My ePortfolio is composed of all of the publishable content I’ve created over the course of my undergraduate degree. The name of my blog “I’m like” and the general theme of all of my subtitles is based on the way we use colloquialisms to inform our perception of the intelligence of others. Specifically, I wanted to use this digital space to dismantle the “fourth wall” between reader and writer. I wanted to explore what it would be like if we truly and accurately represented our disembodied selves in a digital environment. I wanted to explore the question: How can accurate representation disenfranchise those on the wrong side of prejudice? I don’t think this blog is an answer to that question, but it is representative of how we can use digital spaces to represent ourselves more accurately and holistically.
This is the place that houses the wide variety of projects I’ve done, for the wide variety of classes I’ve taken. As a pre-health english major, I think it’s important to choose to represent myself as a humanities major with interests in medicine. This focus has been vital as I maintain my work and readjust my lens to meet the following learning outcomes as I come to the end of my undergraduate career.
- Read texts closely and think critically.
This first english learning outcome is short, but laden with the rigor of deep writing and close reading. I don’t think I’ve been able to escape an english class without fulfilling this learning outcome— it’s kind of the english major’s bread and butter. Perhaps the best representation of my ability to do this comes from the work I completed in ENG235: Young Adult Dystopian Literature. ENG326: Literature and Madness, and ENG310: Literature and Medicine. Throughout these pieces of writing I look deeply into multiple texts via a comprehensive thesis. Importantly, to me, I explore issues that are relevant: patient provider relationships, racism, and gender and sexuality. However, I am only able to explore these topics through the framework the texts have provided me. To write these essays, naturally, required me to think critically as in order to compare and contrast themes across texts I had to delve deeply into the meaning of the words, metaphors, allusions, and themes, in each piece of media I chose to analyze. I consider a variety of rhetorical strategies in the pieces of literature I chose to analyze, and utilize deep reading skills to articulate how these strategies are relevant to the larger issue I’m approaching in my writing. - Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of literature in English
This, I think, is my favorite learning outcome because it allows me to show the project I’m the most proud of. In ENG409: Law and Literature, I examined legal themes across rap narratives and how systemic racism manifests in unjust prosecution, strained citizen police relationships, as well as police brutality. The literary approach of this subject seems especially important following the recent verdict in the Chauvin trial. This is. my project: Rap, Race, and Culpability. I think this project demonstrates the most comprehensive understanding of English literature, because it considers some of the most broadly defined pieces of media and how they interpolate with literature. Additionally, I use literature critiques and narrative theories to examine both a novel and relevant rap songs while extrapolating my findings into the real-world implications. This perhaps plays into the first learning outcome, but I think my ability to manipulate so many forms of media and create an essay that meets the requirements for an english class points to my comprehensive understanding of all of the different art forms that influence and connect with literature. - Communicate effectively
This learning outcome is, perhaps, the most broad but it houses a very important aspect of English learning: approach writing as a recursive process. I, of course, try to do this with every English assignment I have. However, I don’t have very many good examples of it. Instead, I have all of my work as a writing fellow and the project I wrote on how scaffolding can support the recursive writing process. I think that this, decidedly, shows my embrace of the recursive process— as I, myself, am an active proponent in it and help others to participate in it and value it. I think the other projects I’ve shown demonstrate the other concepts underneath this learning outcome. Like, for instance, the ability to write a coherent essay and show mastery of the english language. However, I still have to work extensively on “Higher Ground” issues in my writing, where I might make mistakes with comma splices and excessive punctuation. - Present research in cultural and literal studies.
For this one, I’m going to have to blame covid. I had an IRB-approved exempt research project as part of my independent study called “Under High- Impact Practices” with Professor Miller. My project was accepted into the CCCC undergraduate and digital praxis presentation sessions— where I would have been able to present my research as a poster. However, because of covid, the conference was cancelled and I haven’t been able to present in-person. Instead, I’ve been able to present it to each class I’m a writing fellow for. Additionally, I was able to present my research on scaffolding (as mentioned above) at the spring 2018 research symposium at UNE, and I had to ready my artist’s book from poetry to be put on display. While the latter did not require research, it did require a lot of the same preparations, and I had to formulate my project so that (even though it was digital) it was able to be displayed physically. My opportunity to present cultural studies is met by my capstone— which focuses on gender oppression in psychiatric patient-provider relationships in Sylvia-Plath’s The Bell Jar; kind of the nail in the coffin, I guess.
To conclude, I’ve used my undergraduate english career to pursue the literary research of narratives that discuss presently relevant topics. This work has helped prepare me for my future as a nurse, as I’ve had the opportunity to “see into the life of things”, as Wordsworth would, but also to ground my analysis in systemic sociological issues. Literature is, to me, the only ways in which we are able to understand, in tandem, another person’s lived experience. Humans are compulsively driven to share their experiences— this has been true since before the pristine civilizations and the global advent of language. Conversely, other humans are driven to listen. Be it the greek bards in antiquity, or prehistoric storytelling with cave painting: humans are here to listen and share. Literature is, for that reason, so immensely representative of both genuine human life, and the imperative of existence: to learn. I would be remiss to end this conclusion without including the quote that I both tattooed permanently on my body and based my graduate school essay off of: “It takes a soul/ To move a body…”; Elizabeth Barrett-Browning wrote this quote through the voice of Aurora Leigh and I still can’t think of a way to better use the English language to represent my undergraduate degree. In a few short weeks I’m going to move to one of the most infamous cities on planet earth to study and work in medicine, and to, hopefully, end up as a trauma nurse. I can’t honestly say that in the middle of a code blue I’ll be thinking of these words, but afterwards, when I speak to the patient and their families, and when one of my patients doesn’t make it through my shift, and when I am giving an IV to someone who doesn’t know why they feel so sick, and when I am working with trans patients, and when I am treating patients who have be historically traumatized by medicine, and when I am getting bloodwork from pediatric patients, and when I’m working with patients with substance use disorder, and when I am moving so quickly in between hurt patients I forget to check the time, and when I am filling out paperwork, and when I mess up, and when my patient avoids looking at me while I help them use the bathroom— I will remember that it is not just my degree at Columbia that has prepared me, but my degree at UNE: where I learned that it is our souls that move our bodies.
