspects of the essay was finding all of the sources. This

essay required the students to find many sources based on their topic. Topics could not be really

broad, so sources had to be narrowed down so that they were very close or exactly the same as

the topic. It made the process of beginning to write lengthier. Having to read all of the sources in

order to compare them and finding information that could be included in the essay was the most

time consuming thing the class has ever done for English 1301 and English 1302.

The second homework assignment based on the article “Search mechanisms and

innovation: An analysis across multiple perspectives” was perfect for the second. The main focus

was the interpretation of sources and their comparison with other sources. This gave us an

example and/or idea of how authors and articles should be compared in order to write the essay.

Of course, we still had to figure a few things out since it was a new format we had to follow. For

instance, we had to add headings in order to organize the information in the essay. Previously,

headings were not used to put information into categories, so the first draft of the essay had an

incorrect heading format. That was later fixed, of course, but it was still a mistake that I would

know to be a mistake if my peers would not have told me about it.

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Essay 3

This was the final essay of the semester and my junior year. Having to elaborate on the

points was one of the most difficult tasks of the essay. However, having references from essay 2

that could be utilized in essay 3 made the process of writing the essay much faster. Although it

was a bit difficult to find additional sources so that the two essays would not have the exact same

sources, having other sources to begin writing made things much easier to do. Since the topic

was supposed to be around the same as the second essay, the topic of mental health evaluations

sparked my interest. Luckly, many of the sources used for the second could be used for the third.

Even with the help of the second essay and the practice and experience we had with

finding sources, it was still difficult to find sources that would match the topic of the essay and

the argument: “Parents should undergo mental health evaluations in order to avoid endangering

their children and preventing abuse and neglect”. Finding sources is definitely the hardest task to

get done in English. Since databases use keywords unlike Google, it is a lot more difficult to find

something that will match what we need to write about. This, of course, is not the only

challenging aspect of writing any type of essay.

It was difficult to find instructor feedback for this essay. A lot of things happened this

semester, and our instructor was a little behind with grading and giving feedback, but I

completely understand. She helped as much as she could, which is amazing. I do not blame her

for the lack of feedback and grading. Since feedback is a requirement for the final portfolio, it

did make me panic a little, but she did end up providing feedback. Still, we had the previous

homework assignments and in class activities that helped us brainstorm and come up with ways

to organize our essays. Plus, by attending SI sessions and asking our support teacher any

questions we had, we were able to complete the final essay of the semester.
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Portfolio

Last semester, I had picked cherry blossoms as the main theme of my website portfolio.

In order to avoid repetitiveness with the theme, I decided that stars fit the domain name: “Let us

all sleep”. Even with roofs above our heads, we still sleep under the stars, so having stars as the

theme was the most fitting out of every other idea I had. Apart from that, there were no other

rhetorical purposes apart from attempting to make the portfolio look pretty. It is also easy to

navigate through the website, so it is easier for a person visiting the website to know where

everything is.

The most challenging aspect of creating the portfolio was finding images. Since we are

not supposed to use another person’s work because it is considered plagiarism, our support

teacher suggested that we use “free blog photos”. Although we did not have to cite the photos, it

was difficult finding the photos we needed for our portfolio since websites did not offer many

options. In addition, some websites required users to pay a fee in order to access certain

photographs. This became a big obstacle that was hard to overcome. In the end, I was able to get

all the photos I needed.

The least challenging aspect of creating the website, on the other hand, was designing the

pages and putting all of the pdfs into the boxes. For the most part, designing the pages was

repetitive, so it was pretty easy to create something simple, yet not unorganized. Playing around

with a few of the templates available made the process of designing the website fairly simple.

Since we had already created a portfolio for last semester’s essays, creating the portfolio for this

semester was a piece of cake, and it was pretty fun. Furthermore, everything that was needed for

the portfolio was already organized into folders, so it took a few clicks to put everything where it

belonged.
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Conclusion

Personally, I felt the quality of my writing decline as weeks passed. I became unhappy

with the way my essays were ending up. Not to mention the amount of stress that I was already

under due to other courses. Since the junior class had gotten another college class in place of our

free block, our schedules were full. That made the semester way more tiring than it was last

semester. For that reason, there was less time to work on the essays. Of course it was enough, but

it was not as much as it was the previous semester. I believe that the reduction in time I spent

writing heavily impacted the end result of my essays. In all honesty, it was disappointing.

I love and have always loved writing. Ever since I was in middle school, I had noticed

that writing was something that came easily to me, and that I enjoyed creating stories and

scenarios. For some time, I considered it a forte since writing is a big part of life. After this

semester, though, it felt like my skills had disappeared. Motivation to get anything done had also

vanished, and I once again fell into bad habits of procrastination. Even as I created the website

for the portfolio, edited the final drafts, and am writing this reflection, I do not feel motivated to

do so. It was another factor that really affected my writing.

Nevertheless, this semester has left us all with great experiences and knowledge. Surely,

everything that we have learned to do this semester and the previous will be useful for every

other course that we take in the future. It is a privilege to have taken classes with our instructor,

Mrs. Judith McCann. I will be forever grateful with everything that she has done for my

classmates and I, and for everything that she has taught us. Now, as I finish this reflection, I feel

relieved and hope that I will be able to look at the stars tonight.