The End is Approaching...

It seems to be that time in the semester when stress starts affecting me, and my progress. I'm not sure if I work well under pressure or not. I don't think I have ever received any feedback about it either way. I just know that I end up getting less sleep and my body's reaction isn't the best. I am a little concerned about this, considering I don't know what path my Professional Writing and Editing concentration will take me down. It could be that I deal with this type of pressure and stress everyday in my career, I don't know.

Anyway, I feel like I'm not necessarily behind in my work right now, but I'm sitting on that fence. I have started a few drafts of the letters I plan to send to congressman, but I was really hoping to get them sent before this legislation session ended. Unfortunately, I don't feel as if I will have time to committ to that goal. Plus, I'm pretty sure the bills I researched and drafted the letters about were already voted on. I'm not sure. It is frustrating, thinking that I could have had a part in those decisions, had I been a little more on top of my game. So I figure there will be more research and drafting in my near future. Add to that the projects for this class and the end of the semester assignments for the rest of my classes and you have the typical stressed out college student. I'm pretty sure most of you can identify with this situation.

Well, I will continue to work on my time management skills and try to accomplish the rest of the goals I have for this semester. Good Luck!

Web Portfolio Plan

The following is a plan for my web portfolio. It is modeled after the example on pages 60-61 of The Web Protfolio Guide. I would greatly appreciate any kind of feedback, as I feel like this will be an ongoing process from now until the end of the semester. Thank you in advance for your suggestions and or comments.

Purposes:
The main purpose of my web portfolio is to present the projects I completed in my internship to my internship director for evaluation. Secondly, I'd like to present my professional skills aquired from both my classes and my internship experience with examples to illustrate those skills. I would like to be able to use this in the future as a resource for future employers. I am considering providing both my progress as well as some of my best works.

Audiences:
My main audience will be my internship director who will be evaluating the progress I've made in my internship. He deignated criteria that I will follow such as 20 pages of polished work, contextual statements that describe my thinking and writing process, and other documents that display my growth as a professional writer and intern. I am assuming he will be looking mostly to the contextual statements for information regarding my progress and intentions for specific documents. He will be evaluating different parts of the portfolio as well as how they work together.

I also plan to use my portfolio for professional purposes, so it could possibly be viewed by potential employers. They will generally be viewing the portfolio as a whole and will be mainly concentrating on the finished documents and the skills I demonstrate within each. They will also be looking at the contextual statements to see what career skills I have aquired through my classes at WVU and my experince with my internship.

It will also be viewed by my fellow intern peers and classmates.

Look and Feel:
I really want to have a professional look while showing my creativity with visual design. I was thinking about going with different shades of green background with a contrasting white text, or maybe just light shades of green for the background and a darker green for the text. I'm still thinking about graphics. I think I might just use a single picture of me and make it cohesive throughout all pages. I really like the heading that Chris Bell from MSU used with his head shot and name. It was really creative. I also really like the links on the horizontal plane. That look seems to be very clean.

Page Design:
Like I said before, I think I'm going to go with the top menu style because I think it looks more clean and I don't have as many pages to create links to. I think the names of my pages are going to be as follows: home, professional writing, professional editing, creative writing, and resume. I'm really not sure what size pixels I should make my page I would really like some suggestions here. I like having a frame inside the page with some "white space" surrounding the frame.

I'm also still deciding what papers I'm going to include in the portfolio. It is an on going process, but I think I'm making steps toward the final product.