Blog Post Number 19: Final Portfolio Reflection

Part 1:

The assignments I am most proud of would be my Creative Project and well as Blog Post Number Three. These were my favorite pieces because both of them had a rather strong focus on creativity as well as individual work. Though I have grown as an individual within a group setting and have become much more comfortable with discussing my opinions and thoughts and creating a final presentation with others, and am introverted at heart and will seemingly always find individual work much easier to work through.

I believe that my Creative Project was not only a success but also fun to create. As a painter, I thoroughly enjoyed painting my representation of the struggles within the novel "Bring Up the Bodies." As a poet, I tend to be deep in my thoughts and see symbolism within everything I read and see, this made it fairly easy for me to add in the proper symbolism from the novel into the painting. The main weakness of this piece was definitely my explanation of it. I feel that if I used more evidence from the novel in order to be more specific about my choices within the painting and how they connect, I feel that this would have been a greater success.

When it comes to Blog Post Number Three, I actually found this rather easy. We were asked to pick two people from mythology or folklore that we connected with. Being an avid reader of much mythology, specifically Greek and Nordic, I immediately thought of the muse of lyrical poetry, Eurterpe. As someone who has spent much of her childhood in Sunday School, Esther came to mind. I feel that I made these connections very well and explained myself but that I could have expanded my argument more as well as include the Group Skill concepts we talked about, describing what Esther and Euterpe exactly would be and comparing that to myself and my own skills.

Part 2:

As someone who is rather quiet, I do not tend to ask questions in class unless prompted to. Even so, I have avidly done my fair share of work for this class both individually and in a group setting. For example, in the Group PowerPoint assignments my group members and I equally split up the PowerPoint slides in order to each participate a decent amount. Though at times we would each step in and do a bit more than others when the other people were knowingly busy that night; this, however, evened out by the end of these assignments. We each discussed our own thoughts, Megan Drake normally initiated our discussions, and eagerly listened to each other. I feel that we worked very well as a group. The American Drama Project also shows how I work in a group setting. For this assignment, I contributed to the synopsis sheet (Primarilly with the Playwright Background), typed up all of the scenes we chose, found the AP prompt, drew out the Story Boards, contributed to the bibliography, played one of the main parts in the video, and also brought in different costumes and props to use in our scenes. I feel that I contributed greatly to this assignment.

With individual assignments, I feel that I have done fairly well. I have completed all of my individual work on time (as far as I recall) and have attempted to become more comfortable with asking questions on how to improve, such as with the Creative Project. I have stayed up to speed with the reading and I feel that I have put in a good amount of effort. This, however, definitely decreased for a short while when filling out College Applications. I am sure than you can understand that. Looking back on the trimester as a whole, I feel that I have put in a lot of time and effort and have even pushed myself within group work and presentations, things that I have definitely struggled with in the past.

Part 3:

At the beginning of the trimester I set certain goals for myself in which I have tried to obtain through the trimester. Upon taking the practice test I realized that "I [needed] to take my time" and "reread any parts that don't make sense" which I have found are extremely helpful. As someone who tends to second guess herself and get caught up in the moment, when taking a test I have a problem with slowing down. I find it hard to pace myself and tend to speed through tests, putting down a certain answer and then changing it last minute before turning it in. I have realized that most of the times in which I change my answer, I tend to be correct the first time. Not to say that I should go with "my Gut Feeling" or anything of the such, but instead realize that if an answer stands out immediately and it makes sense to me there is no sense in questioning myself unless proven otherwise.

I also decided that I would create flashcards of the different literary terms we've focused on throughout the trimester, such as "paradox and metonymy". Though I truthfully never actually wrote out these flashcards, I did, however, review the different terms. I ended up typing out a list of the different terms (each on the syllabus) and find the definition and necessary examples for each in order to understand them more. This definitely helped me, making it easier for me to look back on specific terms we have used. I used this paper multiple times throughout the trimester in order to stay on top of my class work.

Though I did not necessarily follow my future goals exactly, I feel that I have definitely become better at test-taking after this trimester. This is because I have focused on what I have struggled with in the past and forced myself to properly understand the different concepts, forgetting any doubts for a short while.