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Ryan Windham
Ms. Ingram
UWRT 1103
8 December 2015

Becoming the Writer I Am Today

Introduction
For as long as I can remember, I have always written my papers with
the same process. I would get a prompt and think about it for a while. In my
head I would try to form a plan or at least an idea of what I was going to
write. Once I had a general idea of what my essay would be about I would
wait until the last minute to write the entire thing. I was the worst
procrastinator I knew and I procrastinated on everything. My personal motto
was No minute is more productive than the last minute. I believed that if I
waited until there was very little time left, then it would take me very little
time to write the essay. This skill was actually very useful to me throughout
high school, because many of the essays I had to write were in class and
timed. I was able to just start writing; oftentimes, I wouldnt even know the
direction my essay was going until I was already there. If there is one thing I
learned from this class, it would be that procrastination is not my friend.
Upon arriving in this class, I believed it would be my least favorite
class. I wasnt looking forward to having to craft my own ePortfolio to present

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my writing. I had never written outlines or drafts; almost all my composing
work for writing was done in my head. Now I would have to learn and
challenge myself in order to make the good grade I desired. I wouldnt even
know where to begin, but Ms. Ingram was there to help me through it and
give me all the help I needed and more.
For my portfolio I chose to organize it by major writing assignment.
Each writing assignment taught me a new lesson so I assumed it was best to
break it down in that way. Each assignment has its own tab in my portfolio
where the finished product is on top and the artifacts that are specific to that
topic are below. For this Final Portfolio Essay I decided to use subheadings to
section the paper; the subheadings Exploratory Essay, Midterm, Inquiry
Project, and Blog are hyperlinks that will take you to that specific tab in
my ePortfolio. So now when I reference an artifact, a quick click will take you
right to it.

Exploratory Essay
I struggled with this prompt for a while. I was tasked with writing about
my passions, but I just truly believed I didnt have any. I enjoyed a lot of
different things like eating and sleeping, but I wouldnt have said I was
passionate about anything. I even reference this struggle of mine in the
opening sentence of the Exploratory Essay when I say I used to believe
every person had a passion, except me. In order to figure out what I was
going to write about, I had to remove the word passion from my thinking. I

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stopped asking myself What are you passionate about? and instead asked
myself What do you spend your time doing most? In my head, I had a nice
little list of activities I tend to do on a regular basis.
Ms. Ingram asked the class to write down our plans for the exploratory
essay in our writers notebook. This was the first time I had actually taken
the time to write down the plan in my head. I wrote down a possible list of
passions that included movies, making money, and my passion to be lazy. I
decided to include this artifact, even though I only used one of those possible
passions, because it was the first step I took in this class to creating a
composing process instead of just writing the essay by winging it.
I wrote the first draft of this essay on the morning it was due, like I did
with every draft I wrote this semester. I realized that in order to write the
great essay I wanted to create, I would have to get very personal in my
writing. Usually, I try not to show emotion or tell too personal of a story in my
writing. I dont want to be judged or viewed differently because of it.
However, I didnt see any other option than to leave my comfort zone and
write about some very personal thoughts and feelings. Getting Out of
Your Comfort Zone was one of the 10 key concepts that I was supposed to
work on as a student in Ms. Ingrams class. I decided to focus on this concept
for this essay, and Im glad I did. I felt like it was the personal details and
talking about my older brother Michael that really shaped my essay for the
better. Quotes like Ive played many games of backyard football, but none

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could compare to that game in the rain with my brother really capture the
emotion that I have towards him and spending time with him.
I was very happy and content with my first draft, until we did the group
workshop in class that day. The peers in my group tore my essay apart and
pointed out flaw after flaw. Some of these flaws were painfully obvious, like
how my paragraphs were each close to a page long. The workshop
highlighted all the areas that I had to work on so I had plans on what to
improve for my second draft. Then, Ms. Ingram helped us by telling us to
picture a certain memory that had to do with the exploratory essay. She
instructed us to close our eyes and see every detail, hear all the sounds, feel
it as if you were actually there. I chose to do mine on a specific memory with
my brother and I playing football. I ended up writing close to a full page of
just the sensations I felt during the memory. This exercise is what helped
improve my second draft the most. It went in deeper to help the reader
understand why I love football. Without doing this exercise, my final draft
wouldnt be as personal or in depth as it needed to be.
I was very happy with the way my second draft turned out; the
following workshop only highlighted minor grammatical mistakes. There were
no real problem areas that needed to be improved. In fact, the feedback I got
from Ms. Ingram was all positive as well. She did suggest I add a few things
like inner dialogue and more specific examples, but I waited until December
to actually write my final draft. I added what I felt was necessary and I am
more than satisfied with the finished product.

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Midterm
Before this assignment, I had never written a reflexive paper before. I
wasnt quite sure how to start; I couldnt just sit down and start writing like I
had typically done previous papers. I needed an actual plan of attack. I
decided to actually make an outline.
For the assignment, the class had to pick key concepts that we were
good at and pick key concepts that we needed to work on. I thought it made
the most sense to first start by making two lists: the Im Good at and the
Need Work On. I wrote out the possible concepts I could write about in both
categories and then I tried to figure out what piece of writing I would use as
evidence for that concept. For instance, I had Critical Reflection listed and
had planned on highlighting the differences in the first and second draft of
my exploratory essay. Once I had both lists completed, I chose which options
were the best and easiest to write about and marked them by placing a
check mark next to them. I even thought out how I should open and conclude
my essay and wrote that on the paper too. I had a complete outline for the
essay and felt ready for it
This was the first outline I had ever written and it helped me out
tremendously. I didnt waste my time pondering where to go next or how to
proceed; it was all mapped out for me already. It took me half the time to
write the midterm than I had planned and I credit all of that to the outline I
had created. Now that I learned the benefit that creating an outline can have,

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I decided to always create an outline for every major writing assignment. I
now had an actual composing process that I would use. Composing
Processes is another one of the concepts we were supposed to develop
while in this course. I think this is a perfect example of how I tried composing
my paper in a new and different way and it worked out for my benefit.
My midterm turned out to be fantastic. I got lots of praise from Ms.
Ingram on it. Ms. Ingram had a list of midterms by students in the class that
really excelled at using quotes. This was so other students could see them as
a helpful reference. My midterm was one of the ones chosen and that made
me very proud. My writing had never been singled out in high school, so that
really meant a lot to me.

Inquiry Project
This paper all started with Blog Post #3. For the post, we had to list
topics and things that interested and choose one to possibly do our project
on. My list of interests included Breaking Bad, Movies, and Marijuana
among other things. When it came time to choose one for a possible
research topic, I jokingly chose marijuana. The thought writing a whole paper
solely on marijuana legalization would be funny. I had no intention of actually
choosing marijuana for my paper though. Then I had a thought, basically it
was along the lines of Why not? I wasnt in high school anymore; I was in
college. I wouldnt get in trouble for writing about it and I could write about

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whatever truly interested me. I decided to stick with it and do my entire
project on it.
After figuring out my target audience and creating an outline in Blog
Post #6, I was ready to start writing. I struggled at first on how to bring in
quotes. I didnt want to just plop them in the middle of a paper. In the book
Who Says, it went over the Quote Sandwich. It explained how you have
to introduce the quote, use the quote, and then explain it. This made a lot of
sense to me and I started trying to do that every time I used a quote. My first
and second drafts of this paper were essentially the same, the second draft
just had more length. I wasnt very satisfied with these drafts, something
seemed to be off.
Luckily, each student had an appointment to meet with Ms. Ingram and
get her feedback. Her feedback was actually very helpful to me, and it did
confirm my beliefs. Throughout my draft, she would mark where stuff needed
more explanation, or something could be organized in a better way.
However, she did mention I integrated my quotes very well; I knew I was
doing something right. We even agreed that the entire introduction should be
changed. The introduction I had wasnt very professional and didnt really fit
the style I wanted in my essay.
Then I made my mistake, I didnt work on it again. I procrastinated until
the end of the semester when I also had to put my ePortfolio together before
I even looked at the essay again. This was a terrible mistake, because then I

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was rushed like crazy and in panic mode. I rushed through the corrections
from my previous draft and rushed through the rest of the paper as well. I am
still happy with my final product, but in the back of my mind I know it
couldve been better. This was the first time I truly regretted procrastinating
until the end.

Blog
The blogs were the first piece of writing that we did for Ms. Ingram. At
first, I didnt really take them too seriously. I kind of assumed they were just
going to be a participation or completion grade. The blog posts turned out to
be much more beneficial to me and important to my development in the
course. Oftentimes, the blog post would require us to formulate plans for
writing assignments or prepare us for whatever was coming next in the
course. I didnt realize it at the time, or at least near the beginning of the
course, but what the blog posts really were was ways to try out new methods
of writing. As a student, I could experiment with the best ways to provide my
point to the reader depending on the topic I had to write about.
Essentially, the blogs were the best way in this class to help students
learn and become more efficient with multi-modality. I didnt always have to
write in the same format for every post, I could pick and choose which
method would work best with that specific post. Whether I just wrote a thick
paragraph or wrote down a bulleted list, it didnt matter; neither was correct

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nor incorrect. However, one way could be more efficient than the other.
Personally, I love a good bulleted list. I think they provide the fastest way to
observe data while not leaving out too much information. The more I
experimented with different ways of writing, the better I got with multimodality of print & digital texts. It was these constant and recurring
chances to experiment that truly honed my multi-modality skills.

Final Portfolio Essay

This essay was without a doubt the hardest I have ever had to write.
This is not due to the content it entailed, but rather the time in which I had to
write it. My first problem was once again procrastination. I recently started a
new job at a restaurant as a busboy and they have me work many
weeknights for long hours. I was always tired and had other schoolwork due
at earlier times so I just kept putting off the work I needed to do for my
Portfolio. Then, my grandfathers health started to decline rapidly. He was
hospitalized and tragedy struck less than a week after he entered the
hospital when he passed away. Luckily, I was able to visit him the day before
he died and Im happy about that.
During this time, the first draft of the FPE essay was due and all I had
was an outline. The outline wasnt even complete, it was half of an outline. I
was struggling with this essay in general; I wasnt sure where or how to start,
or even what I would write about. Plus, with the recent death of my
grandfather I was just depressed and didnt want to work on anything. I was

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freaking out a little bit, and wrote about it in my writers notebook. We were
asked to write about our feelings about our draft; I essentially wrote about
how I didnt have much work done and I was worried I would wait until the
last minute (which turned out to be true). That class was a work day and I
took the entire time to work on my outline. I made it as detailed and all
planned out as possible. I now had at least an idea on where to start.
Shortly after that, my parents decide to separate and my dad moved
out. Now, I couldnt take less shifts on my job because we needed the extra
money to pay bills. So I still wasnt getting much work done on my Portfolio. I
decided to break it down into parts based on major writing assignment. I
planned on writing a section at a time so I wouldnt seem overwhelmed. This
didnt work; I was still overwhelmed. I had to write my entire FPE, organize
my ePortfolio, and finish my Inquiry Project. Plus, finals for all my other
classes. I knew I was going to struggle.
I had created a steady pace for work by doing one part at a time, but
then the health of my other grandfather declined and he passed away too.
Now I lost two family members, parents got separated, being overworked at
my job, and had to study for finals. I had to take a break from writing, even
though I had less than a week left. So then, I became rushed to write
everything. It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do for school without
a doubt. Because I waited until the last minute, Im not sure this is the best I
could do; however, I know it to be the best I can do under my current
circumstances.

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Conclusion
I know that I have grown as a writer since the beginning of the
semester. I dont just look at papers with a Wing It mentality. I now plan out
my papers and do a bit at a time so Ill have a plan and the paper wont
seem as bad. I now know how to establish my ethos in writing to make
myself sound more credible and trustworthy. I will not procrastinate on a
writing assignment again. At the moment; however, I just feel relief that it is
finally finished and I can relax during winter break.