Dear Dr.

Blackburn,

My portfolio will showcase all my work over this past semester as a freshman in college.

Throughout this semester we have focused our RC1000 class on the topic of food. I have read

Food Matters and used A Writer’s Reference to further my writing skills. In the beginning of

class, we began by talking about the rhetorical triangle and what it means to be a part of it.

Following this we started our first assignment which was to rhetorically analyze a piece of

advertisement. This taught me a lot about how to compose a paper and think as a scholar instead

of pushing out a somewhat decent essay in high school. After we wrote this paper, we began

looking at a research proposal. I chose the topic of food safety and based my research paper on

this topic. The other big assignment we had to do with this research proposal was an annotated

bibliography. This annotated bibliography was a challenge but taught me a lot on how to format

and analyze sources. Finally, we went into our final research project. For this project we had to

stick with our research proposal topic so mine was on food safety. However, with this paper we

had to fit our topic into three questions offered by Dr. Blackburn. The question I chose was

“What are the ethics of food?” This portfolio will show off all of the work I have done in this

class including my in-class writings.

Throughout this semester I have had in class writings. Most days when we got to class

there would be an in class writing assignment that would have us discuss what we read for that

day. These in class writings could be on a range of topics, the general theme was food, but we

also wrote about different writing techniques. I have spent a lot of time discussing what rhetoric

means and how to be a rhetor. Furthermore, I have written about what the difference is between

rhetoric and situational rhetoric. These in class writings are mostly informal but for the most part
serve as a way to practice expressing our ideas and learning how to be engaged in conversations

about writing.

As I mentioned earlier our first major assignment was a rhetorical analysis of an

advertisement of our choice. For this project I chose a commercial by Dos Equis. I analyzed the

fallacies of their commercial and discussed how they changed the way you felt about the product

they were selling, in this case Dos Equis beer. This paper was my first introduction into college

level writing. In high school I had mostly written short one to two-page papers which weren’t the

most formal and were on a topic or subject determined by the teacher. This was the first time I

had creative freedom of my topic. Overall, I was fairly happy with how the paper turned out. My

biggest challenge was making everything flow, I have always struggled to make my papers flow.

My portfolio will showcase my first draft and my finished paper. The last challenge I faced

writing this paper was formatting. I have written in MLA before, but the structure was only

loosely enforced. I referred to easy bib and a few other sources as to the formatting and structure

of my paper.

After we write each of our major assignments, we are required to sign up for a scholar’s

circle time slot in which we discuss our writing process and how we worked through the

problems we faced as writers. Once again, this was my first every college presentation.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t as nervous as I thought. In high school I had many chances to present and

be a leader, so communication and public speaking has never been challenging for me. I won’t

discuss my process for each writer’s circle because they were all pretty much the same.

The next major assignment we had was a research proposal and an annotated

bibliography. I had never done either of these two assignments before and I was worried. The

other challenge I had to overcome was that I was sick and missed a week of class. This was the
first time I had missed college class and felt behind. The reason this hindered me was because I

missed the day Dr. Blackburn talked about the rubric and what she expected. I reached out to

other classmates about the assignment because I was confused on how to start this assignment.

After meeting with some classmates and reading the rubric many times I started to get a hold on

what this assignment entailed. Once I understood the topic, I had to find an idea for the

assignment, this was the hardest part. I had hit writers block before even writing. Finally, I

landed on food safety for my topic. So, I began writing and researching. The annotated

bibliography was easier than I had thought. I picked my five sources and wrote about half a page

for each source. The research proposal felt difficult, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was to include,

and the length was hard since it had to be single spaced. When I had finally finished both the

assignments, I felt much more confident in my writing abilities. Being sick for a week put a lot

of pressure on me and made me analyze the assignment more than I previously had. I believe this

helped me become more adaptable in the future for assignments.

The last assignment and most definitely the most challenging was our research-based

argument. When I originally wrote my research proposal, I thought that we could either do an

argumentative paper or an informative paper. So, when I found out that it had to be

argumentative, I had to shift the focus of my paper. I still kept the same topic, food safety, but I

needed to tie it in with one of three topics Dr. Blackburn provided us. The topic I decided on was

the ethics of food. So once again I started researching how these two topics related. Eventually I

had my argument, the argument was that food safety is the most important aspect of eating

ethically. I thought the research would be the most challenging section of this paper, but then I

realized it had to be six pages long. I just began writing, I tried to follow the section of A

Writer’s Reference called “Shitty First Drafts.” This helped me get everything down for my
rough draft and I was actually very satisfied with how it turned out. The next obstacle I had was

going to the writing center and meeting with someone. Even though I was proud of what I had

written, I wasn’t too comfortable with other’s reading it. To my surprise, the writing center was a

pleasant and informative experience. At the writing center we mainly focused on the flow of my

paper. He had me look at the main points in all my paragraphs and then we shifted everything

around to make the paper flow better. This will definitely make me a better writer in the future.

Overall, throughout this class I have written more than I had throughout all of my high

school years. I had to overcome challenges such as being sick, missing class, not know what an

annotated bibliography was, and balancing my work in RC1000 with all my other classes. I am

very proud of the work I have done in this class and how I have improved as a writer throughout.

There are many aspects of my writing that I still want to improve on, but I have fixed the

majority of the insecurities I had before. I think this collection of work from my first semester

shows the big improvement I have made.