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Here is a link to my online portfolio. http://community.wvu.edu/~akg007/491A.html
Revision has always been a tough thing for me to do. I become attached to my work and the way in which it is put together. Needless to say I don’t like change. I have revised many portfolios for specigfic classes and, though I may not have liked the changes I was making I did them because they were necesarry. This is the most important step that our work will go through. It is important that it is professional in apperance as well as content. For example, when I was first applying for an internship most buisnesses wanted samples of my work. What I didn’t realize at the time was that they didnt want examples of things I have written for college classes. They wanted documents that had been cleanly revised and prepared to be published.
While college papers may be the only thing I have to offer them looking back I realize I could have prepared them better. I could have put each through a round of revision. The documents I had sent could have looked more professional. Though it is a step I hate to go through revision is important for creating professional documents.
It is always hard for me to expect what someone may want when they ask for a portfolio. I have done many portfolios for classes in my 4 years here. They have all been different some in more ways than others. Last semester I did an online portfolio somewhat similar to this one. It was a collection of all my work throughout the class. The semester before that I put a hard copy portfolio together for my professional writing and editing class. It consisted of all of the work I had done for the class grouped by the type of work it was. I am doing two different portfolios this semester, one is online and the other is a hard copy. These are both different from the ones I have created in the past. For this class we will be putting together an online portfolio. It will only be the second online portfolio I have created. The readings really helped me to understand what a professional portfolio consists of. It made me realize that I need an overall theme for it. Previously my portfolios were themed by the work I had completed. As I have mostly worked on copy editing I will have a theme that suggests this. The work will not be completed by the time that I complete the work I will need to show all the work I have done and what the finished product could be. I plan to show the documents with my copy edits and what they looked like afterword. It will be an before and after effect.
Having an online portfolio is a great way to get your work out to the public. In my multimedia wrtiting class we not only created a webpage from scratch using photoshop and an online tutorial but we also uploaded our class work to this page. As tiffany said its hard for a college student to see their work as portfolio items and not work for a particular class. I had to put together a small portfolio of my work when I was applying for internships. Deciding which works to send out via e-mail was an interesting task. As I read the documents I had saved I had to get out of the mindset that these docs were just homework assignments. For the online portfolio I created in my 303 class we posted the different assignments we had completed to the webpage. Having a webpage like this is important for future employers. More than likely they are going to scan through your documents to get an idea of your writing style. They will want many differnt examples of your writing and having them on a webpage provides easier access to the documents. The webpage also has all your information so it is simple for your future employers to get in touch with you.
I share everyone’s fear of performance reviews. It is something that not only affects us but our family members as well. Recently my mom had a performance review and I remember asking her how she was so calm and wasn’t nervous. She looked at me and shrugged stating that what would happen would happen and there was nothing she could do to make it any different now. It’s important to go into these things with your head held high and a positive attitude. This attitude allows the higher ups to have faith in you to trust you. It’s important for them to know this because they will be more likely to give you a better review. You may even gain a raise depending on the work you have done and the attitude you carry with you. Unfortunately there is always the chance to face a negative review. The best thing to do in this situation is to figure out what you are doing wrong and then how to fix it. Without progress there will be no success.
Performance reviews are important in all aspects of work. It helps you to know what your doing right and more importantly what you’re doing wrong. While our internship reviews may not seem that bad they are still very important. Knowing how to get the best performance review is helps in ensuring we do the best possible work for our internships and secure our grades.
Like Celeste I felt that the Messmer reading was a bit strange. After reading it I realized how helpful it could be. It provided a good understanding of the types of reviews that we could be facing. It helps to prepare us for what could be coming once we are in the “real world”. My current position at a privately owned company I don’t have the threat of performance reviews. If they don’t like what I’m doing they are more likely to tell me than to evaluate me.
Zimmerman’s article on annual reviews shows that these reviews can be just as important as the performance reviews we face though out the year. The annual review could provide you with a raise or a promotion depending on your work throughout the year. Performance reviews can help you to achieve a better understanding of what your superiors will be expecting when your yearly review comes up. These reviews can be nerve racking especially if you are planning to ask for something from your superior’s such as a raise. You want to wait for the most opportune time in which to do this. The best time to ask is when you are being praised for your performance over the year especially if you have excelled. This should not come as a shock to them because the topic would have been brought up in previous meetings, your performance reviews.
I think that all of these things are important for us to think about right now. While we may not be facing annual reviews in our internships it is important that we keep these things in mind. When we graduate we will all be finding jobs in our fields, these jobs will have these reviews and they will determine how far we advance in the company as well as the tasks we will be trusted with in our future. Knowing what we will be up against will help us to do the best we can on our reviews and ensure that we are able to do the things we need to do.I was really worried about getting an internship. Last semester was crazy for me and I started searching late. I emailed my resume and luckily the corrdinator was interested, She told me that though they had already started selecting but she would consider me. Then I didn’t hear back for a few weeks, I became worried. Thats when I sent the e-mail sure that I was going to have to try to find something at last minuet. She e-mailed me back and told me if I was interested they wanted me. I was so estatic, my first position for my major. Everything I had been studying for the past 3 years was going to be put to the test. I have just completed editing the main document I will be focusing on for my internship. There are two documents that I have editied, my next project will be to conslidate two different documents I have been editing to one.
My main worry is that this semester I am taking my first editing class. I edited the documents but not with proper editing marks. I wrote a lot of suggestions in the margin and made minor edits to the documents. My supervisor looked over them but I will not know what she thinks until tomorrow. She could be really upset with me, thinking I had more knowledge than I do. I am worried that she may pull me off the project feeling that I am not suited for me. This example has shown me that what will happen will happen and I must remain calm and collected before I meet with her. I really enjoy working on this because I need to bring my knowledge from my part time job to my internship to help me make decisions about the way things in the documents should be.
Andrea George
