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Greetings writing connoisseurs. I know you're all deeply involved with preparing your portfolio for this week, so I don't want to take up much time, but I do want to share with you some thoughts about the reflective essay that you will be writing when you submit the portfolio.

Let me remind you that the reflective essay is the first thing that I will be reading in your portfolio. So it is your chance to explain your choices, to show how you've improved as a writer this semester and to persuade me about the effectiveness of your writing.

Do note that you can bring with you Ideas & Details, the Little Penguin Handbook, Common Culture, a dictionary--anything that you think may help in writing the essay--except a friend or relative!

Also, please upload copies of your final portfolio drafts into the portfolio drop box. You can do this before coming to campus or on the computer when we meet. And definitely upload a copy of the reflective essay after writing it Wednesday.

• This is a safeguard in case I need to reprint one or more of your essays.

Do

• focus on a specific point that you want to get across to me about writing that your portfolio exemplifies, and that each paragraph in the reflective essay supports.

• explain any context about the assignment or about your interests/experience that will clarify the reasons you chose the topics you did.

• identify aspects of the writing process that you found particularly helpful, showing me how you improved as a writer. Using references to ID or LPH would be effective in doing so.

• clarify the revision process you followed to improve the effectiveness of the essays, including feedback from each other, feedback from me, ideas you garnered from your family, tips you picked up from ID and such.

• show me aspects of effective writing that you learned from our texts and from your work throughout the semester.

• And I do mean show, with specific examples from your essays and texts, the latter using MLA parenthetic citation and works cited.

Now don't think you will need to cover all of this in the ninety minutes or so that you will have to write the essay. But consider these as the types of things that will be most interesting, and focus on what you think is most significant about your writing and about you as a writer.

You will most impress me as a writing teacher by showing me what you've learned about writing and about becoming a better writer. I know, "blinding flash of the obvious," but something that is easy to overlook.

• Also, keep this in mind. If your portfolio returns from the external readers as unsatisfactory, and I think it's borderline, an effective reflective essay will likely persuade me to appeal the portfolio. A weak, poorly thought out, poorly expressed reflective essay may persuade me you would do well to take the class again.

If you have any questions or want to talk about any of this, don't hesitate to call me, email me, stop by for a chat (IM or f2f) during my office hour, or some other time, if you let me know when.

And if you haven't looked at the "Submission of Portfolios" page lately, you would do well to review it to make sure that you bring everything that is required for the portfolio.