Introduction

Having my first semester of college fully online was interesting to say the least. I didn’t have much expectation for myself in the beginning of the semester. I struggled quite a few times throughout the semester and grown through that as a student and a writer. There were times I was unmotivated to do work and was on the verge of giving up but I was able to overcome those feelings and ended up accomplishing a lot more than I expected to. Through the FIQWS 10103 class I was exposed to various writing assignments and was able to acquire few new writing skills. This portfolio outlines my accomplishments through the writings assignments I completed throughout the semester in this class.

Image created by Nattakorn Maneerat, September 13, 2018

 

Self Assessment

What I have done:

Over the course of the semester in this class I have explored and analyzed various genres and rhetorical situations by reading newspaper articles, work from other students, writing poems, research papers and essays. I have engaged in collaborative and social aspects of writing processes by workshopping another student’s work and critiquing on what they did well in and in what ways they can improve their essay. Additionally, in this class I located research sources including academic journal articles, magazines and newspaper articles in the CCNY library’s databases and on the internet. Lastly, I have practiced systematic application of citation conventions.

What I did well on:

Before starting this class I used to be really vague when describing things in my writings and I struggled using sensory and specific details, but that changed as I completed few assignments from this class. My use of good sensory and specific details can be seen in the I Remember poem, Five Senses poem and the Tagore-based Poem. I really enjoyed writing the Tagore-based poem because though that poem I was able to reminisce memories of someone that I care about- who is no longer in my life. The Tagore-based poem is a writing piece that I am proud of. I was to put my feelings and memories of events down on the paper while coming up with a rhyme. Even though I have my favorites, I am proud of all of the poems that I wrote in this class. Through writing the poems I was able to put my feelings on paper and develop new writing skills.

What I still need to work on:

Something I need to work on is time management. I spent a huge amount of time formatting the outline and drafts for the essays I have done in this class. This was a outcome of my procrastination by leaving the planning and research portion of drafts for the same day. If I were to do them on separate days I wouldn’t have been so stressed and spent less time than I usually take formatting my outline. Procrastination is a really old habit of mine and it will take a lot of will power to fix this habit. A positive side of procrastination is I tend to produce some of my best works when I am under a lot of pressure.

Something else I need to work on is, my tendency to write long run on sentences. Trying to follow Professor Stoler’s guideline of having only three to four sentences in a paragraph for the essays in this class, resulted in me over packing a lot of details in each of the sentences. One example of me having long sentences can be seen in my Narrative Essay. I had a lot to say in the narrative essay but with the sentence limit I tired to include every one of those things in the limited amount of sentences I had.