Dear Portfolio Reader,

English 115 was the first college class I walked into and was in many ways the beginning of my
college experience. It's been an interesting, hard, and rewarding journey growing from an
insecure high school graduate to a confident and involved college student. This class not only
helped me grow as a writer, it helped me grow as a critic, actor, and person as well. Every
homework assignment improved over the last and every essay got deeper than the last.
Our Professor, Kimberly Lewis was remarkable. She was not only very knowledgeable about the
source material we studied, but was also very helpful to us students when it came down to
helping us improve as readers, writers, and storytellers and made the process an enjoyable one at
that. I cant think of a single professor that would show the Batman Vs Superman Trailer for
rhetorical analysis.
While there were only three essays assigned to us this semester, I can gladly say they were all
among my best pieces of writing.
My first essay was an ethnography essay, involving going to an exhibit of one of the greatest
comic book artists of all time, Jack Kirby and writing solely about the exhibit. It was one of the
only essays I felt passionate about writing, since I grew up with Spider Man, The Avengers, and
his various works. It was not only an enjoyable experience seeing the origins of these classic
characters, but also seeing characters that Ive never heard of, such as Kamandi: The Last Boy on
Earth.
Then the focus of the class shifted in October, toward the story of Coraline by Neil Gaiman.
Having had prior knowledge of story before, (seeing the movie and doing a Speech and Debate
Duo Interp of the story in high school) I had a strong sense of the source material and taking it in

virtually any direction. Not only did we read the book in full context, but also discussed
differences between the film and book that I never thought of before, such as the mixed reaction
to the character Wybie in the film adaptation, when he was nowhere to be found in the book.
Based on that, I decided to write about a comparison between the film adaptation and the book
and why the film adaptation is a superior story over the book.
My final essay was completely new territory unlike the previous two essays. We had to write an
identity essay on the Diana Wynne Jones novel, Howls Moving Castle. While we couldnt do a
book to film comparison for this essay, I chose to focus on the protagonist of the story Sophie for
the essay and drew from many psychological theories to help me prove my thesis.
Overall, this was a wonderful class to begin college with. I would highly recommend this class as
well as Professor Lewis to any first time freshman, looking to not only gain new perspective on
the subject but also have a fun time as well. Hope you enjoy this portfolio and I hope everyone
has a great winter break.
- Noah Weinstein