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Project 4: Professional Portfolio

Understanding Public Subjectivity

A goal of this course has been to engage you in composing texts that are grounded in real world rhetorical situations
Your texts have real audiences and your texts circulate within the real world. This mindset is key as you begin to
approach and compose the fourth project: the digital professional portfolio.

Your portfolio, which will be your own professional website, should include materials that would appeal to future
employers (e.g., rsum/CV, future goals, specific skill sets, etc.) as well as materials that reflect the strengths and
skills youve developed as a writer/composer at FSU (e.g., examples of work produced across different genres). The
goal here is for you to leave with a professional portfolio that you can potentially use when applying for future jobs,
internships, and/or graduate schools. The notion of website as professional portfolio is a relatively new practice;
the conventions for this genre are still quite fluid, giving you a fair amount of agency in the construction of your
portfolio. Simultaneously, there are some discernible conventions for the genre of the portfolio. For instance, a
portfolio will involves three aspects of the following three concepts:

Selection: you select consciously a corpus of materials that shape your identity as a potential job, intern,
and/or graduate school candidate.
Collection: you make a collection of these materials, organizing them in a way that fosters a specific reading
experience, shows personal progression, and highlights particular composing skills.
Reflection: you explain to your viewer the reasoning behind the construction of your portfolio.

Youll need to provide information and materials that make you look like a credible and qualified job, intern, and/or
graduate school candidate. This will require you to research different job/intern positions or graduate school
programs; youll also need to explore further the notion of the professional portfolio (which we will do together as a
class), while simultaneously projecting yourself into the future of the job market where you may be applying for a
job or internship that doesnt quite exist yet.

What you include in your portfolio and how you design and organize it is up to you. However, youll need to be
cognizant of the rhetorical situation, in particular, your audience. As with previous projects, youll also complete a
separate rhetorical rationale (1000 1500 words) wherein you articulate and defend your composing, designing,
and editing choices for this project. I place a heavy emphasis on your ability to justify your rhetorical strategies; that
is, when I assess your portfolio, Ill look to your rationale to see if you are able to demonstrate how your composing
and designing practices are rhetorical and conscious rather than whimsical.

Overarching goals:
Research the qualifications and expectations of your desired job, internship, or graduate school
Understand the conventions of the digital professional portfolio
Develop and gather various professional documents and materials
Create and design a website (i.e., a portfolio) to house professional documents and materials
and to market yourself professionally
Arrange and contextualize your professional documents and materials in a way that is
appropriate and effective considering your audience
Design your portfolio in a way that is easy for your users to navigate
Construct and exude a professional identity

Due Dates:
Wednesday, December 6th: Draft of your portfolio and of your resume/CV for in-class workshop
Portfolio Link and Rhetorical Rationale Due: Wednesday, December 13th by end of day.