This is a portfolio for the sake of a 2016 Senior Seminar class

and is not to be distributed.

Section One: Editing Samples w/ Track Changes
Section Two: Literacy Autobiography Excerpt
Section Three: Memoir Sample

Section One

Deleted:

Chris Fidotta
A Dream Cut Short

There I lay in a hospital bed, groggy, dazed, and confused. I went to itch the left side of my face

and immediately felt a burning that scorched with the intensity of a thousand suns. I was quickly
reminded of what had happened and as it was clear that what was going on was not a nightmare in the
sense of a dream but it was it was a nightmare that I was living in.

Formatted: Centered

... [1]

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Comment [BT1]: I like that youre attempting imagery

here, but youre falling just a little bit short. Youre telling
here instead of showing.

Formatted: Line spacing: double

Comment [BT2]: Nice!
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Comment [BT3]: Clich

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Comment [BT4]: You lost me here. I have no idea what
youre trying to say.

Hockey had been my entire life since I was five years old. The reason I started playing was

actually quite funny. My older cousins always forced me to play at family gatherings and I was tired of
getting my ass kicked by them every Christmas and Fourth of July, so I picked up a stick and never
looked back. From squirts to college hockey, I had my ups and downs--big championship wins and heart
wrenching lossesI won 2 junior Olympic gold medals, two national championships, and a regional
championship my freshman year of college. To losing in overtime of the championship my senior year of

Comment [BT5]: This is called white space. You use it in

memoir type writing to show a clear separation between
paragraphs that switch topics.

Formatted: Strikethrough

Comment [BT6]: Youre telling again, not showing.

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Comment [BT7]: Just curious, but does the stick have an
actual name? This sentence would be a bit more clear if you
used that term, if possible.
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high school. Hockey has always been there for me, and outlet for my frustration. It was my passion plain

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and simple, and now that it has been taken away from me likely forever. I dont know if I will ever be the

Comment [BT8]: This sentence feels a bit out of palce. I

would consider moving it up higher in the paragraph.

same.

Comment [BT9]: This whole paragraph, whild I

understand what youre trying to say, could stand to be
better organized. Just do some moving around with
sentences and make sure you're moving from one logical
point to the next. For instanct, you go from talking about
high school to college, and then bounce back to high school.
Find a clear line of order.

Since I can remember I have had one goal for my hockey career: end it with a national

championship. This is a goal which had eluded me my first three years at Cortland and each years
elimination became more heartbreaking than the last. My freshman year, we were unable to attend the

Deleted: winning

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Deleted: by

tournament, despite being the highest ranked team in the country, due to funding. In my sophomore

Deleted: with

year, the regular season came to a close and we found ourselves ranked in the top five; we attended the

Deleted: rest.

tournament in Fort Meyers, Florida with our hearts set on a national championship, but that goal was

Deleted: being
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Deleted: which was held

Lindsey Panza
Due: 4/13/15

Editing workshop 5

The SAT

Scholastic Aptitude Testing, better known as the SAT to high school students.

Its one of the most dreaded and feared words that students will stress over

throughout their high school career. Its a long test with 10 sections, (1 writing

section and 9 multiple choice sections) and ends up taking about 3 hours and 40
minutes long. Each year over one million college hopefuls set their alarms for an
early Saturday morning to take a test that determines where they stand

academically. Or in other words, see what colleges they should apply to.

The SAT's significance is nothing like your everyday history quiz or English

Deleted: . B
Deleted: ,

Comment [BT1]: Use of that is generally unnecessary.

Think of it as fluff. This sentence still makes sense
without it.
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Comment [BT2]: Just curious, is this an accurate

number, or a guess? Would be interesting to have some
actual statistics here.
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essay. The importance of these tests is unprecedented; in some cases these dreaded

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colleges have recently restrained from using these exams in their admission

Comment [BT3]: Is the word youre looking for here

refraine?

three-hour tests weigh more than all your high school efforts combined. Although

processes, there is an undeniable significance to the scores. Some colleges receive

thousands of applications and are forced to use a formula that includes SAT scores
when making decisions. Your score on the SAT can decide whether you get into a

top university or a community college. Hypothetically, these exams can significantly

determine the outcome of your future and career.

The SAT should be abolished as a deciding factor for college admission. It is a

poor indicator of school performance, because test performance does not measure

school performance. There are many factors that shape how well somebody does in

Deleted:

Deleted: s

Deleted: the

Comment [BT4]: I would be careful with the use of

you/your. Notes at bottom.

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Comment [BT5]: Love this so much. So true!

Section Two

Ch. 01/Intro

Heavy like the taste of sweet summer tea steeped too long in the sun, words never came easily to

me. They would stick in my throat, curl around the tip of my tongue like a lazy cat soaking up the rays on

a bowed in front porch. It wasnt that I couldnt, but that I didnt. Why should I, when I had a twin who did
all my speaking for me? With a look, or a giggle, Lane would run off to our mother with one favor or an-

other rolling past his lips before I could even fathom myself what it was I wanted; it was definitely a twin
thing, that language we shared that had no words.

We always used to play games, as children do; there were blanket forts in the living room on days

when the rain came down so hard it could have washed the color from our skin, or berry bushes behind

the duplex walls wed paint each others faces with when our mother wouldnt bring out the actual paint.
Wed write stories together of wild adventures where not a single word met paper, and each game was
different even if wed played it the day before.

When my little brother was born, we learned a new language. Jay would laugh the way only ba-

bies do, a cooing, joyful giggle straight from the gut, the way I sometimes think adults have forgotten how
to do. With each swing of chubby hands and feet, each cooing laugh, we talked as only children can and
learned how touch was a language as precious as any other.

We all learned other ways of course, but when I think of writing, of language, I always think of

those times when Lane spoke the words before I knew how to share them.

Because of the languages I learned with my brothers, Ive always thought of language, of writing,

as a collaborative thing. Its simple enough to put words to paper by yourself, to blow life into them as

letter by letter the words fall down the page, but by letting someone else tweak a sentence or suggest a

line youre adding in something that you might not have thought of yourself and I think thats a beautiful
concept.

As we grew older and stopped playing together, my brothers and I learned our own languages

then; Jay made his own friends and often spent his days running rampart through the neighborhood and

Lane spent his time learning how to skate, teaching himself the delicate balance of risk and safety as he

made air with kickflips and ollies. And me, well I delved into the first Harry Potter book like Id never be
able to read anything else ever again.

Our mother would read to us occasionally when we were little, stories about Mother Goose and

her shoe, or Rapnuzel and her Prince; childrens stories about magic and hope, though I didnt really

understand them at that age. Harry Potter was the series that taught me to enjoy reading; I would wait in

line next to Harry, Ron, and Hermoine, and sometimes even Professors Snape or Mcgonagall in the stifling
heat that only suffocates a place when there are too many warm bodies taking up all the fresh cool air.

Despite the way sweat trickled down my cheek or the incessant crying of an impatient child, waiting for

the next book was always worth it. I could barely wait to crack open that new spine until we got in the car,
much to the chagrin of my mother.

Words never came easily to me, but they do now and when Im relaxed at my desk writing the next

part of a story, I still sometimes think back to the time when my brothers and I had our own languages.

Section Three
The spoken word is nothing more than a breath, a sound curled around our tongue, pushed against our teeth,
shaped by our lips, all an echo of vibrations in our vocal tracks. Despite knowing these things about words, about
language, words have power. Especially the nasty ones.

I know a lot of four letter words, words that would make any mother raise a brow and turn a lip in disapproval. I
even have one of them tattooed across my foot: Fuck, as in, Southern as. This word in particular happens to be one
of my favorites.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Words like fuck have power, enough so that even the most popular broadcasting networks and radio shows still
censor the use of it. Even though the literal definition, depending of course on the dictionary you use, is to have
sexual intercourse with.
To have sexual intercourse with.

The specific dictionary I used added this particular alert: for many people, the word fuck is extremely vulgar, considered improper and taboo in all of its senses.
For those of you that are still with me, I apologize if you think this word is vulgar or inappropriate, because its
about to get much, much worse.
Because if words like fuck have so much weight, then why dont words like rape?

We gloss the word rape over with slimy phrases like Sexual Assault and Forcible Touching as if changing the
names of such vile acts make them any less violent, as if by changing the name we can quantify for the survivors of
these atrocities exactly what counts as rape and what doesnt.
Oh, you were held down and made to touch their genitals? Well, there wasnt penetration, so that doesnt count as
rape.

What were you wearing? Did you have anything to drink? Are you sure it was rape? Was there penetration? Did you
actually say no?
As if penetration is all it means to be raped. As if all it means to fuck someone is to have sex with them.

Ill be honest. I like the word fuck. I like the way it makes people uncomfortable, the way it makes people squirm in
their seats and look at each other, wondering if I actually just said it. Which I have, nine times so far.
Because see, heres the thing: until it happens to you, the word rape doesnt make the average person squirm. It
doesnt make the average person wonder if you were raised properly, or if you know what youre talking about. It
doesnt make the adults in the room wonder where you learned the word.

Rape is tossed around like a bean bag, all full and heavy, but thrown around like a toy in a corn hole match, like
children throwing dirt clumps that dissolve upon contact, as if nothing was ever hurled in the first place. And like a
toy, the word is easily lost or forgotten about, shoved to the back of the drawer or further under the bed, hidden in a
closet like something you dont want anyone to know about.

Because in most cases, if its happened to you, you dont want anyone to know. Theres this shame with being raped,
or assaulted, or forcibly touched (or whatever word you want to use to hide what really happened). Shame, maybe
because your body reacted, or because you think you let it happen, or because you couldnt stop it from happening
in the first place. And theres fear too, because you wonder if anyone is going to believe you, when youre not even
sure yourself it counts as rape.
And so then you start to doubt yourself, and you push it away like that toy. Except you know exactly where its at,
even if no one else does and it eats at you, tears you apart from the inside like claws shredding your organs, making
everything inside of you as twisty and bloody as your mind was after it happened, as your heart was in the aftermath.
Because the worst part about rape is that as a society in general, we think it doesnt matter. Its just a four letter
word for violation, after all, a word for degradation and theft and torment and guilt and humiliation and defiling,
and on it goes.

A word we toss around like corn hole bean bags. We turn it into adjectives, as in, oh, hes so rapey! Or we use it as a
term of conquest, as in, we totally raped that team this time! Yasssss, because we all know what conquest is about
and theres nothing dangerous in talking about defeating and overthrowing our enemies and taking from them
whatever we might want for ourselves.

Rape is a four letter, one syllable word that sometimes I think people forget how to hear, and because they cant, or
dont, hear it they discount how much it really weighs as it curls up behind your teeth. They discount all the shame
and guilt and fear as if none of it ever happened and youre left to wander around in the dark until you find someone who might believe you, if you tell them how much you were drinking.
Because rape is a one syllable word were still trying to deny exists.