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Welcome!

 Welcome to my e-portfolio! Here you will find a collection of my work from Writing 220,  English 325, Communications 101 and the Michigan Adversiting and Marketing Club.  Please read on below for an insight on who I am as a writer and why I chose to include these specific peices.

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Enjoy!

 

As I compiled my writing for this portfolio it provided me with a unique opportunity to present myself in any which way I desired. Out of the endless writing assignments I’ve completed since freshman year I have selected just six to showcase. Why these six? Well, this requires a little bit of a look back in time. Let me explain…

 

For much of my life writing was about arguing, proving a point, winning even – a translation of my love for competitive sports placed into an academic realm. I was stubborn with my structure, strict with my diction, and straightforward in my conclusions. I rarely tried anything new or veered from the conventions I knew and loved.

 

Spring semester of my sophomore year I took English 325: Art of the Essay. Besides college application essays, which I despised, this was the first time in years I had been asked to write a personal narrative, to use creative writing techniques, and to reflect on a complicated or confusing personal experience. There were no structural conventions and no formal tone required for these essays. I had expected to hate it, yet the complete opposite came to be true. I don’t know exactly why or how the shift happened, but it did. This course opened me up to writing in a new sense. I slowly began to enjoy writing about personal topics, life decisions, and things that confused or frustrated me about society. In the past, I wouldn’t dare use first person or interweave a narrative into my work. Suddenly, these ideas began to excite me.

 

So now here I am, a Sweetland minor in writing student, with a great deal of freedom regarding how I shape my time in the minor. If you asked me last year if I would have chosen to write a blog post on the thought process and decision of choosing what to do after high school for my Writing 220 repurposing project I would have laughed in your face. When I applied to the program I thought I would be spending my time polishing formal research papers and academic essays; yet my outlook on writing has changed, or rather broadened over the past year. I've come to understand that good writers are diverse writers. They can critically analyze, they can present formal research, or they can move their reader with emotion and insight. 

 

​I could have easily presented myself as an arguer; I could have effortlessly picked out numerous formal, academic essays. But rather, in my quest towards diversity and variation I've attempted to do just the opposite. I realize that without an explanation, my portfolio may seem like a smattering of writing thrown together with no purpose. However, each piece has been chosen specifically to highlight a different type of writing. My competitive, stubborn self has finally come to understand that good writers do not just write good academic argumentation. Good writers write fiction, nonfiction, blog posts, tweets, analytical essays, and research reports to name a few. Good writers are diverse.

 

 

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