A Crazy Week...Preparing My First Year Portfolio

This week has been a crazy one for me.  To start off, I had my first college research paper due today (Friday) for my FYS class.  The paper was on the 2008 Recession: how we got there, what happened once we got there, and why did it even happen in the first place.  I actually really enjoyed writing this paper (don't tell my classmates that, they weren't crazy about writing it!) and I felt it was a nice way to show my professor everything I've learned the past three months.  I now have a pretty good grasp on the crisis, the players involved, the gravity of this crisis as compared to recessions in the US' history, and the multitude of problems it created.  My paper, complete with three graphs, ended up being 12 pages so I spent a lot of my time this week revising and strengthening the paper.  At the same time as I was becoming very comfortable with the crisis, I was also preparing my First Year Portfolio.

Every first year has to make a portfolio; you include at least two FYS papers and then you could also include another paper you've written this year at Coe if you'd like.  The other part of this portfolio is a preface.  It's a reflection on your college writing experience so far at Coe and reflections on the two (or more) papers you've included.  You talk about your writing process in creating these papers, challenges you faced and triumphs you had.  You print two copies of your portfolios and one copy goes to a professor in your FYS area of study (for example, one of my portfolios will go to an economy teacher) and the other portfolio will go to another FYS professor.  Each professor will read my papers and give me a score from 1-6 along with feedback and comments.  The portfolios are a way for me, my FYS professor, and Coe to see how am I doing with college style writing.  So I finished my portfolio and research paper last night and turned them in today.  It feels REALLY GOOD.  Now I've got a nice weekend to relax and catch up on everything I had to put on hold while I worked on the paper and portfolio.  Then I've got Monday and Tuesday at Coe and then Tuesday afternoon, I'm going back to Mt. Horeb for Thanksgiving Break! Whoo!