English Portfolio

The Class

As a student at the University of New Mexico, one of the required courses I’ve had to take was an Expository Writing class. At the university, each Expository class was taught with different themes. For the course I took, the theme was Science Fiction. Taken from the course catalog, the description of the class is as follows:

Space Travel: Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Storytelling. The theme this section covers is sci-fi, with particular attention given to the technological, entrepreneurial, and mythical aspects of it. The world of sci-fi inquires about real technological possibilities. It has motivated scientific development and has created markets by instilling in consumers the desire for products that they had never previously envisioned using. In this course, we will try to understand this interplay among storytelling, entrepreneurship, and technology by analyzing popular film and TV literature (including but not limited to Star Trek), along with journalism covering the entrepreneurial aspects of sci-fi and academic work about the scientific side. Written assignments will bring these diverse sources together in such projects as evaluations, analytical reports, and proposals.

In this course, we had to write 3 major essays/video and create an electronic portfolio containing all our works for this class. The portfolio can be viewed here.

Analytical Report

The topic of this essay was how animal experimentation affected both space travel and science fiction. For this essay, we had to write a Precis, which is just a summary of the actual Analytical Report.

Evaluation Video

The topic of my Evaluation Video was to explain what make up a successful space industry. Under the video, I included a Research Paragraph to descrbe the steps I took to creat this video and the research I completed to support my argument in the video.

Commentary Video

The topic of my Commentary Video was “space magic” and how space magic can create a good science ficion plot. Under the video, I’ve also included a Research Paragraph wher I explained how I created the movie and the research I did to prepare for this video.