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Reflection Essay
The first day of class. I walked in, reserved, quiet, and to myself. “It's a writing class there's no need to talk and i won't talk” I thought to myself as I braced myself as T asked for volunteers to read their writings. My writings were personal, dark , and I never wanted to share them. I wrote to relieve stress or to relieve pain and I rarely wrote for other purposes unless it was academic. This course not only forced me to write for other reasons other than stress but it made me enjoy it , and also reflect on past times when I would write for fun. Whether it be the e-portfolio or doing our writing warm-ups for class, I have come a long way from not wanting to share my writing, to the writer that I am now.
Although writing is not vocal, it requires you to be vocal throughout class, workshop , and feedback. My personality falls right in the middle between an introvert and an extrovert which means for me that I will talk when I want to but if I am uncomfortable you wont get a word out of me. In the beginning I was afraid to share my writings or read anything I had wrote in class. Now looking back , I wish I would have shared more. I started to warm up to the class a lot towards the end and was very comfortable in my writing but that’s what made me grow. Realizing it takes time to be comfortable with your writing is okay and everyone moves at their own pace.
Being comfortable also stems from a sense of executing your work correctly. With my e-portfolio it was awful in the beginning. I had the wrong idea of what the e-portfolio was truly supposed to be, and started off with an e-portfolio that was sloppy and unorganized. Because of the fact that I did not execute my e-portfolio correctly , I was scared to show it because I felt that it looked awful (which it did) . Now my e-portfolio is clean, unorganized, and revolves around my writing rather than me. Choosing to delete my old e-portfolio and start from scratch was one of the best decisions that I made throughout this course. I chose to remake my e-portfolio late in the semester , but I didn't care I wanted to showcase my best work and a website that represented me well. It's never too late to make a change , and going back to recreate my e-portfolio was a brilliant decision that paid off well. I hope that through my e-portfolio people will utilize everything i’ve included in the website, especially the songs, to help them better understand the different experiments and to educate themselves , the songs on the different experiment pages should be played.
If I had more time one thing I would change is that I would make my website a little more creative, for example I would give each page its own theme rather than having one theme and design for the entire website. Also if I had more time I would figure out how to get my experiment three sample on my page. I couldn't put the sample for experiment three on my page because it would give anyone access to edit it and also access to my entire student google drive, which could potentially cause a lot of issues. I have my genre analysis and my whole thought process on the website, I just don't have the physical sample on the site. Next time I would also change my experiment three to something else. The rap genius idea seemed good in my head but on paper it was awful and not that interesting to do.
After looking at my e-portfolio I hope the viewer can take away how influential Kendrick Lamar's Album is and how it impacted my life. I hope by looking at my different projects and essays they can see how his music is so different from the mainstream , cookie cutter music we hear on the radio everyday. The controversial issues that Kendrick Lamar are important to me and are issues that have directly impacted me being a black girl in this country. Also if viewing my site is the first time anyone has ever listened to “To Pimp A Butterfly” I hope that they decide to listen to the remainder of the album as well as other albums by Kendrick.
Looking back this course really caused me to step out of my comfort zone and helped me to grow as a writer. Although there are things I would change I am happy with my outcome and decisions that I made throughout the process of creating my e-portfolio. I look forward to taking my capstone course and other courses for this minor to see how much I grow as a writer and student.