My Writing Journey
My experiences with writing were usually met with frustrated moans and sighs. I always found myself never starting essay assignments at all or at the close deadline of one. As I began my English 115 course, I didn’t know how to feel. I was overcome with nervousness, anxiety, and hopelessness to pass the course. I clouded my mind with a negative perception of myself and my education. Yet at the same time, I wanted to learn and understand what it means to have a ‘college-level’ writing and grow as a writer. Throughout the semester, I confronted my struggles of writing from my experiences of reading and discussing certain topics, my reflections on my two major papers, and how these developed my writing process further over the semester.
Firstly, in my experience, the English 115 course materials were a little different than what I was used to in English courses. I struggled--and still do--when I encountered the “Progression papers” and its “exercises” on top of “ePortfolios”. The unfamiliarity of these types of assignments did not sound pleasant. For the progression papers, I wasn’t very confident in my writing skills or my organization skills. There were 3 exercises per paper and they were the stepping stones for a particular paper. However, I had difficulty putting them together because I was either too keen on perfectionism or I had an excessive amount to work with. In addition to a new method of learning how to write, I was interested in most if not all of the topics selected for each paper. For example, Citizen: an American lyric by Claudia Rankine used an uncommon point of view throughout her book to give the reader an intimate relationship with the speaker. The text was difficult to read and dissect through but still, I was fascinated by her work. Examining her chapters during class meetings and discussion posts helped me understand the messages Rankine wanted to convey between blocks of text.
The Mushroom Method
Mushrooms come in different shapes, sizes, colors, and even lifestyles. I designed my e-portfolio to tie in with my obsession with fungi. In all honesty, I didn’t think too much about it and wanted to have some creative fun with the theme. I barely started to study the world of mushrooms during the summer of 2020. In this semester alone, I analyzed plenty of sources such as articles, blog posts, reports, and even poems regarding fungi in order to make my website more purposeful. My e-portfolio follows a mushy theme that reflects my growth as a writer through its methodical organization of elements comprised of my papers, exercises, and reflections, accompanied with images.
First and foremost, I sought to make every page of my e-portfolio easy to maneuver with nothing being too busy or too bland. I had two options from wix.com (a popular website builder), make my own format or use ones that were already available. Since I had little to no experience of building an e-portfolio, I used a format that was pre-made by wix.com. While I practiced using the website builder, I became very anxious and irritated by the vast amounts of options to edit. It was all so new to me that I had to take a step back from my computer. Professor Koning, my English 115 teacher, called this moment a “cooling time” after the poet, C.D. Wright. Regardless, I hopped back onto the computer and started again with a newer perspective. Once I found a good pre-made format for my website, I started working on what will be the theme, the color palette, and so on. However, I overthought all the little things, compelling me to spend plenty of days redesigning each page. On the top of my website, I rearranged the tabs from most important to most personal. In essence, I overthought this: “What would people like to see next? Since we commonly read from left to right, I should put my important subjects on the left side and more personal writings on the left.” I worked out how simple I wanted the sizes and colors of the fonts, background images, and overall navigation.
Primarily, I found the concept of mushrooms to be an amusing theme and so I wanted its color palette to match that atmosphere.
