INTENTIONALITY OF AUTHORS

        Between the three passages, I chose three examples of writings that I enjoy a ton. With the first piece, Notes from the Underground, I got to explore the style of some philosophical writing. By choosing a novella, I was allowed more nuances by the author, as opposed to the bulk of philosophy writing that includes ‘being’ and ‘the self’ in every other sentence. For the Life in the Iron Mills piece, I was able to explore honestly my favorite piece of early American literature. Of course the passage I chose was the climax of the book, but the way Rebecca Harding Davis is able to convey the issues of workers rights during a period of industrialization with a story of an unfamiliar character that feels so familiar is beautiful. Last but surely not least, my girl Nina Simone. Sinnerman holds a special place in my heart because it was the first song of hers that I listened to. I heard it on an episode of scrubs and was absolutely entranced by the sounds and her vocals. Having known the song for about ten years, I never knew the meaning of running to the rock, and when I was working on this portfolio, I decided to look up the meaning of the lyrics and discovered the whole side of the story I never knew existed. The discovery of this meaning was a very enjoyable thing to write on. When it came to the style imitation, writing the outpatient form was a way I was able to show my abilities on InDesign and more unconventional writing platforms. Having recently had a concussion, the longer lasting symptoms of fogginess and lack of concentration this concept helped me cure some writer’s block. Seeing as this concept was both figuratively and literally in front of me, it was a no brainer! The style remix was last because it was my favorite. It felt the most truthfully me. In a literal sense it was but I digress. I felt that it was emotions I felt as a kid that my writing did justice expressing.

            As for the media used to display these works, I am super proud of myself for following through and creating a website. As someone who intends to become a web author, this is a great demonstration of my abilities. I was able to play around with photography. Being a hobby of mine, I may have spent way to much time to find just the right pictures. I also became very perfectionist with the design of the website to the extent that I was being neurotic. For those who saw the first site, yes I scraped it and started over. That being said, the final product is a great depiction of my skills and I’m happy with how it came to be.

        This experience of creating a style analysis portfolio was an incredibly rewarding experience. I loved the lack of guidelines on the assignment paired with the tight deadlines. Because I set grandiose plans for this assignment from the start, this left me to be dedicated to this project, and not veer of the path on producing my best work. This project is filled with blood sweat and tears but is something I’m truly proud of. Most time when I receive a big assignment or midterm, two sides of Mike can come out. Either the Mike that plans on half-ass-ing the assignment and just doing the bare minimum, or the creative expressive dedicated Mike that makes me feel confident in my work. This assignment is something I’m proud to put my name on and is something that will find a way onto my portfolio of work. I’m incredibly proud of myself for choosing to not take the easy route for my pieces and really explore the limits of my abilities. I felt this project is my current magnum opus for the reason that I was able to show all facets of my writing abilities from reflections to document design, to web authoring, and to the simpler things such as analysis. I struggled a lot switching to an English major in college for the reason that I sometimes default to being a very quantitative thinker. I felt a lot of my classes were not teaching me things I could apply in my future career or be valuable in real life applications. Being a previous neuroscience major, I was judging my abilities on questions being correctly answered but to convert to classes that were graded subjectively was challenging as hell. School was always a level of validation for me, and it became somewhat disheartening to know that some professors will take an assignment that a spent maybe an hour on and give it an A. The point I’m trying to convey is that nothing is more rewarding that fully putting everything you have into a project and really showing your best self. I found that self in this project and I’m incredibly grateful for this experience. The looser parameters of this project allowed me to explore things that make me happy in the context of literature. Because of this I was able to put my passions on paper.