Becoming Who I Am

The first story I ever wrote is a story I don’t remember. I only remember the feeling I felt from writing it and that it was a short story. It's not that the story wasn't memorable, but it is simply an occurrence from a very long time ago. Even though the plot, characters, and setting are things I don’t remember, the joy, the feeling of wanting to do it again and again, and the “you’re really good at this” reaction from others are things that I could never forget. At that time in my life, I was a young child in my pre-teen years. I remember having a vivid imagination and would easily get carried away from reality to some new place in a book. These trips would happen quite often since picking up a book and sinking into the content was something I did often.

These were the moments when a passion for the written word emerged and was watered through constant indulgence. This passion grew like a plant that receives the proper amount of water and daylight. It grew until I had to acknowledge that indulging in this art was something I was meant to do in some form or capacity for the rest of my life. I mostly wrote poems and short stories for fun and to satisfy my yearning of creating something that would evoke the same feeling I had from reading the work of others and my own. Feeding this passion went from informal to formal when I realized that obtaining the knowledge and skills to dig deeper and get an understanding of what motivated writers to write the words they shared with the world were vital in me becoming a good writer.

The Awakening

My goal wasn’t to become a writer in the beginning, but as I grew, I realized that my career choice should be primarily driven by passion. This is when the formal preparation began, when I stopped chasing an ideal career (lawyer) to getting in touch with doing something that would truly give me that feeling I had a long time ago with that first short story. This awakening happened when I was in the process of earning my undergraduate degree in English (Literature). This is what I wanted to major in and had learned was the best major for LSAT preparation for lawschool (advice from a lawyer). Once I had earned my B.A. and truly deciding to not pursue law, my research of writing concentrations led me to expand on my knowledge of analyzing, thinking critically about, and writing creative fiction/non-fiction by studying professional and technical writing.

I entered the Professional and Technical Writing Program at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock not knowing what to really expect but knew what skills I wanted to acquire. I wanted to graduate with a feeling of knowing that I can write on the web, design web pages, and write online help, using the software that is the industry standard for technical writers. Being able to write various genres in various forms (media outputs) was important to my development. I developed the skills to not only do these things, but also perform usability testing, index online and print documents, teach writing for the workplace, design/format documents for professional purposes, edit more efficiently, write proposals, and much more. I also received more experience in presenting to large audiences of adults while learning a bit about adult learning theory. Through my graduate education and work experience, I have acquired the skills to occupy positions such as consultant, software documentation specialist, web page designer, document designer, teacher/college instructor, indexer, editor, user experience specialist/researcher, etc.

About this Portfolio

This digital portfolio is a reflection of some things I’ve accomplished and learned through education and on-the-job experience. Through this portfolio, I hope to provide insight to what I’m capable of within my career field or supplemental fields, even though I may not have done specific tasks before. I also hope to inspire clients/employers to brainstorm on how I can be useful to their institutions and consider how my skills can transfer to their environments and needs. This portfolio is also for Expressif Communicators LLC's customers to feel secure in knowing that a trained professional will complete or oversee needed services. Although this portfolio includes many samples, it also serves as a sample of my ability to write on the web through hypertext markup language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This content was coded by me (no use of a content management system such as WordPress even though I can if needed).