Dear Reader, 

Welcome to my WRT 303, e-portfolio. WRT 303, otherwise known as The Personal Essay, is an upperdivision writing course at Stony Brook which can be taken after completing WRT 102. Since WRT 102 was a category previously in my portfolio that I took back in Spring of 2013, the writing within this section of my e-portfolio will vary as I am now a senior in the Spring of 2016. I love the idea of having both easily accesible on my e-portfolio for this reason to be able to see how the writing topics have become increasingly more complex and I how I have developed my own greater sense of style. 

The Personal Essay, WRT 303, was instructed by Professor Lucenko my semester and I could not have been more happy to have chosen her as a professor for the class. To sum up in an organized fashion a few of the requirements for the course in case anyone becomes more interested in taking the class and wants to know more about it, there is some information listed below. 

*Please notice that the amount of work is specific to Professor Lucenko and can vary        depending on other professors. 

• Weekly Blog Post (750 words) on WRT303 Wordpress.
• A minimum of two comments on a fellow peers blog post (200 words).
• A couple of reading assignments for the weekly unit.
• Weekly short essays on topics pertaining to assigned reading assignments. (Total: 5)
• Longer essays chosen from the collection of peer-revised short essays. (Total: 2)
• Submit two peer revisions of shorter or longer essay assignments
• Draft and finalize a copy of a personal statement catered towards your profession.
• Digital Story Presentation (7 to 8 min video pertaining to anything you want)
• Publishing everything here on my e-portfolio for you guys :)

Although it looks like a lot in list form, it really was not at all. The class taught me to get into a routine in order to complete each assignment per week. It was not a over-burdening amount of work at all as I reflect now. The class allowed us to get multiple opportunities to draft the essays each time we would submit them. Nothing we wrote was set in stone, similar to how real writers handle their work. Not everything is perfect on the first time and that was one of many gems I have learned from the course. We got to see how beautiful and sometimes, difficult the process can be in this regard. The class was not out to get you and this is something that I am glad I learned early on in the course. Unlike other classes at Stony Brook, I did not worry about my grades in this class, all I ended up wanting to do was improve in my writing as this could be the last time I have a structured approach to it because of graduation looming in closely. I wanted to go from being entirely inclusive in my writing to being able to fully express myself and my personal experiences in my essays.

Taking the course was entirely of my own will and I trusted that the amount of work that was assigned had a justified reason by Professor Lucenko in order to help increase our confidence and skill in writing. Being a biochemistry major who did not really have the opportunity to take other writing courses with the exception of senior year where I enrolled in both WRT 302 and 303, most of my writing was done to complete lab reports. Therefore, in the years between 2013 and 2016 I had adapted a style of writing which focused entirely on long-winded sentences which trapped my sentences into potential fragments and in the end hindered their flexibility in artistic quality. Upon taking my second writing course: WRT 302 in the Fall of 2015 with Professor Khost, I was also required to maintain a blog and submit many writing samples which definitely helped in getting me into the habit of writing again. However, some flaws in my work ethic was something I noticed pretty quickly as we wrote a lot in the first couple of weeks in class. I lacked somewhat of a drive to continue writing and felt a bit burnt out (Something pretty frightening for happening in just the first week). But, quite honestly, this was something pretty natural I found out as time went on. I made the comparison to myself that creativity in writing was like a muscle and the more excercise it got the longer/more it was able to produce a respond. So no matter what happened and how bad I thought my essay was, I always continued on knowing that even the littlest amount of work would help me in the long run become a better writer. 

As the semester went on we continued to test ourselves even more. Initial challenges involved handling simple topics through the short essays which were assigned to help us self-reflect on our own experiences in order to answer the generalized prompts. I thought one of the hardest parts about the essay assignments that were in this class was not extending the short essay into the longer assignment essays. It was always easy to think of an example or two to be able to extend to about three pages in the short essays, but when it came to the longer essays ranging from five to eight pages, it was easy to start to wander off or struggle to extend the essay to a degree where it is still enjoyable to the audience. At points like this I saw one of the themes that I got out of the class which was to delve further into unknown no matter how uncomfortable it may be. Like the weight training example from earlier, endurance helps make the muscle stronger over long periods of time.

With the essays piling up in the class we began to tackle the next unit, the Personal Statement. The long essay which ultimately gives a admission committee a first impression prior to an interview. Obviously a very important essay, I started a year before I even took the class as I knew I would wrestle many ideas. What I thought was a good essay after five drafts ended up taking about five more drafts by the end of this class. This class always forced me to pick up from what I thought was strong to make it even stronger. Writing the personal statement got me to appreciate each individual word in a sentence as I toiled both inside office hours and at home working to try and get my message across perfectly. 

Being a pretty inclusive person who only gets their emotions out through the medium of writing, going into the last part of the class was definitely a challenge. I had worked with wrtiing essays for as long as I can remember. Writing using the hamburger format in ELA class in elementary school to college writing about Microbiota in the Gut or the impact of Mobutu Sese Koko on the socioeconomic landscape of Democratic Republic of Kongo, writing has always retained one medium, on paper. Therefore once video and audio came into play with the introduction of the digital story, I struggled. This was apparent in my first script of the digital story where I answered it exactly how I would have wrote an essay before this class. I lacked the personal element which was necessary to connecting the story with the audience. Instead I made a semi-argumentative essay on the importance of photography. How would this have been able to be made into a memorable video? A question I toiled with for a long time until I came to the revelation that adding personal experiences is what makes essays more memorable than a list of rhetorical strategies and devices. Once I came to the idea of what I wanted to do, the ideas started pouring in and I would spend hours editing on iMovie. In the project I tackled a period in my life which I never thought I would share especially in a classroom where I did not know any of my classmates prior to the class. But, as we learned already, this class forced me to go outside my comfort zone and I am very grateful for that aspect.

Before continuing to my writing samples I would like to discuss the classes first blog post, "Why I Write," as I learned a major lesson about writing a few months after the posts were uploaded. I remember sitting in my room reading the ambitious blog posts of fellow classmates writing how they write to rewind, cope, argue, plan, and so many other reasons that would do the posts injustice (Why I Write). After reading a few of the posts, I was thinking to myself, "Wow, I wish I could write just like them. They have so many beautiful and well constructed ideas." I was obviously frustrated as I felt sometimes I was typing to a wall in terms of how I can get my points across, but looking back now I am glad that I continued to work at writing through the many writing assignments as I was able to develop my own mode of thinking when it comes to writing. One that utilizes my own skills and techniques that I like to utilize while simultaneously seeking inspiration from others. Rather than giving up on myself and trying to be something I am not, I saw reading my classmates posts and essays as a chance to emulate what I liked and subsequently try to integrate it into what I already have. Something that I feel helped mature my style, but kept it to the point where it did not become structured as it was in the past or ended up copying someone elses way of writing. Every essay I tried to bring something new and I truly hope it came out that way. Like one of the blog posts I was particularly fond of writing this semester, this class helped me find the beauty in the little things. 

Now, if you are reading this, thank you for making it through my reflection of WRT 303 and I please welcome you to check out some of the essays I worked on in the class. 

- Jose