Final Portfolio

Final Portfolio – English 241 DL04

By: Kelsey Glasco

                This English class has taught me a lot about myself.  I have had to really think about what I want out of my life when I was writing these essays and I think that I do some of my best writing when I have assignments that force me to do that.  The discussions are helpful because the other students in the class really help me understand the reading a little more and it is neat to see the other opinions that everyone has.  I have taken online classes before, but none of them have had this much participation between the students.  I think that I get more interaction with the other students in this class than I do in the classes that I go to school for.  I think it is great that we can all help each other out without even meeting one another.  I did not notice how much I relied on my committee’s blog posts until I had to complete an assignment that I was confused about.  By having these blogs, I was able to understand assignments more and I think that they taught me a lot about this English class.  Some key facts that I may not have caught in other classes that I did in this class was what the writings mean or what the assignment was supposed to reveal either about myself or what is going on in society.   I realized that a lot of my ideas for what I wanted to write did not come from the reading, but from personal experiences or from ideas that I got from my classmates.    

The first assignment that we completed in this course was the letter that we wrote to a future American citizen.  I have never actually thought about what being an American meant to me, so this assignment really opened my eyes to all of the freedoms that we have in America.  St. John de Crevecoeur's  Letters from an American Farmer, "What is an American?", helped me have a better understanding of what to write in my letter and it gave me a sense of how someone else views this topic.  This is one of the few reading assignments that actually helped me with my writing.  I think that the way it was written was easy to understand and it really spoke to me.  You never realize just how good you have it until you hear about someone who wants to become a U.S. citizen and about the process that they have to go through.  You never think about how easy it is to have the freedoms that we have just because we were born here.  This assignment really made me appreciate my life and it allowed me to see the other views of my peers.

The next three assignments that we did were really about connecting with ourselves.  These three assignments include “My Ideal Self”, “Living My Life to the Fullest”, and “My Sublime Experience”.  These assignments really showed me what the Romanticism writing was all about.  Romantic artists are all about remembering good times and feeling happy and overjoyed.  I think this is why I enjoyed writing these assignments so much.  Poe, Emerson, and Thoreau’s writing helped me relate to situations in my life.  Even though it was hard for me to understand everything that they wrote about, the passages that I included in my writing were ones that really stuck out to me.  Poe wanted his readers to use their imagination and confront all of the emotions that you have about a particular memory.  Thoreau and Emerson were more focused on the development of the individual self and connecting their emotions through nature.  Considering the rough time that I was having when I started this course, these assignments were good for me because they helped me connect with myself and they helped me figure out what I think about myself as an individual. 

I think that the two assignments about social issues have really challenged my writing.  I am not very good at writing about facts or issues; I am more of a free writer where I like to write about life issues or beliefs.  When I had to think of a social problem that is affecting our nation, I had a hard time thinking of one.  To help me out with this problem, I actually typed it into Google and I got the idea to write about the death penalty.  Once I found my topic, the writing became a little easier.  The readings that we had to do for this assignment did not really help me with my topic because it was mostly about slavery and I just could not get it to relate to my topic.  I do think it is good that this assignment challenged me because it made me think about what I was writing and it challenged my thinking on the death penalty.  I really did not know much about this issue, so it was good that I had to do some research and even ask my parents about the topic.  Quickly I realized that not only was this class about connecting with ourselves, but it was about connecting with the real world and the issues we are facing today.

When we were asked to write a list of virtues that we thought were important, I thought that it would be a fairly easy thing to do.  When I saw the long list of virtues on Wikipedia, I realized that it was going to be hard to pick which ones were truly the most important to me.  After I chose the ten that I felt were most important, I then had to decide which one was the hardest for me to work on which was patience.  This assignment really made me think about how patience is important and that by being thankful for what you have, that can give you more patience.  I like how assignments like this one can challenge what is important to me in my life and it makes me appreciate what I have a lot more by forcing me to write about it.  Since writing this blog post, I have gotten more patient and I realize just how annoying an impatient person can seem to other people.  I noticed, as the holiday season was fast approaching, that people become more and more impatient as they have to wait in long lines to purchase their items.  As a sales associate, I know how frustrated people get with long lines, but they also need to realize that we are going as fast as we can.  By taking notice of these impatient people, this made me more patient because I know that by complaining about how long the line is taking, it’s not going to get me there any faster.  I am so glad that I had the opportunity to test my patience in many situations.

The assignment about factions was probably one of the most difficult assignments for me.  Madison was against factions and he wanted to find ways to get rid of them and it was my job to find solutions to that problem.  I really tried my best to use the reading to help me with this assignment, but I still feel like I was not totally connecting with what Madison was saying.  I got a lot out of this assignment because it challenged me and it taught me more about why Madison was so against factions.  I personally am not too interested in politics so factions do not bother me, but for someone who is very involved in politics, I could see how factions would annoy them and why they would want to get rid of them just like Madison did.   It was nice to have good feedback from my peers because it showed me that I really tried on this assignment and that my peers could see that.

When we wrote a blog about faith, I felt very connected to what Thomas Paine believed in.  A lot of his beliefs were very similar to mine and I finally felt connected to one of the writers.  This assignment challenged me to become more in touch with my faith and it gave me the opportunity to tell others my beliefs.  I have never really had to explain how I felt about my faith in God and I think that was a good test for me to see if I could feel comfortable posting my beliefs publically.  I know that some people do not like to talk about their beliefs, but I was happy to see that the majority of my classmates completed this assignment and I thought it was cool to read about their faith and learn more about them as an individual.  I think that it was so easy for me because I know that my faith in God is real and I think that by using Thomas Paine’s writing as an example, it really helped me feel confident and proud about what I was writing just like he seemed.

I really enjoyed reading about how everyone spent their Thanksgiving.  I noticed that a lot of people had a traditional meal just like the Pilgrim’s, and I think that Thanksgiving should be spent that way.  Giving thanks for your food and spending time with your family is important and it should be done traditionally just like it was spent in 1621.  I do have to say that things are certainly different now than they were back in the Pilgrim’s days.  When they had their Thanksgiving, everyone sat at the same table and enjoyed each other’s conversation.  When you think about today’s times, not everyone sits at the same table and there are a lot more distractions such as cell phones and televisions.  I noticed that at my Thanksgiving the adults sat together and the children sat together.  Of course there would be conversations going on, but there were also a lot of texting and football games being used as a distraction from those conversations.  Although things have changed, I am still thankful that I was able to have a family to spend Thanksgiving with because there are some people who do not. 

Over the last few weeks, we were supposed to be working on our rough drafts of our reflective essays.  I am glad that we had so much time to work on them because there is a lot of information that we needed to include in our essay.  I thought it was helpful to look at the other essays of my classmates to get some ideas for how I should organize my paper and what other important information I should include incase I missed something.  I was a little hesitant at first about the whole blog idea, but once I actually saw how helpful it was, I really enjoyed having other opinions on my writing.  By having the opportunity to read my committee’s essays, I was able to get some ideas from them for my essay and I hope that they were able to get some ideas from me as well.

Overall, I am really glad that I took this English class.  I am glad that the assignments are challenging me because I have not really had a difficult class at J. Sargeant Reynolds until I began doing some of the assignments for this course.  I am not saying that the assignments are difficult, I am just saying that there are a lot of things to complete and they are more involved than anything I have done since I began going to college.  I feel like I am actually working hard for my grade instead of just completing a few assignments and tests and walking away with an “A”.  When this course is over, I think I will have learned a lot and I hope to take what I have learned and apply it to my everyday life.  The next time that I read literature, I will have a better appreciation for what the writer is saying and I think I will understand it more than I did when I began this class.