“E-Portfolio Reflective Essay Paper”
In my final e-portfolio I have included the minor writing assignment one, major writing
assignment one, major writing assignment two, and lastly my peer review that I did earlier in the
year on March 8th, 2013. I pee reviewed a female in my class who is Erin Ditro. I have done
many assignments for this Foundations of College Writing class, such as journal entries, short
story writings, a screenplay, and then I also had two multi-media presentations. The multi-media
presentations were power points, I did one of them on the screenplay and one of the stories a
group member from my group wrote. That power point also consisted of a video that I and the
group members had to act out that tied in with my group’s screenplay. The second power point
presentation was done individually; I did those during the first two weeks of May. That power
point was for me to explain to Dr. Barrett and the class what I was doing with my major writing
assignment two essay. I was required to do a seventy-five person survey or an expert interview. I
chose to do the expert interview and it was successfully done. I interviewed Dr. Christopher
Podeschi who is a sociology professor here at Bloomsburg University. My power point
presentation went well and that is all that I wanted to happen. The work I have mentioned above
was basically all of the work we had assigned to us, believe me it was a lot of work, I learned a
lot from it, and had to put a lot of time and effort into the work.
Doing this work repetitively helped me to become a well skilled writer, at least that is
what I think of myself. Writing is not my major or anything but I feel that I have done a good job
with the process that it is. In my minor writing assignment one I made the simple mistake of not
indenting, eventually I knew where to indent. I always have known how to indent but like I said
it was just a simple easily missed mistake. Also, in minor writing assignment one my thesis was
not clear at all; it was similar to a clutter of words that did not mix together, somewhat of a mess.
From Dr. Barrett having us do revisions on our papers and by educating me in class and
explaining thoroughly about the thesis argument, I picked up on how to write a decent thesis and
I used it to my advantage by writing superior thesis’ in future papers. On my minor writing
assignment one I revised it three times, if not more. From revising my paper I learned new ideas
as I went along with my writing. My final draft might not be the best paper, but for a fact I
absorbed new ideas and ways of writing from the minor writing assignment one.
These revisions were tough, there is no doubt about that, it had taken me a while because
it was a long process on doing this work for my major writing assignment one. In this assignment
I had to pick two stories from “The Weird” written by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer. The stories I
chose were “The Crowd” and “The Hungry House”, they were interesting stories to read, same
with majority of the stories in “The Weird” anthology. What I had to do was compare the two
stories with eachother, write about both of them, and interconnect themes together. I used a few
citations from the book and they worked well for me, they tied in perfectly to what I was writing
about. In this paper unfortunately I made a lot of writing errors and mistakes, which how it goes
with every assignment. It is really good though because then I would make the revisions and it is
also a learning process. A big revision I had to make for this paper was right in the beginning, I
had a weak beginning with no relation to a personal story. I had to do all of the revision, I went
back and started writing a whole new beginning, it was the only way to pack a powerful punch
for my essay. Another revision I had to work on was connecting loyalty, remorse, and sin into
the two stories. I went back to the part of my essay where I was writing about this and started
making changes. A sentence from my story about this is “These two stories go well together
because both of the themes have to do with murder and killings committed by non-living people,
they kill due to their loyalty, they feel that killing is the right decision to make in that type of
situation; it is not a sin to these people”. My mistake was not explaining how these people were
loyal, and why committing these crimes were not sins to them. In my new and revised draft, my
final draft, the sentences after this were strictly about how these people are loyal and why they
don’t consider killing the victims in these car accidents a sin. I made a strong point and
explanation.
My thesis, the most important part in any paper, my thesis perhaps needed a lot of work
done to it. At first I thought hmmm okay this thesis is pretty straight forward and strong, it
supports a lot of evidence. I soon came to find out that was not the case, a thesis always needs
work and thought just for it to be a decent argument. My thesis involves murders and killings
that are committed by non-living people which is the base of it. It also consists of the decisions
these people make, and the reasons to why they kill. The reason behind why they kill victims of
accidents is due to the fact that the crowd members were once victims in an accident and they did
not survive, so they are deceased crowd members. A part of my revision in the thesis area was I
explaining and digging down deeper by getting more information and becoming more detailed. I
explained how the crowds are deceased members; they kill basically because they did not get the
opportunity to survive the accident they were involved in. They feel that everyone in a car
accident should die because the crowd members all died from their accidents and anybody who
gets in a car accident does not deserve to survive. The crowd plays the role to show up at every
accident scene and make sure that the victim does not survive. I also explain in my thesis how
the people do not have a care in the world of what they are doing. They don’t feel the hostility or
evil that comes from committing murder, they are deceased they have no personal feelings. In
my thesis I also mentioned and made revisions to how I said that society plays a role in this
activity, the people of this society keep the murders a secret, there is no trace left behind. I said
that society does not realize that somebody has just been murdered, they don’t make it to be
anything different, it is not a big deal. Nobody mentions anything about how this crowd appeared
out of nowhere and killed someone in a car accident. Nobody tells the police, nothing is said of
it! The main character Mr. Spallner is the only person who realizes what is happening and on his
way to telling the authorities what do ya know he gets into a car wreck and who is present, the
crowd, they kill him and now nothing changes. The crowd will not and never will be caught by
law enforcement. Those were my major thesis revisions for this writing assignment one. Doing
these corrections taught me so much and helped me out tremendously. It is practice and practice
makes perfect, that goes for anything.
To wrap up this e-portfolio reflective essay I will say that all of the assignments that were
required gave me a big boost to understand the writing process to the best of my ability. I have
been making tons of progress throughout the semester with writing and creating a clear, and
strong thesis argument along with coming up with great essay papers. The only way I know this
is true is because of Dr. Barrett having the class do multiple revisions and becoming better at this
writing process everytime. Learning in class helped so much I can’t even explain and then you
are doing it over and over again, it is a win-win situation. Dr. Barrett really knows how to do
every little thing to make a thesis and a paper that much better, and I have done a great job in
adopting those ways. Thank You for Foundations of College Writing English 101 class for
having me become that much of a well skilled, and talented writer.