Portfolio Introduction & Table of Contents

All of the writing pieces within this blog were written as an assignment for my English 101 class. The pieces are from varying times throughout my five or so weeks in said class as this portfolio includes the first piece I’ve written, the essay that was done about midway, and my most current piece. The first piece you read will be the shortest, and they will grow in length as you move down the page.

Table of Contents

1.     Introduction to Obsession Article

2.     Obsession Article

3.     Introduction to First Discussion Board Post

4.     First Discussion Board Post

5.     Introduction to Revised Essay

6.     Revised Essay

Introduction to Obsession Article

The first piece I’m presenting is the summary I’ve written for my obsession article. The article was actually an interview with former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan about his life in and out of the ring. The reason I chose this piece of writing is because it is the most current piece that I have done for this class, and I feel that that this shows my growth as a writer since my first piece. I have tried writing summaries before, but because I could never seem to be concise enough, my summaries would end up basically being just as long as whatever it was I was trying to summarize. In this case, I was able to take a four-page article, and summarize it into about a one hundred words, which would’ve been difficult for me in the past. I found the main points of Hulk Hogan’s interview and focused on them in the summary. I was able to apply the piece of advice from my essay, which was to keep it simple, and write a clear and concise summary of the article. I hope to continue to improve upon that concept in my future works.

Obsession Article

In a piece written for Men’s Fitness, professional wrestler Hulk Hogan speaks about his experiences in and out of the ring during his nearly four decade career. Hogan states that wrestling isn’t fake, just predetermined, as the physicality within the ring is real. He’s received numerous injuries during his time in the wrestling business, most of which still plague him to this very day. Steroids became commonplace in wrestling, and Hogan admits to using them, but he nor anyone he knew that was a user ever experienced the so-called ‘roid rage.’ Wrestling didn’t just take a toll on him physically, but also mentally. Because of the pain from long withstanding injuries along with the recent collapse of his marriage, Hogan fell into depression and nearly committed suicide.

Introduction to First Discussion Board Post

The second piece I’m presenting is actually the first thing I had written for this class. I chose this piece of writing mainly because it is the first piece I had written, and it shows exactly how my writing has evolved since then. The concept of this piece was that it was sort of an introduction of my writing history and myself to my peers. I spoke about when I first began writing and what I enjoyed writing about, which was video games and everything about them. A good amount of the sentences I wrote in this piece began with ‘I’ or some variation of it, which I think disrupts the flow of the paragraph a little. I feel I’ve improved in that sense as I try to vary the starts of my sentences more often. It is a personal work, so it is expected that ‘I’ is used often throughout, but there should still be variety at the beginning of each sentence. This was obviously written before my “keep it simple” essay, so the sentences are a little on the long side, but comparing this piece to my most current piece, I can definitely see an improvement in that department.

First Discussion Board Post

I've been writing for pretty much as long as I can remember, whether it be an assignment for school or just writing random stories in my free time. As a kid I was really into video games, I still am now, but back then it was steering into an obsession. I was always inspired by video games and the stories they could tell, so they drove me to write my own stories, usually featuring game characters such as Sonic and Mario. It was always fun to be able to take these characters that I played with in the games and imagine them in scenarios that would usually not happen within their own games or even universes. I obviously still have a lot of love for video games seeing as I'm majoring in Game Art & Production, and I love seeing how the genre has evolved over the years and how now they've basically become interactive movies. Writing is a huge part in game production as over the years more and more games feature countless hours of story and cutscenes in between bits and pieces of gameplay, which really bring the whole experience together, so I expect to use writing throughout my hopeful career as a game designer. My dream is to one day create my own game with my own unique characters and stories, and to have it released on pretty much anything that can play video games.

Introduction to Revised Essay

The final piece I’m presenting is my revision of my first full essay done for this class. This essay was written in between the first two pieces that are posted above, so it may not be up to par with the obsession article, but the revision should have improved it. The main idea of the essay was to write about a piece of advice that we either have received in the past, read somewhere, or from Kurt Vonnegut’s “How to write with style.” “Keep it simple” was the piece of advice I chose from Vonnegut’s article. When I reread my essay as I was starting the revision process, I tried to focus less on rehashing Vonnegut’s article and more on what his advice meant to me. I tried to go in deeper and give more specific examples of what I was taught in the past going up against Vonnegut’s advice. I also cut out what I felt was being repeated multiple times throughout the essay or if something seemed a little redundant. While I think my original essay was nicely written, the revised version improves it in absolutely every way possible.