E-Portfolio

Hello I am currently an undergraduate at The Pennsylvania State University with a double major in Political Science and Communications. I choose these two majors because the reason for my college career is to become a lawyer. I believe that if I know how the law became to be and how to effectively communicate with people through my writing and speaking I will be able to be the best at my profession. This year I have grown as a person, writer, and a speaker because of classes like LA101H and clubs like Mock Trial

My writing has increased a great deal during this year because I learned that what I think is an A paper others may think it is a B paper. In high school and grade school, I have always thought I was the best writer because I always got A’s on my papers. I never looked at any of the comments on them because if I had an A, how could I improve my writing? But this year it hit me hard. Papers that would have been A’s in high school turned into B’s, B-‘s and C+’s. I was completely shocked when this happened so for the first time in my life I actually read the comments on the paper. And most of the comments were the same, I needed to proofread, I needed more information and I needed more variety in my vocabulary. Looking back on all of those years, I wish I would have read those comments on my papers because they could have helped me with the harsh reality that I faced after just my first paper in college, everything that I write is not great.

One of the clubs that I am apart of is Mock Trial. It is an imitation trial. This showed me that practice can go a long way. I have a good memory when it comes to certain things but it is not so good with others. I never realized this before because I never had to deal with these problems before. In Mock Trial I had to be an expert witness. I thought this would be simple, man was I wrong. While practicing, I kept mixing up and forgetting lines to specific questions. I realized then that I was going to need a lot of practice which was new to me for speaking. When I normally wrote something I just read through it once before I presented it and just ad-lib where I got stuck. But since this was actual statistics I could not do that. I practiced and practiced until I had everything memorized which was harder than I thought it would be.

This year has taught me a great deal. But the thing that I will always remember is no matter how good one does something there is always room for improvement. 


Link To Darrell Simon's E-Portfolio