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Final Portfolio and Reflection Letter

Quests

Length: 1000 – 1250 words (4-5 pages)

Due date: 5/6

Look back over the writing you’ve encountered and produced this semester, and then draft a cover letter for your portfolio that explains how you have met the learning outcomes for this course. This letter is an opportunity to think about your writing and clarify — for yourself and portfolio readers — how your skills and awareness of your writing processes have grown this semester. Think of each piece of writing included in your portfolio as an “exhibit” that you are analyzing and reflecting on in this letter.

What should your letter do?

  • Explicitly address the course outcomes and how you encountered them throughout the reading and writing for the course.
  • Guide your readers through the exhibits, discussing your writing while looking for larger patterns. What do you see about yourself as a writer when you step back and look at the work you’ve produced this semester?
  • Discuss at least one piece of writing in depth, considering the stages of the writing process as it developed. How did you think about audience, purpose, or genre while you wrote this piece?
  • Explain how you have applied (or will apply in the future) insights from this course in your other classes or other rhetorical situations. Use specific examples, if possible.
  • Employ evidence to support your claims. Just like in the other writing assignments you’ve completed this semester, you will need evidence to support of your argument; however, in this case, the evidence you will use is your own writing.
    • Remember that you need to incorporate quotes into your own writing with clear framing language.
    • Also remember that you always need your own interpretation and analysis of any quote you use in order for it work as evidence.
    • Forms of evidence from your writing exhibits could include, but are not limited to: quotes from your own finished writing (embedded in sentences or longer quotes in blocks); quotes from early drafts of your writing or notes; reported or quoted feedback from others; illustrations or quotations that show how a particular exhibit evolved; or screenshots or images from your work.

Hometasking

Due to the coronavirus physical distancing measures, we had to drop the Kickstarter game design project and instead you completed six #hometasks. As part of your reflection letter, I’d like you to take some time to specifically reflect on what you learned from those tasks, and perhaps what you learned from each other engaging in those tasks as a community together during this challenging time. Did the hometasking assignments help you to convert a “threat mentality” to a “challenge mentality” in McGonigal’s terminology? Did these quests work in the ways that McGonigal describes quests in Superbetter (did you experience any sort of “upward spiral,” for example)?  Looking back over your hometasks, what patterns do you notice in the way you approached those assignments? What patterns do you notice in the works of the entire class when taken together? Are there lessons from these tasks that you can apply to writing or other academic tasks in the future?

Publishing your cover letter

The reflection essay should become the new home (or index) page for your course site and should begin with a note indicating that the site is an archive of the work that you completed as part of ENG101 at Emory University during spring semester 2020. You should link to the course site, so that a reader who is going through your work can easily find out more information about the course you were in.

You should organize the work on your course site into a finished portfolio showing all the work you have done this semester. Make certain that your entire course subdomain looks complete, coherent, and like you’ve given some thought to its overall design and aesthetics.

Just like with any assignment you’ve completed this semester, your reflection letter should include at least one image (though you can certainly include more than one. You might consider using your Assemblies image as the primary or feature image for your letter — hopefully constructing that chart will help you to think about how the work you have completed this semester fits together, and hopefully it will help to communicate that understanding to your readers.

DO Exercise!

Student Posts

I have gained SO MANY weight during the quarantine! There are not many things for me to do every day. The only thing other than school works for me to think about is to eat. Typing this short paragraph, I cannot help myself stop getting another cup of yogurt and self-lying that I will not get fat because of this little cup of yogurt. Therefore, I used the trousers as a jumping-rope. I would like to make this hometask, doing the most extraordinary with a pair of trousers, to remind myself: IT’S TIME TO DO EXERCISE AND LOSS WEIGHT!

Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Fruit Bowl

Student Posts

If you search “Iconic movie moments”, scenes from the Great Gatsby, Good Will Hunting, the Matrix, the Godfather, and many more show up. As I aimlessly procrastinated through the scholarly consideration of clips–yes I was watching youtube– one caught my eye. Or, perhaps, my treasure-eye. #SQ13 #HT6

My Video is attached here.

The Lion King: Quarantine Edition

Student Posts

When I first saw this side quest, I was sitting in bed next to my quarantine best friend: my life sized bear toy. I was instantly inspired to recreate one of the most iconic scenes in film history. I hope all of you recognize the scene and enjoy watching my rendition of it. Here’s my video:

Sidequest 13: Rocky Road

Student Posts

The training montage from the film Rocky (1976) is the most iconic movie scene in sports movies in my opinion. My backyard is laid out perfectly to recreate this scene, so I chose it to recreate for my hometask. I wrapped my hands in paper towels in place of white boxing gloves and put my hood up like Rocky Balboa. I ran across my backyard to an awkward set of steps that we have. There’s only four steps, but there’s a lot of room between each step like there are at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I jogged up the steps and did a celebration fist pump, just like Rocky did. Hopefully people will soon be able to recreate this scene at the sight it was filmed instead of at home!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pU1BM-06sqa0ElTwgNfzSupNLK96rM0U/view?usp=sharing

Vote for the most extraordinary use for a pair of trousers

David's Posts

Giovanni

Zamirah

Alan

Kimberly

Keita

Michael

Austin

Winslow

Wenyi

Kathy

Sadie

George

Rachel

Jessica

Ruohan

Who did the most extraordinary thing with a pair of trousers? Watch the videos of your classmates on this one -- some really extraordinary trousers!

Vote using the poll below. Check the box next to the three entries that you believe are the most spectacular. Please do not vote for your own entry.

Hometasking 5
Checkboxes

Who turned their kitchen into the most epic kitchen sporting arena?

David's Posts

There’s definitely a running theme here as, once again for this task, George received the most number of votes and he came in first place.

Jessica defeated her sister to take the gold in Pan Pong, but that was only enough to land her second in the voting for the most epic kitchen sporting event perhaps because she and Giovanni split the vote of those who were delighted to see kitchen islands turned into a ping pong venue.

Right behind those three, Kathy, Cherie, Michael, and Rachel‘s efforts tied them for third place. How were the voters not more impressed with Rachel hitting an egg off a racket and banking it into the pot to fry it up for breakfast?

Once again, check the updated leaderboard to see where everyone stands in the overall competition (hint: George has a big lead and it’s looking to my eyes like only Jessica has the potential to overtake him with only two hometasks remaining before the semester winds down.)

Trouser Pull-up Failed

Student Posts

The inspiration of this idea came from the pull-up handles that my cousin installed on the walk way, which I was never able to reach. I thought using trousers to function as extensions to the handles can benefit the shorter human on the earth, but clearly I underestimated the power of gravity.

Shout out to my cousin who had to act short to be in both parts of the video since I am incapable of doing a single push up no matter under what kind of circumstances.

Hometask #5: stay protected!

Student Posts

This assignment tasked us to create or do the most extraordinary thing with a pair of trousers. For my idea, I chose to create something that’s not necessarily the most “extraordinary”, but extremely practical and useful for us amidst this global crisis: a face mask. I grabbed some thin, cotton pants from my closet and made a new face mask following instructions posted on the CDC website. I hope you find this helpful, especially since it feels like it’s nearly impossible to get a mask these days.

Step 1: grab some pants
Step 2: Cut out a square piece of your pants, fold it lengthwise, and loop two rubber bands through on either side.
Step 3: Fold each side in and loop the rubber bands onto your ears to wear(folded side towards your face).

A video of the finished product — and I promise it works!

(here is a link if the embedded video doesn’t work: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CyXnpcXAGbfvLFOyCiVRY1sx6T07sDwE)

The CDC’s instructional picture that I used –

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