David McGowan

Suzanne Ingram

UWRT 1102-026

04/27/2015

Final Portfolio Essay

I. E-Portfolio: Design and Contents

A. Design

My e-portfolio is designed simply. I used a blank background and no additional color.

My focus was on organizing my written work for the reader. This “Ikea” website has a clutter-

free look and is designed to be minimalist—a style I like. The image above is the only one on the

website. It is a picture of a day by the ocean in the south of France that I find calm and

minimalist. I also used lower-case, clean text to make items easy for the reader to find and to

avoid distraction with complicated fonts.

B. Contents

My e-portfolio contains several pieces of my written work, including my research project,

the three-column notes I compiled while writing the research essay, my mid-term reflection, nine

blog posts from the semester, and a series of written artifacts from this class and my film class.

Each one has helped shape my learning process in the class. For purposes of explaining how

these artifacts helped me learn this semester, it makes the most sense to start from the beginning

and work through how each artifact—including my drafts and blog posts—helped me write my

final paper.

Pre-Search

My process work artifacts include my initial “pre-search” for the research essay, and three

drafts of the final research essay. My pre-search helped me brainstorm about my research topic.

It is interesting to revisit my pre-search because the document shows how my research topic

shifted over time. When I did the pre-search, I was interested in the “craft brewing community in

the area.” I reviewed a brewery-related article about the “local brewing scene.” As the semester

moved forward and coupled with Andrew Gunn’s (Humane League) visit to our class, I began to

shift my topic to focus on the local food, rather than the local beer.

Blog

Like the pre-search, my blog was also important in shaping my paper and my learning in

this class. The blog posts were almost like we were writing the paper over the course of the

semester. For example, Blog Post 2 helped me think about what’s “driving the increased interest

in local/gourmet food” in a more detailed way. The blog writing process also encouraged me to

look for new sources to write about. Blog Post 2 helped me narrow my topic to local food.

Similarly, Blog Post 3 helped me develop a research proposal – I planned to “highlight the most

prominent driving force behind North Carolina’s push for quality nutrition and local food.”

Although the weekly blog posts were sometimes a struggle for me, they helped me keep thinking

about my topic and sources.

Three-Column Notes & Writer’s Notebook

Like the blog posts, the three-column note process was both challenging and very helpful

for writing the final paper. The three-column format forced me to organize my sources and pick

out the most important parts. As the Engaging Questions textbook point out, “[m]aintaining a

research log can help you work more efficiently by making it easier for you to keep track of

sources and by helping you to avoid having to retrace your steps.” Although I didn’t use

everything in my three-column notes document, each thing opened up its own new ideas and

reinforced another point. I had never organized sources this way before and found it helpful to

organize my thoughts. One of my artifacts from my writer’s notebook (“Artifacts – Writer’s

Notebook”) is a description of my three-column notes bibliography. This writer’s notebook entry

shows that I realized during the semester that I needed to put additional sources into the three-

column format and that I saw it as a way to “link my resources together.”

Draft 1

Using the sources in my three-column notes and portions of blog posts, I was able to put

together Draft 1 of my final paper. As you can see on page 3, I was missing a large part of the

final paper at this early point. I was organizing my thoughts for the paper, and had only really

developed my first section, on “How it was/past food trends/corporations/processed engineered

food.” Still, the paper probably wouldn’t have been as developed as it was if I had not had to

write an early draft (Draft 1).

Draft 2 & Writer’s Notebook

In Draft 2 of the final research paper, I added several of the sections that were missing

from Draft 1. Many of these additions stemmed from the documentary Food Inc. Working on

Draft 2 showed me the holes I still needed to fill in to make stronger arguments. The draft also

helped me start thinking about my conclusion, which, as you can see at page 5, wasn’t finished.

Around the time I worked on Draft 2, I also completed a writer’s notebook entry addressed to the

reader (“Artifacts – Writer’s Notebook – 3/23/15”). That entry helped me realize that,

considering the complexity of my topic, it was normal for me to be struggling to find a counter-

argument.

Draft 2 Feedback

The feedback received on Draft 2 (under “Artifacts - Feedback”) of my research essay

was of great benefit to me in aligning my essay with the MLA format and thinking about big

picture questions. Adhering to MLA format was perhaps the biggest difficulty for me.  Many of

the online MLA guidelines that I was using had actually created more confusion, so feedback in

class was particularly beneficial, although even after this draft I still had many MLA questions.

Draft 3

By Draft 3 (“Artifacts – Process Work”), I added a conclusion and added more to the final

paragraph of my paper about new trends in the food industry as compared to the local food

movement. I also took out the “section headings” I’d been using as a guide for myself to outline

my paper. I felt that my paper was close to complete, but still needed work.

Draft 3 Feedback

Although I received helpful feedback in my Draft 2 peer review workshop, I still had

doubts about my citations as I knew that I had made mistakes in citation technique.  After

reviewing Draft 3 with Professor Ingram I was able to eliminate errors in my citations as she

added clarity to the information on MLA formatting that was available online. In addition to

formatting, Professor Ingram aided me in the completion of my essay as I was unhappy with how

I had brought my essay to a close. I had closed my essay on a paragraph on what might continue

to drive the local food trend (“increased publicity of the effects of the typical American diet,”

“exposure of mass food production practices,” and “increased availability of healthier organic

foods.” After meeting with Professor Ingram to work on Draft 3, I felt that I needed to add

another paragraph to enforce my belief that the new food movement was not so much a new food

trend, rather a return to how we (our grandparents) used to purchase and consume food.

Final Research Project Essay

In my final research project essay (“Research Project”), I made this change by adding an

additional sentence in the concluding paragraph rather than an additional paragraph in the essay.

It reads, “While other food trends of the last decade (gluten-free, soy everything, soy-free

everything, paleo) seem short-lived, the local food trend has more staying power as it is a return

to the way we used to eat.” This sentence helped me sum up my concluding argument about

local food and balanced out the information about food trends I’d added to my paper. In addition,

my final paper includes many of the edits from Professor Ingram, including cleaned up MLA

citations. It also includes a full “Works Cited” page.

Midterm Reflection & Wild Cards

There are three other items in my e-portfolio that don’t necessarily directly relate to the

drafting process for my final research paper. The first is my mid-term reflection. That paper

helped me link the work we had been doing on the research paper to key concepts in the class,

like critical thinking, making connections, and independent inquiry. It also helped me state my

challenges with the writing process and feedback, both of which I still think need development.

The other two items are film comparisons from my “Superhero” themed film class. These short

essays depend on making connections between two different films, so I thought they fit with one

of the key concepts in this course. They also require rhetorical awareness – even though all the

films we watch and discuss are “superhero” movies, The Incredibles presents a very different set

of images than The Watchmen, as do Metropolis and Gotham. Even though I might not have

recognized it while I was writing these papers, these film comparison papers are examples of

using the key concepts in other contexts.

II. How My Writing Has Grown Through Engagement with Key Concepts

My writing and my understanding of the writing process have improved this semester. In

many ways, this was the first time I was exposed to a lengthy research paper process. This

semester helped me understand the planning and revision process for writing a research paper.

Several of the key concepts in the class help show this improvement.

Getting Out of My Comfort Zone

First, my writing grew because I got out of my comfort zone. I am not a natural writer. I

had a career in professional athletics prior to returning to college, and I plan to pursue a career in

sciences, so I have had limited exposure to the research and writing process. This course

challenged me to ask myself questions about my audience, conduct “pre-search,” and gather

sources in a way I had not previously.

In particular, I found thinking about my audience to be a new and helpful exercise. I also

enjoyed seeing the variety in the audiences my classmates selected. For example, Andres

Galindo wrote, in Blog Post 6, about choosing between white Americans and Latinos for his

target audience. In the end, he chose “Latinos because they are the ones that are affected by this

inequality issue[s]” he wrote about. I see now how a paper designed to describe an issue to an

affected group, like Latinos, might be different from a paper designed to persuade a different

group, like privileged white Americans. Similarly, Brandon Rotimi wrote in Blog Post 6 that he

hoped his research would “be viewed by all in hopes of all coming to an understating,” his main

audience was “Afro-Americans.” Although my audience wasn’t a particular racial or ethnic

group, I identified with what Andres and Brandon wrote about their work potentially appealing to

multiple groups. I ultimately ended up with a fairly broad audience.

The Writing Process and Revision

This course allowed me to fully participate in a longer writing and research process. Most

of my other college writing has been short essays with one-time topics. Participating in the

longer writing process and accepting feedback and revisions helped me shape a piece of writing

on a longer timeframe. Spending more time thinking about one piece of writing also helped me

develop a more cohesive paper. For example, in Draft 3, I was struggling to find the right way to

conclude the paper and wanted to say more about how the local food movement is different from

other food trends. In the final draft, I added the following to my conclusion: “While other food

trends of the last decade (gluten-free, soy everything, soy-free everything, paleo) seem short-

lived, the local food trend potentially has more staying power as it is a return to the way we used

to eat.” This sentence helped me tie my thoughts together and make a stronger argument about

the difference between local food and other food trends. Engaging Questions says to “[a]void

premature closure on research and thinking.” (403). I agree that the “best resources are not

necessarily the first ones” I found. (403). I benefited from adding sources and changing

paragraphs through the last draft.

Making Connections

Organizing my sources and spending time re-working my paper helped me develop my

ideas and make connections between different sources. Before this course, I would have

struggled to tie a film like Food Inc. to a New York Times article to an NPR broadcast. This

drafting process helped me make connections between, not only genres and various modes, but

also within the 10 Key Concepts themselves. Along with my peer review partner, Keylee Brown,

we concluded that key concepts are interrelated—exercising one necessarily means using others.

For example, making connections requires critical thinking.

III. The Grade I Deserve

I believe I deserve an A in this course. In terms of my e-portfolio and final portfolio

essay, I’ve met the requirements in the posted grade scale. My portfolio is easy to navigate and

simple, I’ve demonstrated my use of key concepts, and quoted from my own work and described

how each piece of the portfolio contributed to my development in the course. Besides the e-

portfolio, I have sincerely pushed myself in this course, both to participate and to develop myself

as a writer. I feel that I have improved and given this course great effort.

And now, I’m off to enjoy some local food (and beer).