It’s been a while. I haven’t technically worked on my e-portfolio in the past week or so (on account of other course work) but I don’t think that means I haven’t made progress.
One professor of mine said that as long as you nailed down your ideas and outline, you can write your rough draft the night before. I personally have never subscribed to this. Things always happen in the execution that I do not expect. I have thoughts while I write. I look at the page and that sentence that sounded so wonderful in my head is stupid on the page.
However, this advice did apply here. While not directly working on e-portfolio directly, I thought about it and I thought about what I wanted to do. Originally, I intended to do a more fun and creative portfolio but now that I think about it, producing my eportfolio as a precursor to my graduate school writing portfolio has several advantages. One, I have a specific audience. Two I have a specific goal. Three, it steers me towards a more professional look and tone. So I switched themes yet again and managed to create something I like better. I may want to change it once more because it’s a bit dark and have a more neutral palate for whatever pictures I use but that’s work for another day.
I wrote an intro to my Asian Studies page and was working on the intro to my Welcome page. The problem is I’m not sure whether I want to list out my credentials, which is boring and sounds . . . like I’m trying too hard. I could talk about the ideas but I think there has to be some of myself in there as well. Moreover, not to get too into it, but I’m considering changing my academic plans.
Thinking about this topic makes me want to change to a less professional more creative approach again for this portfolio and for the capstone course eportfolio take the grad school approach. Probably I’ll sleep on this decision too.
As for the writing I’ve been doing for my e-portfolio, I’ve been editing my “Why I Write Essay.” Most of what I’ve been doing is streamlining the writing, dividing it into more concise sentences. But I’ve gotten into more of the nitty gritty. I divided the paragraph I was least confident into two and then added material. I think doing this robbed it of some of the humor and the informality. I’ll have to go through it again to inject that tone.
In the back of my mind is editing my re-purposing essay. I know what I have to do. Cut the research. I wanted to show my research in the article and thought because it was more journalistic I could just direct quotations to explain different arguments for me. Now I know that I need to dumb it all down. Cut the statistics. Simplify the explanation. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about the beginning. It’s too informal and creative but it is the most relatable, liked part of the piece for some people. Another problem to sleep on.