Dear Connie,

When you are looking through my portfolio, you should first notice that the tabs are in
chronological order from left to right. Each page is also chronological going from oldest to
newest, excluding the bog page as it goes newest to oldest by default. Before I discuss my
challenges and triumphs of UWRT 1102, I will briefly discuss what you will find under each tab.
The home page serves as an introduction to my entire portfolio. This page consists of a
brief introduction and overview of my inquiry topic and what you will see in the following
pages. A good introduction is the make or break portion of anything whether it be an essay, web
page, or even a movie. When someone visits this portfolio, they will most likely decide whether
or not to continue reading after the introduction. Due to this, I was very careful when writing for
my home page. I tried to include the important points without giving away all of the information
making it unnecessary to read on.
Directly following the home page is the critical thinking page. As I stated earlier, this
page begins with my older work and is followed by more recent work. On this page specifically
is a daybook assignment that I wrote at the end of January followed by the proposal for my
multi-genre project. I added these two pieces because they were two different genres of writing
about two different topics. The first was an informal assignment about the NSA, which was my
first idea for an inquiry topic. I made many revisions when typing this from my daybook. The
original version was much less formal than the uploaded version, which was the largest change I
made. The second piece was a formal proposal for the line of inquiry that I decided on:
cyberbullying. The pieces also work together as they show the different ideas I considered. The
first piece on this page shows a piece of my writing that is not centered on cyberbullying.
While the previous page demonstrates my thought process before I began focusing on a
specific topic, the blog page demonstrates my thought process once I had decided on a topic and
began researching. Each blog consists of a cohesive summary of an article often broken down
into multiple sections for ease of reading, followed by an analysis and a reflection. Each analysis
provides information on the quality of the article. The reflection provides my personal opinion
on the article and how I felt about the information.

The forth tab and easily the most important section is the multi-genre tab. I say this page
is the most important because it shows the final products attained from all of the research
performed. If you were to only read one page from this blog, this would be the one. The other
pages simply build up to and support the information presented. The first piece added at the top
of the page contains my dear reader as well as four of the five genres for this project. I decided to
use a newspaper as the container of my genres. I initially wanted to include all five genres into
the newspaper, however I could not decide how to include a formal essay so I split my project
into two sections. The genres in the first section are, in order, dear reader, newspaper article, a
graph, a poem and an advertisement. The final genre and second section of my project is a
persuasive essay. In this essay, I took a more formal approach to cyberbullying and provided the
most information in regards to solutions. I did this because the essay is meant to be the last piece
read so when you have received all of the information in an informal way, you then see it again
and receive a possible solution and call for action. The third and final piece at the bottom of this
tab is the rationale for each genre. This was used to describe the choices I made regarding genres
and why I put them in the order they are in.

I believe its safe to assume that if you are reading this, you have successfully made it to
the final page of my portfolio. Congratulations to the both of us! Either I am finally starting to
understand how to write in a somewhat interesting manor or you are forced to read everything in
order to grade it.. Im going to keep telling myself it was the first choice! Moving on; now that
I have described what you will find on each page, I will now describe my experience in UWRT
1102 and what my greatest challenges were and how these challenges generated my greatest
triumphs.
Coming into UWRT 1102, I assumed it would be a replica of 1101 with an extra essay or
two. I was wrong. I thought I would be able to continue to write at the same level and I would
get an easy A, however I quickly learned that was not the case either. When my first essay was
returned and I saw a huge C in the top right corner, I knew I had underestimated the expectations
of the course. Although I want to say I instantly began writing better, I cant. Even at this point
in the semester I still dont believe my writing has improved very much. The main differences

between today and the first day of the semester are my approach to writing and my writing
strategies.
I used to be a firm believer that I could get any prompt and begin writing. No
brainstorming or prewriting; I would just start typing and I could produce a decent essay. That is
the approach I took to the first essay of the class arguing which article provided a better
argument. The C I received told me otherwise. After this, I began brainstorming before I wrote
anything. Nothing too fancy, but I would write down certain ideas that I thought of before I
actually began writing. This proved to be effective in certain papers such as my Cyberbullying
Proposal located at the bottom of the critical thinking page. I wrote in my daybook the voices
associated (parents, students, school employees, etc.) and then I wrote down a list of about nine
or ten different points that I was thinking about including in my proposal. This helped when I
was writing and revising.
That brings me to my next strategy that I have been taking advantage of this semester:
revising. Prior to being here at UNC Charlotte, I would never revise any essays. Even when I
was required to I would sit around for thirty minutes and then say I revised it. It wasnt until this
semester that I learned the true benefit of revising. I was forced to revise for my ENGR 1201
course and there were many times that I was much more satisfied with my work after it had been
revised. I began using this method for all the essays I wrote in my courses. My roommate is in a
different section of 1102 so we swap papers and revise them for each other. On my critical
thinking page, the paper under the title First Inquiry Topic is a perfect example of revisions
working in a positive way. I originally wrote it very informally as it was a daybook assignment,
but when I was choosing papers for my critical thinking page I thought it would be a good idea
to revise an informal piece to make it formal. In doing this, I created a final product that I am
much more proud of. Possibly the most current example of that is what you have just finished
reading.

Thank you for a challenging class this semester! Although at first I thought you were
asking too much of us, I am glad you set high standards as it forced me to work hard on all of my
writing and ultimately helped me improve my writing strategies. Classes that are easy As are
fun but end up being a waste of money and I would much rather earn an A than be given one. I
hope you enjoy reading what I have been working on this semester!

Sincerely,
Alex Violette
April 26, 2015