mohamed-finalportfolio

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Introduction

This course has been somehow a walk down through my memory lane; the different assignments have taken me to dark sides I thought I have forgotten, to memories I enjoyed remembering and to reflections I never knew I could give on my own life. I enjoyed each assignment separately, but I also felt that I grew in writing skills of course but also in my attachment to myself and my identity. Hence, the choice of my selected pieces has been affected by the growth I felt along the way; I meant to choose the very first assignments vs. the last ones because my feelings have dramatically developed towards myself along the way. It’s been a nice rollercoaster of feelings and emotions inside of my head. My first choice was the self-portrait assignment where I reflected on my life as a journey and I explained my feelings towards my past and took accountability for my life choices. It was not a long assignment in length, but it was a deep one that took me a long time to breathe out. My second choice was the “I remember” writing about self and shadow self portrait assignment; this was amazing because I enjoyed writing it, I loved the “I remember” for JOE Brainard, mimicking his writing was interesting but also emotional because I put effort to find more and more hidden memories in my head and many of them brought up a lot of emotions I needed to relive. I lastly chose two of my last assignments because I loved the confidence that I had by the end of the semester doing them and I loved how writing them felt a lot different than the tasks and writings I completed at the beginning of the semester: I chose the Language Log and Etymology-Experiment because I loved that I was able to originate the words that I use the most and reflect on a different kind of and types of language writings, and lastly was the multimodal research and critical analysis. My portfolio also included the origin story project and some peer responses. I chose the origin story project because it was the best project that made me dig into my identity and family history. I got to interview (informally) many of my family and relatives and research their words to find facts about the family origins; I even got to find blogs and history groups on social media. As for the peer reviews, I picked the ones that I felt connected to where I expressed myself more and spoke up. In the end, I enjoyed the process of choosing some of my work itself because it made me appreciate and reflect on my writings and evaluate my growth. I am thankful for a course that not only influenced my writing skills but somehow made me more connected to myself, my heritage, my identity, and my culture.

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Semester Project

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This Project made me go deep into my origin and family’s history. I chose this project to be presented in my Final Portfolio as it stands out for me. It resembles my identity. It was my first time to explore my family’s history and search for my heritage. It was the most enjoyable piece of writing, for me, this semester.

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Discussion Posts

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I chose this Discussion Post from week 2; self and shadow self portrait, to be my first discussion post presented in my Final Portfolio. It’s the first real/full piece of writing to compose in this course, so it didn’t really turn out as I wanted. This choice was made to compare my first writing about my self to the rest of my writings throughout the semester, presented in the coming posts. It was the first time for me to openly write about myself and my life. To compose this piece, I had to brainstorm my thoughts and re-write it for 2 full days as it was my first time experiencing this type of writing.

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This Discussion Post; Week 3, Mimic Writing, was one of a kind. In this writing I chose to mimic Joe Brainard’s “I Remember”. It brought back my memories as a timeline in my head. It’s included in my final portfolio as it resembles my childhood and my past. It’s me. It’s who I am. This piece of writing means a lot to me, it’s my life described in words.

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I included this Discussion Post from Week 4, Language Log and Etymology-Experiment in my Final Portfolio because it’s a new approach to words that I don’t think anyone thought about before this assignment. To write this piece, I had to critically brainstorm the words and look for its origin. I really enjoyed doing the words log, so I thought of including it here.

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I chose this Discussion Post; Week 11, Multimodal Research and Critical Analysis to be part of my Portfolio as it is one of the final pieces I wrote in this course and it shows how my writing have changed from the beginning of the semester, presented in the first writings, till this final piece in the Portfolio.

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Peer Responses

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I chose this peer response to Theresa Finn in week 5′s The Origin Story project. Theresa’s Origin Story was emotional and touched me. I responded to her in an emotional way to show my sympathy. My peer response was emotional, it was my first time doing it like that and that’s why I chose to include it in my Portfolio

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I chose this peer response to Amal Dawoud in week 9′s Spoken Word Poem and Performance Project. I chose this peer response as its one where I closely analyzed the writing of my peer and made a reaction to a performance. It’s a new type of peer response for me.

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I chose this peer response to Amal Dawoud in week 11 Multimodal Research and Critical Analysis. I chose this peer response because it’s one of the best i’ve written. I discussed the Arabic language and dialects and compared it to the Chinese as an example. This response was done after a research, which is one of the reasons why I included it in this blog.

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I chose this peer response to Amal Dawoud in week 13′s close-reading project. In this peer response, I got to tackle an important issue to me, as well as Amal. I chose this peer response as I got to express my feelings about this issue and discuss a worldwide problem that needs to be addressed.

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Final Reflection

As we began the semester, I was a bit worried about taking this course. Knowing that this course was to be taught asynchronously, I was anxious about how I would write my pieces without the professor explaining. In my first writings, I struggled to understand, and took me time to get the idea I'm supposed to write about and how to write it. As the semester went on, I changed my writing style and it’s clear how it was refined from my first writing till this final portfolio. I grew my ability to creatively write and critically think about a topic and deeply brainstorm.

The project that sticks out to me is the Spoken Word Poem, Time Flies. It took me time to think about it, but I got to express my feelings. 5 days of thinking, writing, re-writing, deleting, adding, redoing, and performing the poem. In this project, I wrote about the time and how fast it flies, and some of the thoughts that pass through my mind. I related it to my past and how it flew and the present how fast it flies. I really miss my childhood, and I believe everyone does. This project, in my opinion, was the best piece of writing I ever did, as it made me emotional while writing and performing. It’s something I never experienced before, to feel the words. It was a step to a new world of writing for me, it was a turning point for my writing style.

My writing process was totally changed in this course. At first, I just wrote whatever was on my mind without planning or professionally thinking about it. But as we moved forward with the assignments, I noticed how I started thinking about the topic more than I did before. As I mentioned, the spoken Word project was the turning point that changed my way of thinking and approach to writing. After successfully participating in all the assignments and projects in this course, what I now find important in the writing process is brainstorming, pre-writing, drafting, thinking of new themes and ideas, creative and critical thinking.

In this course, I developed numerous skills that I plan to take forward in my future life. These skills will definitely improve my future writings, not just for an English course, but for the employment world as well. Now I know how to professionally carry out a piece of writing from its very beginning process till the end. Creative thinking and thinking outside the box was addition to my skills that I believe is very important for my future. The ability to locate and critically assess a variety of sources for a variety of functions is Also a new skill that will be taken forward. Adding to them; research skills, analysis, using new and appropriate styles in writing, using evidence and documentation practices

Generally speaking, as thankful as I am to the content of this course, I am equally grateful to the professor, Preetica Pooni, and her endless support because without her guidance and encouragement and positive and constructive critics I would have never loved writing or ever imagined finding myself in reflecting and opening up.

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