Gregory's Wonderful Portfolio

     Life is a learning experience. You don't just pop out the womb and know everything. It's a process. Such is learning about yourself. Over the past year, I have learned a substantial amount about myself as a writer. One thing I have learned is that I don't always hate writing. I learned that writing about something that interests me is kind of fun as compared to writing about something the bores me. Basically, finding the right thing to write about is half my battle when writing. I love video games, and the blogs I wrote about video games were much more fun than the other blog I did.      Another thing I learned is that I am better at analytical writing rather than creative writing. I find it easier to connect dots from far away places as compared to creating my own dots. I see this by comparing by literary analysis to my personal narrative. I did much better on the analysis. I think this is also seen in my blog posts. Although, I think my poems are a ...

     When trying to improve one's knowledge, one must first understand what knowledge he does not possess. I use this philosophy whenever I must correct anything, whether it be biology, baseball, bowling, anything. One of the skills of writing that I find to be primarily lacking in is my creative details. Whenever I write, I usually use details about actions and thoughts versus aspects of the scenery and the world around me. When I need to use features pertaining to the latter, I have trouble meeting the requirements. My personal narrative shows this flaw; I use more telling details rather than descriptive imagery.      Nonetheless, I think the ability to use such details can be useful and meaningful. Without these types of details, books would be more like an anecdote than a complete story. This phenomenon would be the same throughout any genre of writing that requires detailing of any kind. I think that if I improve these skills, I might be able to kee...

     Over this past year, I believe I have been able to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of my writing. In this post, I will only focus on my strengths as a writer. I think that one of my main strong suits is my organization. Especially when it comes to analytical writing, I have a clear and deep understanding of how organization affects my writing. My research paper especially shows my organization. During the first outline of my research paper, I had a distinct idea of how the structure was going to look. I think the organization of my topics a the general structure helped my research paper stand out from my other works.      Another part of my writing I feel proud of is my voice. I can find the right tone for whatever rhetorical situation I am meeting. My research paper was a brilliant example of this. My research paper required a calm and neutral tone throughout, so I made sure to recognize any points in which my tone changed at all. The ability to r...

     This semester, I visited the writing center seeking help with my choice project for my portfolio. I decided that I wanted to transform my research paper into a video essay. The first thing I did for this process was to get a grasp of what parts needed focusing on in a video essay. Through an extensive case study, I figured that an essential part of any video essay is keeping your audience entertained. If your video doesn't build upon itself, then I, as a viewer, would likely lose interest and move on. Armed with this knowledge, I headed towards the writing center.      During my writing center appointment, I sought help with transforming my paper to be more entertaining. My writing fellow helped me with this a lot. One point he brought up was that I seemed to be more interested in this subject than most people (including himself). One way he suggested I improve the entertainment value was by trying to make it interesting for all people by thinking thr...