Portfolio Project Reflection

As the presence of technology continues to infiltrate every part of our lives, it is

inevitable that technology plays an important role in the professional world. This project allowed

me to gain a better understanding of how I would like to present myself professionally and the

image I want to create with different parts of my portfolio. Most importantly, this project gave

me an opportunity to explore various ways I can present myself in the professional world and

required me to produce professional documentation of my work so far.

I think that the most important part of this project was creating a resume that encompases

my education, activities, leadership, awards, and personality. When I have created multiple

resumes in the past, I always struggled with determining what is most important to include in a

resume. Often, I struggle because what I think is most important is often not what would be most

important to the internship site that I am looking into or the college that I am applying to.

Therefore, it was good to come up with a general resume to get an understanding of what

activities and details represented me best.

Another very beneficial part of this project was exploring my leadership philosophy as

well as my mission and vision. Prior to this assignment, I had never spent much time thinking

about how I approached my leadership roles or the way that I acted in a group setting. I was able

to take the time to consider how I think leadership works best and hope I have acted in the past.

Thus, I was able to get a better understanding of the picture I wanted to paint of myself, which in

turn improved my understanding of how to put together my entire portfolio. Once I was able to

work through what I wanted my mission and vision statement to reflect, I was able to build the

rest of the portions around that goal and philosophy. Then, I was able to build the visual of my

website upon what I had portrayed in writing. I think the combination of written and visual
decisions helped me the most in understanding what I wanted to portray myself as and how I

wanted to do so.

It was difficult for me to decide how I wanted to portray myself both visually and

rhetorically. I believe that the way that our professional websites appears visually should be a

reflection of how we wish others to perceive us. However, it is important not to misrepresent

yourself and thus not stay true to oneself. During the project, I found it difficult sometimes to

make decisions because I wanted to stay authentic to myself but still put my best foot forward.

While writing my mission and vision segment, I often got confused and I had many different

ideas because I am in the process of deciding what I want to pursue in my career. I also had some

trouble with the business card because I did not fully understand what it was most important to

put on the card because I do not hold a job. I was a bit unsure about how I should be marketing

myself, partially because I did not know who my audience is.

Improvements could be made in this project to have a greater focus on the audience of the

project so that students have the opportunity to go through a process as if it is for a real-life

scenario. For example, if this portfolio were in the context of a college-related application, then I

think that students would be able to isolate what they believed was the most important for that

audience, and they could thus form a more cohesive and well-planned portfolio. Also, that would

have removed some confusion in regards to the way I want to present myself because I would

have a clear understanding of what my goal was, making the path to a sophisticated portfolio

more clear.