My ePortfolio contains the writings and reflective introductions to many essays that I have written. Each essay has a different topic and mostly different writing style to it that was dictated by the type of assignment that the paper was written around. In my first paper, I wrote very descriptively and tried to use this to create a large series of surreal and interesting metaphors. This was meant to grab the reader’s attention and to show them how entertaining written work can be while simultaneously telling them about the importance of writing well, regardless of how loathsome the task is. My second assignment was to write in a genre. I chose to educate readers about the genre of Anti-Humor, its conventions, and how it is essential to understanding the human reaction of laughing in the face of discomfort and horror. My third assignment was to write about Discourse Communities and how they use language to further their aims. I chose to write about the US Naval air arm and how it uses its complex lexis to maintain cohesion and capability while combating the enemies of America. Throughout the processes of writing these essays I came to learn about the important conventions and strategies of how to write skillfully and also how to properly edit and revise my work to an optimal state. As a writer, such skills as revising, maintaining proper paragraph organization, and writing to the audience are essential to writing well and were learned very thoroughly over the course of my papers as shown by the contrast between my first paper, and my later work.

Long before my later work, however, I had few real notions of how I was supposed to begin this sort of work. Fortunately for me, I at least had the sense to start doing something so that I may have something to analyze and then critique, something that I could eventually make a full paper out of. The first words that came to mind when I began to write about my personal experiences with past English assignments were “show don’t tell”. Naturally, I took this way too far and began to think more with my imagination than with my entire mind. The style got completely out of hand. Even after the first two drafts, I failed to grasp how over the top my style was which hampered the quality of the paper. Even in the final draft, such wordy lines as this remained:

“Through many years of schooling and many different graded assignments fabricated from the worst ideas of the English department which only ever managed to demoralize their eager students, I had suffered the criminally terrible book choices and entailed assignments as one of many in a hollow crowd who would otherwise have been primed and ready to detonate at the sight of knowledge on pages more alive than their physical existence would suggest.” (Cooper, Hayden).

This clumsy intro sentence severely crippled my work. The paper only received an 80% and it’s not difficult to understand why. While I was busy being distracted with the language, I was neglecting the importance of thorough proofreading and sentence structure. I had also rather ironically weakened my figurative language by using far too much of it which, like money, becomes less scarce as more of it exists and therefore less valuable. As a result, the only thing my paper had going for it, was reduced in quality. I also failed to address the audience as I had written far too much about myself with the expectation that they would apply it to themselves as necessary. From this I have learned not to make any assumptions, either about the audience or about the quality of my work. I then applied these lessons to my next paper and managed to do far better with a more plausible assumption. Average Joe is very average indeed. He needs a good explanation.

The shortcomings of the first paper left a somewhat bitter taste in my mouth that had to be removed and Average Joe still needed me to explain my ideas to him. To this end, when I began to write the second paper, I became far more cautious about what I did with it and I made sure that I actually wrote to an audience this time around. I free wrote once again to create the ideas that would go into the first draft and went from there. What I set up from there was a somewhat challenging proposition: proving that Anti-Humor was its own genre. This time around however, I made sure to explain the concept of Anti-Humor to an imaginary audience that would be familiar with comedy and humor, but not with Anti-Humor. I did this best in the set up by prefacing the paper with this:

“For untold centuries humanity has partaken in the art of comedy. From the humor of Shakespearean theatre to Monty Python’s flying circus, people have laughed at many good jokes, sketches, skits, and the like. Indeed, humor is almost as old as humanity itself and plays a central role in every single culture across the globe. Many have heard such classics as “Why did Sally fall off the swing? Because she has no arms!”. It’s not very funny is it? Where is the humor in this “joke”? It can’t be in the punchline. Indeed, it isn’t present at all. Nonetheless, one may find it funny anyways.” (Cooper, Hayden).

Unlike in the first paper, I also made sure to respond to the feedback in its entirety, which removed some very serious issues from the paper such as some sentence structure errors and audience addressment errors. After I fixed these errors, I then forced myself to remember that I needed to re-read the paper as if it were not mine. This revealed some other message communication problems which were promptly dealt with thereafter. What I learned from this process was the importance of keeping the audience in mind and in revising through a neutral lens. As a result of being sure to do these things, I got a 92% on this paper, a substantial improvement over the previous one.

But of course it was easy to apply these lessons to a paper that was allowed to be written in a familiar style. With a new style such as the one present in academic writing, however, there came the new challenge of organizing a paper in a more rigid and professional manner. It was important because a personal style will typically interfere with the conventions of writing in the Discourse Community essay genre which, for arbitrary reasons, forbids the use of personal narrative. Here, I made sure to reiterate my strategy of assuming that Average Joe was what it said on his label. Fortunately, this essay style did not prohibit me from choosing a topic that I liked (US Naval aviation) and did not prevent me from free writing the materials for it. I kept in mind the idea that this paper was supposed to be professional, and I decided that I should cater to Average Joe even further by making sure that every single element was well explained. In my previous paper, my greatest error (which wasn’t so bad, but nonetheless cost me a few points) was that I had failed to explain some examples that I had offered to prove my point about Anti-Humor being its own genre.

“It is a case of Tony Clifton, a character played by comedian Andy Kaufman who is precisely the antithesis of a Lounge Lizard entertainer who would berate his audience as part of his “comedy” and who is funny only because he is painfully untalented (Tony Clifton Attacks Jim Carrey at Press Conference), versus, Major Kong’s ride on a nuclear bomb to his demise with haughty laughter. (Dr. Strangelove: Major Kong Rides the Bomb 1080p)” (Cooper, Hayden).

Here I had failed to explain fully what either of these things were, thus, creating a severe stoppage which rather abruptly altered the flow of my previous paper, creating an unpleasant spot in it. Therefore, when free writing/thinking, I made sure that I would not make such a mistake again. After this was done, I settled upon a rigidly sectioned paper which would simplify the task of organizing it greatly and aid in reducing the workload from transitions. From there it was merely a matter of filling in the appropriate details in the appropriate places (though I was far more nervous about it at the time). This eventually led to a good essay with a solid 91% for a grade.

As my ePortfolio shows, I have, since the beginning of the semester, greatly improved the quality and care of my writing. From the first paper to the last, I was continually trying to apply the lessons learned from my foibles with audience management to my problems with alienating my own perspective so that I could better revise and analyze my own papers. I have even managed to apply some of the lessons from the papers, such as the importance of Average Joe levels of simplified organization which make my site easily navigable. I have also made sure to publish my site in a way that makes it look professional with colors that are appropriate both for the location (VMI) and easily readable.

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