Introduction

Hi, I'm Sparkalena (if you don't already know) and I will be giving my readers a breif summary into my portfolio which will include my: Wikipedia letter; research paper; 4 serial killer blogs; and Wikipedia letter final rough draft. My portfolio gives just a look at all my work throughout the semester in my English 112 class and the topics that each student had chosen at the beginning of the semester. The main topic for all my pieces of work was serial killers and what separates them from any other murderer, and even a normal human being, or citizen. This was significant to me because most people see these serial killers as evil, but I wanted to get a broader perspective than this and really get an understanding of why do they kill and what is their motivation.
      As a class we all started with our Wikipedia letters. When I started the paper I did not find it to be difficult, then we submitted our final rough drafts of the piece in and I was sadly mistaken. I misunderstood the direction and had a paper that was only 400 words long, thinking by the end of the semester it would be 2,000 words long with addition of my research paper. The paper was absolutely terrible, but thankfully it was only the rough draft and I had a chance revise for the final paper.
       My final paper for my Wikipedia letter was (if I would say so myself) a master piece and my best piece of work! This piece was important because it gave me my starting point into using Wikipedia and helping me to broaden my research and not be afraid to ask questions, disagree with an author, and genuinely form my own opinion on the subject. Like always I start off rocky. If I would have turned my rough draft there was no doubt that I would have had failed. I asked my teacher, politely, to explain what I did wrong. She took me through my paper and explained that my paper and is entirely too short, Wikipedia and any other url's must be capitalized, pay attention to my punctuation, and it's not appropriate to bash an Author in a letter when asking him to make some changes to his article. I took her advice to heart and begun fixing my frog and turning it into a prince by capitalizing url's, looking over my punctuation and fixing the errors, and wrote to the Editor in a more inviting tone. My final grade was an A on the assignment. The next assignment we got started on was our own individual research papers.
        The research paper was just entirely a mess. Initially, when I started the paper I had all my resources and material to start on my topic. I had my scholarly journal, media, periodical, and blog post, sadly it still went all down hill. I began typing the rough draft which was dreadful for a rough draft, so I thought I would do decently on my paper. My job asked me to do overtime, and I ended up getting really behind in my school work due to the want of making more money. Sadly, I didn't start finishing my revisions the day before and I got a D+. The day that the class revised my research paper for my portfolio was the same day I made the necessary changes to my research paper because I knew that I could do better. The paper is the most important piece of work for my topic because it gives you a complete breakdown of why serial killers should not only be viewed as killers but also human beings and I knew that I had to make it my priority to revise it first. My biggest dilemma was citing correctly, but I corrected my mistake by adding the date of publication to my sources. If you were to ask me what grade I would get now, I would that's B+ work. One thing that I know I always try to give my all for my particular topic is my blogposts.
        My blog, "The Mind of a Serial Killers", is something that I truly give my all and I don't hold back on anything that I have to say. The reason why my blog is so important to me and my reseacrh topic is because it gives me a chance to research particular cases of serial killers and give my viewers a well-rounded view and not just from one angle. It helps my readers to not only see a killer, but also to remind them that that person is human being. They're probably a mentally disturbed human being, but a human being none-the-less. Sadly, I didn't start to great. When I started my blog posts it was kind of a shaky start because I had great information but I had a poor presentation of the information. My blog was all white and you would have to view each blog individually and my viewers wouldn't get a sense of what I was talking about when you viewed it unless you actually read the information. After, class one day, I asked my teacher to teach me how to change and modify my background of my blog so that my readers can get a sense of what I'm talking about when they view my blog and she did. She helped me to change my background to flames and to change the font colors to whit and black. My peers, say that blog looks my like Hell now, but they got the message. I have chosen four of my best blogs to put into my portfolio. My first blog post is "Aileen Carol Wuornos", which is important because it illustrates how a person's upbringing as a child can also play apart on their adult lives. The second post I've chosen is "Truth or an Easy Way Out?", because it addresses a genuine psychological issues which the known serial killer, Arnold Sodeman, had and also discusses the question whether or not pleading insanity is a easy way out of prison and evn execution. I felt that this was important because it gave me a chance to see how people felt about the plea of insanity. The third post is "Cayetano Santos Godino", because it discusses in America, should we execute serial killers and would that be hypocritical. The final post I have chosen is "Why This Is Important?", because this blog is near and dear to my hear. It gave me the opportunity to say how I honestly how I felt about serial killers and that I don't feel that all of them are just born evil.