Dear Classmates,
In this portfolio, you will encounter three parts of this project. One of them is a revised essay that I chose to display because I felt the need to utilize this unique opportunity by revising a paper that was truly about me and was written in the tone that I commonly portray. The essay is called “Reading Pace”. The second item in my portfolio is called a writing remix. This was where i was told to display my writing in a different and unique way. I chose a picture that I felt correctly portrays the impact the story in the essay had on me. The final portion of my project is called “Hit and Miss”. These are pieces of writing that I felt that I did particularly well on (hits), and pieces that I felt needed more work (misses).
During my revision, I chose to focus on two things: being descriptive and idea development. When I went to the writing center, my perspective was completely changed. I realized that I need to escape the habit of writing like I am just talking to someone. I need to write like I am trying to target a more mature audience. I also realized that I jump around topics a lot. My writing is extremely confusing, so I am hoping that I can fix that with this revision.
In the beginning of the year, I thought that I was a pretty decent writer, and that I didn’t have much improving left to do. It turns out that I was disastrously wrong! I didn’t even know that I needed so much improving until my writing center visit. During this visit, I realized good traits and bad traits in my writing. One thing that I realized is that one of my significant misses is that I write very informally. Sometimes this is a good trait to have, like when writing a blog or something like this cover letter, but other times it is inappropriate to write in such a laid back style. I also finally understood that my sentences sounded rather choppy, meaning that they didn’t flow very well. These are two things that I understand that I will need to work on for a while: they have become more of a habit than just random flaws in my writing. Discovering my weakness was very helpful to me, but discovering my strengths was also very rewarding. I saw that my one of my biggest strengths was my vocabulary and my sentence structure. Sometimes my writing would be very short and choppy, which is not a good trait in writing. Other times, my writing would flow almost perfectly, using similes and vocabulary to lengthen the sentences providing a more even sounding sentence. I want my writing to always flow, like when you paint, you feel the paintbrush glide across the canvas without experiencing even the slightest bit of turbulence. This is why I chose to paint for the second item in my portfolio: the writing remix.
When I looked up the definition of “paint”, there was one definition that stuck out to me: “to describe vividly in words”. From that interpretation I realized that this was exactly how I was trying to revise my paper, I was working on taking my paper, and describing vividly in words an experience that I had that was connected to reading. I was working on “painting” my paper. This and the idea that I was also working on making my writing flow more smoothly, finalized my decision to paint the paper that I was revising. This is why I took the draft of my paper, glued it to a canvas, and painted it. This symbolizes how in my revision, I “painted” my draft, using different, bright colors to “liven” up my draft, just like I attempted to do in my revision. When you look at the painting, I tried to make it confusing with all of the different colors, this describes me as a writer now, confused, but trying to pull all of the colors together into a polished, cohesive whole. I hope that you enjoy this portfolio because I have really enjoyed creating it.
Revision:
Annotation
Reading has never really been my thing. I have always been the type of girl that would rather do anything than sit down and read a book. Books that I have time to read are the ones that I used to truly enjoy; books with a twisting plot and a bit of mystery. My problem is annotation, which leads to procrastination. One of the reasons I procrastinate is because I am just plain lazy, but another reason is because of annotation assignments. I enjoy books where I don’t have to cram or annotate, even though I need to remember the information for a class. I know what you are probably thinking, “Pretty much everything a high school student reads is read for a class, and it needs to be annotated and etched into their memory.” That statement is true because school students do in fact need to do this work for English and other classes to prepare them for pieces of writing and literature that they will encounter in the future. Don’t misunderstand my message. I do understand that annotating is an important tool, but it has always been something that has affected my motivation to read.
My first encounter with procrastination began even before I was introduced to my mortal enemy “annotation”. My downhill spiral with reading began in the summer before fourth grade. This was the first time we actually had to read summer reading books that were more than 5 chapters long. I can vaguely remember refusing to read and lying to my parents about where I really was in the books. That was just so that I would be able to do things with my friends instead of being locked down in my room being allowed to do nothing but breathe and read. There were times when I would become tangled in my own lies and be forced to read but these times were spent daydreaming about the endless summer activities I could be doing instead of reading; like being at the zoo with friends, making a slip n’ slide, or perhaps creating a horse show with my beloved dog bear. The possibilities were infinite. In the end, it would be the day before school and I would be on complete and utter lockdown as paragraph after paragraph were burning my eyes to the point of tears. This is my fault of course. I have always had a real problem with procrastination. I don’t blame anyone else for this, but as you can imagine, I despised any book that I had to slave over for more than an hour. As I continued on with my academic career I slowly began to realize that there were certain genera of book that I truly enjoyed reading. My flowering love for reading had finally bloom…until annotation hit it like a merciless drought.
Annotation first showed its gruesome face in the 8th grade. In English class, we had to read To Kill a Mocking Bird. At first I didn’t mind reading this book. I had plenty of time to do it and I didn’t feel rushed! That lasted all of three days…and then the assignments came rushing in like a flood. I remember at the end of class Mrs. Milligan would make sure she caught us before we headed out of the door screaming “Don’t forget to annotate!” I stopped dead in my tracks...”Oh God…Now ill be up until 2 in the morning…” The simple utterance of the word annotation sent chills throughout my entire body.
I immediately started to begin to dislike the book. That sort of thing happens when you start at a 9 inch long book for hours on end. I now was forced to read the book extremely slowly just to make sure I absorbed every last detail. I could have zoomed through that book in less than a week; instead I had to read it at a crawling pace for 8 or so weeks. Underlining things I didn’t actually find very important, scribbling gibberish across the pages so that my book seemed full of useful information when it really wasn’t. Then the test rolled around and I was completely done for. I sat in my desk, my hands cramping, my brain begging me to just lay my head down and give up. At that moment it hit me…annotating has a purpose! Even though I hated it, I needed to do it. The teachings that my English teachers had been trying so relentlessly to make me understand had finally sunken in. Annotation was actually my friend, not my enemy.
If there was one piece of advice that I could give to kids my age, It would be to never let annotations slow you down. The most amazing feeling that someone can experience is when they finally finish a book that they have been glued to. It’s truly sad that I didn’t come to that realization until just recently. Reading is now my escape where I love to put myself in the books I am reading to really experience the thrill of the plot. This almost makes annotating fun for me! I’ll draw pictures and make side comments where if I look back I can see my first reactions when I initially read the book! Don’t let annotation ruin you. Learn how to make it an enjoyable experience.
Writing Remix:
For my writing remix I chose to "remix" the same essay that I revised because of the obvious symbolism that I noticed. As I stated in my cover letter, when I looked up the definition of "paint", the definition that struck me said "to describe vividly in words". The original assignment for this essay was to give a recollection of a time the impacted the way you felt about reading by using a scene and vividly describing it in extreme detail. I saw this as the perfect opportunity to get my hands a little dirty while being creative at the same time. The paper that I clued to the canvas was the original paper that I had turned in for the assignment at the beginning of the year. It is also the exact paper that I began to revise when we began this project. The symbolism of painting my paper strikes me as both creative, and different while still representing the original point of my paper, but also related to this project.
Hits and Misses:
Hits:
Poem: This is one of my hits because it is the only poem that I have ever written and been proud enough to show it to people
http://lilycat16.blogspot.com/2013/04/poem.html
To Tell The Truth: This is one of my favorite blog posts because it was one of the only blogs that I really put myself into. It really showed my personality and my tone was very obvious in it throughout the whole thing
http://lilycat16.blogspot.com/2012/08/to-tell-truthor-not-to-tell-truththat.html
WRAP: This might sound strange, but one of the writings that I enjoyed was when we did the wrap test. I just really enjoyed the topic! I really love to argue for and against things so I feel like that was really easy for me.
Misses:
Literary Anaylsis: This was definately not one of my best papers. My thesis was weak, and my overall product was just sloppy and choppy. It didn't flow at all and I did not have enough evidence.
Research Paper: This was by far the worst paper I have ever written. I think one of the reasons for that is because I had never written a paper of that length before. I completely lost motivation and that was obvious in my paper.
Literacy Narritive: The first paper that I turned in for this assignment was lazily done. It had a lot of potential though. Which is why this is the paper that I revised.
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