Supporting Documents

The two supporting documents found below were the one's I selected because they best demonstrate my thinking and writing in progress throughout the semester. While these are not finished or polished products, they are early stage assignments that show I planned for each one, reasoned through ideas, and developed my writing before submitting a final draft.

Supporting Document 1: Project 2 Multigenre Persuasive Campaign and Rationale First Draft

This document is the first draft of my Project 2 proposal which displays the earliest stage of my thinking and composing process before a single composition had even been written. It captures the moment in which I was first learning how to think rhetorically and identify three distinct target audiences for my wooden bat campaign, working on deliberately matching a unique genre to each one based on what would reach them the best: NCAA policymakers, current college baseball players aspiring to play in the MLB, and MLB scouts. This is not a polished product, it is raw planning, a look into my mind as a writer, and that is exactly what makes it so valuable as a supporting document. It shows that strong writing does not begin with jumping straight into your first body paragraph, it begins with thinking thoroughly about who you are writing for and why your chosen genre is the perfect one to reach them. The foundation I built in this supporting document is what became the backbone of every composition that follows it.

Supporting Document 2: Project 1 Annotated Bibliography First Draft

This document, and early draft of my annotated bibliography from Project 1, is one of my favorite supporting documents that I have as it helped me shape my entire final essay for this project. This annotated bibliography represents one of the first times I was asked to find sources and deeply evaluate them. Working through this assignment forced me to slow down and find scholarly sources that were niches of my overall topic. I needed to know where it came from, who composed it, and whether or not it serves the argument I am trying to make. The annotations here are unpolished and still developing, and that is the entire point in which I am including it in this ePortfolio. This document shows the early stages of a skill that took the entire semester to refine: the ability to read a source critically, look closely into its credibility, summarize its content accurately, and articulate exactly why it matters to a research question. This skill significantly improved every piece of writing I went to produce after this.