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Adrian Johnson

Debra Jizi

UWRT 1103 012

6 May 2018

Reflective Letter

Thank you for your interest in my portfolio. To those of you who do not know, this

portfolio is a tool being used as an effective genre to inform you of what I have learned,

accomplished, and explored throughout my semester in UWRT 1103. As you explore this

portfolio, you will learn about my past, and revel in my goals for my future. You will learn of my

inquiry into riches and will see the conclusion I reached through it.

There are many different ways you could experience the portfolio. I organized the tabs at

the top in the manner which we took throughout the semester. It is also representative of my

personal exploration into myself. The optimal path would be to work your way through each of

the tabs, including the "Inquiry Project" tab and its child tabs.

When you go through the Past Authoring, you will witness my self-discovery through

reflection on past events. I looked back on the events that have had the largest impact in creating

me. I focused on the most impactful string of events that altered me. While this seems to be just a

recollection of a childhood love story and childish reactions to events, this story has driven me to

be the man I am today.

In Future Authoring, I accomplished the one thing I have always failed to do, set a goal

for my life. We broke down our character strengths, goals, and values to try to discover

ourselves. With this, we took a different route in setting the goals in which we wrote our own
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obituary and free-wrote about our future lives. This opened me up to a new understanding of

myself which I had not previously known.

My Inquiry Project was focused around a genuine curiosity of mine, financial

independence. In order to reach my goals, which I set in future authoring, I need to be financially

independent via a passive income. I broke down different paths and situations in order to find a

method in which I could reach this achievement as efficiently and quickly as possible. In

searching for this answer, I became extremely engaged in the search and more questions came.

In answering those questions, I got as close as possible to my answer as I can. Now I have a path

to take that will get me to my goal.

In the Inquiry Project, we had two main sub-assignments. The first of these was our

Annotated Bibliography. This assignment piqued my curiosity by requiring me to analyze

different texts, peer-reviewed journals, databases, etc., evaluate their credibility, and select and

utilize the information to further my inquiry. When completing the bibliography, I learned proper

convention to acknowledge to intellectual property of the creators of the information I utilized.

The second part was the Genre Project. This required me to utilize my knowledge of rhetoric and

conventions to effectively implement a specific genre that best reaches my intended audience.

With the genre, I was able to creative in how I structured my project to reach my audience.

Through Past Authoring, Future Authoring, and my Inquiry Project, I constantly had to

be flexible in how I was writing. I was exposed to clustering and free-writing which was a new

method to brainstorm and draft my writing. This gave a new depth to my writing and composing

of ideas and material. It also required me to focus of examining how I was thinking, how and

why I was writing a specific way, what biases I was holding, and to utilized previous writing to

improve my writing ability and thought processes. One way in which I did this was through
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constantly reflecting critically on my writing. I broke down my drafts and essays and reflected on

what I did, what worked, what didn't, and how to do it better. This awareness of my own

thoughts and thought processes aided my revising. It also increased my engagement with my

own thoughts, utilization of rhetoric, analytical reading, and my proper use of convention in my

writing, revising, and reviewing of my own writing and others' writing.

In preparing for this portfolio, I learned a lot about myself. I explored my past in which I

learned of my values, strengths, and what makes me who I am. I also explored my goals for the

future, and realized why I wanted it, how I would do it, and what it would take. If I would do it

again, I would try to maintain the awareness of the purpose of this exploration, as it would have

increased my engagement and curiosity even more than it was the first time. Though, I am glad

with how I was highly motivated and persistent to do the work to the best of my ability, learn and

discover what I can about myself, and be open to the critic and ideas of others. I am glad I took

this course, because I have now found out why I am who I am now, what goals I want for myself

in the future, and I have a path to reach those goals. I have also learned what makes me happy,

what engages me, what relationships I want, the impact I want to have, and what I would like to

accomplish with my life.