Conclusion

Creating this portfolio allowed me to reflect on my work and gave me a deeper understanding of the academic growth I made this semester. Going over how it connects to student outcomes and how I obtain the skills of communication, analysis, and interpretation made me realize how far I have come. This process demonstrated to me that learning is less about turning in assignments and making sure you submit them on time, but more about challenging yourself and seeing how far you can go with new ways of thinking and challenging materials. Overall, my portfolio represents my academic life within this course and emphasizes my areas of growth and strengths. It provides clear observations of how I became more confident throughout all my material and even more reflective with my learning process. I am proud to say I am pleased with the progress shown in my portfolio. I see my effort, my strengths, and the progress I made this semester.

Below (center image) you can see SLO 3 Artifact: Extra

This artifact is a paper draft that I wrote for an essay called "How to Come Out to the Jasmine First Essay," based on "How to Come Out to the Jasmine First" by Katherine E. Kottaras. Within the assignment, I examined and reflected on the definitions of time, strength, and healing, and how they come and connect to nature. For this assignment, the students and I were asked to create an essay that contains four pages, with one of them being one full page of the summary. However, before typing out the essay, we were asked to write it by hand, which is the image of part of my work below. This artifact connects to the Student Learning Outcomes because it connects to critical thinking, reading, thesis-driven writing, engagement, and textual analysis, as within my essay, it shows a clear, well-written thesis surrounded by the claims of how nature improves mental health. Within my essay, I examined Kottaras's claim that nature improves mental health by helping us explore it, not hurt. I did that by providing evidence and direct quotes/references. I not only wrote this essay by hand to organize my thoughts and develop ideas, but I also created a strong and purposeful analysis. Overall, this essay shows my ability to unite critical thinking, emotions, and accurate analysis while at the same time staying respectful and thoughtful to heavy material that involves mental health struggles.