For this section of our e-portfolio, we had to upload documents for one of our major assignments and annotate our “process” along with it. The major assignment that I chose to showcase as my process is my Literacy Narrative. The reason I chose this assignment was mainly because it was the first major assignment in my English class and it exemplified the most change. In the beginning, I was very nervous about writing this paper because I still did not grasp the concept of what literacy really is and what it means. On top of that, our teacher said that she did not want it in a typical five-paragraph essay. All throughout high school, it seemed almost like taboo to write in first person and in multiple paragraphs. It was as if everything we had learned and all the rules for writing had gone down the drain. We were given so much freedom as to what to write about and we were allowed to establish and explore our own unique styles of writing and I absolutely loved it. I loved being able to choose our own topic, our own style, and combining personal experiences and interests with writing. So, in order to write this paper, our teacher gave us multiple assignments in regards to what literacy is such as creating our own definitions of literacy, listening to TedTalks, and reading about other people’s experiences with literacy. 

      As a writer, I enjoy writing about struggles, minority groups, or injustice and recently, I had been incorporating a lot of aspects relating to Sikhism in my writing. So, after all these assignments and activities, I decided to write about my own religious literacy. I was very excited about writing this paper but as always, I started stressing out about the actual writing part. Making an outline helped me a lot because it was a way that I could organize all my ideas and put it on paper as a guide to writing my essay. Writing the first draft turned out to be easier than I thought it would but I knew that it wasn’t 100% perfect. In class, we were introduced to yet another idea totally opposite of high school, peer revising. In high school, I was so used to having people edit my paper, searching for grammatical errors, and having red marks filled with comments of negativity. Peer revising really helped me as a writer because not only was I given positive feedback, but feedback that was actual useful and filled with clarity which helped me with my revisions for the revised draft. I liked the way Ms. Andrews graded my essay because she put in positive feedback in comment boxes along with her thoughts on places where I could improve. All of the comments helped me write and revise my final draft for my literacy narrative.

      Writing my literacy narrative was a very enjoyable experience. I was able to look at how literacy changed certain aspects of my religious character and shape me to be the person I am today. Below, I showcase my process from the beginning of the assignment, to the final product being my final essay. If you hover over each picture, it shows my thinking along the process and you can also click on the images to get a clearer picture of what changes I made and why. That being said, I hope you enjoy taking a dive into the process and the making of my essay.