Welcome to my portfolio!
My name is Michael McFarland and I am a senior Professional Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) major at Elon University. I will be graduating in May 2012 with a Bachelors of Arts degree in English with a double concentration in PWR and Creative Writing. I am very interested in criminal law and I will be attending law school in the fall of 2012.
I chose to be a PWR major because I like to write, and I wanted to explore as many perspectives on writing as possible. I was particularly interested in how I could use the art of rhetoric in my writing due to my interest in understanding how to persuade audiences. I found that PWR was a great field of study for someone interested in law school. Learning how to write persuasively and concisely is something with which many first-year law students struggle. I believe that my PWR education will help me meet this challenge because PWR has taught me how to analyze audiences and contextualize my writing for a specific situation.
My portfolio showcases my work in both academic and professional settings. It shows the final versions of the work I have completed in my internships and, in that sense, reflects who I am as a professional. These end products, particularly the social network analysis presentation, the Sergeant at Arms awards script, and the Sergeant at Arms manual, highlight my accomplishments in a professional setting. The portfolio also shows how I developed many of the skills I learned as a PWR major, such as how to use visual rhetoric and how to analyze audiences. These skills highlight how I have progressed as a student in an academic setting. Seeing the work I have done in these two settings is important in terms of understanding who I am.
My portfolio demonstrates that my interests in writing and legal issues have made me into a professional who is highly aware of the power of the written word. I try to use my writing, editing, and design skills in a contextualized setting to help people when they face challenges, especially political or legal ones. This is the type of professional writer I am trying to become and I hope I will be able to accomplish this in my legal career.
This portfolio contains the most important and challenging projects that I have worked on as an undergraduate PWR major. I have divided the projects into three separate groups: Legal & Government Writing, Rhetorical Inquiry, and Contextualized Publishing. Each of these groups represents the types of experiences that have given me my own unique perspective on writing. Each section starts off with its own introduction page, which provides important context and describes the type of work I was doing in each section. After the introduction page, there are individual pages for each of my projects. Each project has a narrative page and a project sample page.
Thank you for taking the time to read my portfolio, I hope you enjoy it!
Sincerely,
Michael McFarland
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