Final Reflection ENGL – 1010

Dear Stacie,

Here on my final portfolio, you will see the following: My flash narrative, a story I wrote about
the time I got into a car accident two years ago. My rhetorical analysis, which is on an article called,
Faced with an Anti. My research journal, which is about a summary of all the different articles I read in
preparing for the last paper you will find. My viewpoint synthesis, which is about drug addiction and
whether it is a choice or a disease.

When talking about successes and struggles, I think there were a lot of things I struggled with.
Rhetoric was the area I struggled with the most when it comes to the threshold concepts. When we
were annotating the different articles, especially, “Two Languages in Mind, but Just One in the Heart”
was really hard for me to under and grasp the deeper meanings. This could also go along with the
threshold concept, context, because I was having difficulty understanding the meanings the writer was
trying to portray. Overall, I enjoyed annotating, but I never felt like the things I was annotating was what
they were looking for. It was very helpful and beneficial to me to attend the in person labs at this time,
because I was able to ask those more in depth questions and get that better understanding. In the end,
my rhetorical analysis, was a paper I was proud of. I picked an article that I felt was a good fit for me to
easily understand the context Bill Heavey was trying to portray.

Another struggle I faced was with my viewpoint synthesis. I struggled a lot with the literate
practices and processes threshold concept as researching was something that was difficult for me. The
researching part of it wasn’t something that was all that difficult, it was finding the useful information
and interpreting that information into my writing. I wish we could have been able to do an in person lab
for this paper, I think it would have been beneficial to me and would have helped to improve my paper
significantly.

When I think about successes, I think about my flash narrative story, Santaquin Snow. This is
something I am the most proud of and where I felt most confident throughout this whole semester.
During this first unit, I learned a lot about the threshold concept, writing is a resource. Writing and
storytelling is everywhere you go and is so important to the world, “writing is a resource people use to
do things, be things, and make things in the world” that has stuck with me from day one. To me, it is so
cool to think about how widely used writing is, more than we even realize, more than we can even
fathom at times. This story I wrote about my car accident, also had a lot to do with the threshold
concept, choices. The choices I made in my writing when it came to the dialogue, sensory details, or
feelings and thoughts in the moment.

Lastly, I think about the threshold concept, action. To me, action plays a great part in my flash
narrative story as well. Because although my story was not the time of story to change someone’s life or
make change in the world, a lot of writers stories do just that, change someone’s life or create that small
or big change in the world. My viewpoint synthesis could do just that for someone, change their life.
Whether it was someone struggling with an addiction or someone who loved someone struggling with
an addiction.

Overall, I learned and gained so much from this class. And as they all told us in the beginning, we
are going to be thankful for the labs, and I definitely am. Through all my struggles, there were successes
and I don’t think I would have those successes without the labs. Thank you, Stacie for all your knowledge
and help.

Word Count 663

Bailey Zaugg