Keylee Brown

Final Portfolio Essay

Introduction
As my freshman year of college is coming to a close, so is my last university
writing class. With this paper you will be able to see my accomplishments in University
Writing 1102.
About the Writer
I decided to let the readers get to know a little about my prior knowledge of
horses and me to show my personal connection with the subject. Along with this I have
posted a photo of me riding to have a visual for my views to show my passion and to
give the page a visual aspect. With this the readers will get to know that I have years of
experience with horses and what possibly lead me to my topic of choice of equine
assisted psychotherapy. For those of you who do not know what equine assisted
psychotherapy is, the definition by the Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association
is, incorporates horses experientially for mental and behavioral health therapy and
personal development.
Final Portfolio Essay
With this essay explaining everything that is in my portfolio and how it is laid out,
I put it as the next thing people would read. As it says on the syllabus, portfolios
allow students to showcase their hard work and allow teachers to grade holistically,
based on a students semester-long engagement and growth, I am able to showcase all
the work that I have accomplished in one place. People who just go jumping from page to
page may not understand the way I laid out my artifacts and may get confused. This

allows me to make connections throughout all of my work during this past semester with
the artifacts that I have chosen to share. For example, by putting all drafts on my
pamphlet page shows how they connect to my final complete pamphlet. I also centered
this paper and made it the only paper on this page so people would focus more on what is
within this paper than what is on the page.
Multi-Genre Project
The next thing you will find on my portfolio would be my multi-genre project. I
decided to do a multi-genre project over a traditional research paper because the multigenre project gave me many more options and I thought it would be the best way to
convince my audience. I also decided to do a multi-genre project because I thought it
would be a great way to display the information that I had found over the semester. With
this type of project you are responsible for your own learning because depending on the
information that you need for your research you may be only using a few or many
sources to get your position across. In my case, three to four sources out of the ten
sources allowed me make my point when it could take others ten or more. Under this
section there are multiple subsections that contain the elements of my inquiry project.
Reflection
The reflection page practically sums up both of my projects into a written paper. I
decided to put this first to give my readers a taste of what each of my projects would be
before diving in to their pages. On this page I put my reflection paper outline, a quote
about reflection, and my final draft of my reflection. I find the page to be spatially and
visually pleasing as the page is not cluttered and unorganized. I put this in order of my

first thoughts to the finished product being at the bottom so that is easy to see the
progress in each piece and goes in chronological order.
The first process artifact that I included on my reflection page was my outline of
my reflection paper. This allows me to make sure that I was covering everything
necessary to put in my reflection paper and where I wanted to talk about what aspect of
my project. For example, I put doctors and online, under Where genres exist for
pamphlets so when it came time that I would bring those places up.
Finally I put my final draft of my portfolio at the bottom of the page. I took
everything that was in my outline and put it into paragraphs. With just the few words
under the header Where genres exist turned into a whole paragraph. From that
paragraph the three little words in the outline that just said, doctors and online, turned
into, The reason that I used a pamphlet is because they exist at a doctors, therapist, or
possibly online. This shows how that from a paper that just had short phrases and words
can turn into an actual paper. With this I was able to improve my writing and revision
process. I also found this paper to be a little bit challenging, as you had to balance out
the amount you talked about each project. I wondered if it would be easier to write about
one to a page in a half on each so you could focus on one project at a time.
Pamphlet
One of the first projects that I decided to do was a pamphlet. Most of the time
when people have lots of options and want the high points of each they grab a pamphlet. I
know I did when it came to deciding on a major. Also with pamphlets, they often
persuade you to pick whatever the pamphlet it on. With me wanting to show the positive

information and make people pick to participate in equine assisted psychotherapy it was
the perfect choice.
The first piece to the left of the page is my first draft of my pamphlet. I was trying
out a new program that made brochures so the first draft did not have much on it due to
trying to figure out the program. I decided to first focus on the cover of the pamphlet and
what equine assisted psychotherapy actually was since they were two of the most
important aspects of this pamphlet. You want to let people know what equine assisted
psychotherapy is as it is main purpose of the pamphlet and you want the cover to make
people pick up the pamphlet.
My second draft is almost a complete draft, but not quite. I finally got to put
information such as peoples comments on equine assisted psychotherapy, what is
involved, and some places that offer this type of therapy on the second page after figuring
out how to put in the information. My first page has changed from my draft, as before
there was nothing in the Citations column and now has citations for my information
along with picture links. After finishing, I did not know we had to cite pictures that we
used and noticed that I accidently used the wrong source for some of the information.
When going to meet with Miss Ingram I asked, Miss Ingram, I know every teacher is
different with how they want their students to cite pictures, some take just the website or
want a citation and I was not sure what you wanted. After she looked over my pamphlet
she said, If you want it to look more professional I would go and do citations for them.
Finally after changing citations, my final draft was done. I thought that my
pamphlet looked pretty similar to something that you would find in a therapist or doctors
office, though theirs would have much more information on it and no citations. One thing

that I did add was the quote by the Equus Foundation, The horse/human relationship
builds independence, trust, co operation, patience, empathy and hope for participants,
their families and caregivers. I thought that the quote went hand-in-hand with equine
assisted psychotherapy as what it we want it to accomplish.
Facebook Page
The second project that I decided to do was a Facebook Page. When starting
this project I had not planned on doing a Facebook Page, but instead a personal letter. I
thought maybe that would reach the reader better, but then I began to wonder how would
one get ahold of one. So while brainstorming one day I got on Facebook and it hit me.
I am a part of forum pages on Facebook for equestrians to sell, trade, and asking
each other questions about tack and feed. I was looking through it one day for a new pair
of boots and happen to find a post like the one that inspired me, which leads me to my
first artifact. This woman is considering a pair of boots and peoples thoughts about them
or other similar boots and had many people reply with their thoughts. This gave me the
inspiration that I could do something similar, but with someone asking about equine
assisted psychotherapy.
With many of the pieces I needed to create my page not being available the way
that I needed them, I took many screen shots of my own. For example, I needed a blank
comment box to write peoples comments in which I was not able to find with a Google
search. When meeting with Miss Ingram, she was very impressed with how my page had
turned out. I asked her, I took many of these pictures myself and wondered how should I
cite these? With both of use not knowing we looked it up and as she said, It is one of
the easiest citations, as the person taking the picture easily knows all the information.

With everything I needed, I constructed and built my Facebook page. I am

pleased with how it turned out and wish I had drafts of the progress of the page, but with
having to put items over saved stuff it was hard to save multiple copies. Also, I had to
write this one somewhat differently. I watched how people on my forum pages were
talking and talked the way that they did bring out the linguistic mode of the course. With
any opinion, especially on the Internet, there is always a bad one mixed with the good
ones. For example, Farren told Hanna that, After being abused by someone fairly close
to me I didnt want to live anymore, this gave me my life back and George had to tell
her, I found that this did not help me at all, horses are stupid. With the response to this
post Hanna more than likely decided to participate in equine assisted psychotherapy.
Annotated Bibliography
First off, I couldnt do any of the projects without doing any research. Most
people when doing a project will just do the research as they go along, but with this
project we found all of our information first. We had the option to do our annotated
bibliography visually or in three column notes. I chose the three column notes because I
had a column where I could put comments or thoughts as I wrote the annotation. With the
Equine Therapy citation I put the comment in the column, Shows every barn might
not have the same model, so that I would remember this when I went to writing. As you
can see, there are three colors of sources. The light blue like the EAGALA,
Meinersmann, and the Equine Therapy, are the sources that I used the most
throughout my projects. The orange color sources like the Schultz, I used the second
most through out my projects. Finally, the black sources are ones that I did not use, but
collected over the semester thinking that I would use later on. I have never used an

annotated bibliography before, but found it to be helpful and may use again in later
classes.
Other
As many of my artifacts went with a project, these two didnt particularly have a
spot. I decided to separate them since they didnt really have an impact on a particular
project.
With the improving peer review worksheet, it helped me figure out what I should
say or ask when we got into our groups. With everyone doing projects totally different
from each other, it helped with to know what I should say, rather than what I would be
thinking. Also, on this page I included the first outline of my thought process for my
multi-genre project. I thought that it would show that my thought process has changed
from doing a personal letter to doing a Facebook page.
As you might have noticed by now, I only have 8 writers choice artifacts. I ended
up omitting a feedback and writers notebook, but for a good reason. I omitted a feedback
artifact due to most of my projects having to be done on my computer. Instead of having
my group write things down, we ended up talking through them leaving me with not
much to work with for feedback artifacts. For example, when I was working on my
pamphlet, Andres and Ivan talked more about their ideas and thoughts. I also did not
include a writers notebook artifact because I felt like more of the important things I
learned in the class were due to my independent studying of my topic rather than things I
got from the class.
Blog
On my blog, my earliest posts are at the bottom of the page while my newest

posts being at the top. All of these posts have to deal with finding out something about
our project. For example, In The Audience post I had a hard time choosing which
audience I should appeal to, therapist/doctors who are trying to determine to use equine
assisted psychotherapy over other types of therapy, people who need help trying to figure
out what therapy to use, or people who don't know what equine assisted psychotherapy is
in general. I thought that I would get the opinion of my classmates and teacher to figure
this out. Miss Ingram thought that, Your first and second options are both great and will
provide you with the opportunity to make a purposeful argument. I'd go with one of
those, and Andres thought that I should, use the people who don't know what therapy
to use as an audience. With two people saying the same group, I figured it would be the
best pick of my options I gave. I also found their opinions to be the most helpful as they
help set tone for my projects.
On the Round Table blog post, I had to go and revise my last point that I made
because while writing the blog I did not have a source for an instructors point of view to
go along with my information. I had planned to go an interview a instructor myself, but
time did not allow me to do so and thankfully found a cite from what it seems to be a
instructors point of view. I also color-coded the statements with the color source that I
used for them. Since I was not able to highlight what I changed in this post, I underlined
the source to show the revision.
Midterm
In my blog, you will find my midterm that I have revised. We had to talk about
two to three of the key concepts that we were the strongest in and the weakest in then tell
why. At the time we had just almost completed our annotated bibliographies and it was

pretty obvious that I felt like that we didnt really provide really good feedback and
revising because no one had really revised annotated bibliographies before. However, this
allowed us to reflect on half of the semester knowing that we would have to reflect on the
whole semester as we are having to do now. When I first wrote my midterm, I created my
own key concept, which was making decisions rather than making connections. So the fix
was easy but the revision is underlined in my paper.
What Grade Should I Receive?
When it comes to my grade in the class I think that I deserve an A in the course.
My e-portfolio is easy to go through and is very neat. I think that I thoroughly illustrated
how I engaged in my writing this year and have been involved in many key concepts. I
have also quoted from other authors and my own work pretty extensively and I dont
think I left any unanswered questions. I have enjoyed this class this year even though it
was a lot of work, but I thought it was worth it all in the end.