Throughout this semester in WEPO, I learned that writing and composing are so much more than just putting words on a page. They involve designing, remixing, reflecting, and constantly making choices based on audience, purpose, and context. As I built my ePortfolio, I noticed that the projects I created like the Mother Gothel fairytale retelling, the Arroz Caldo magazine spread, the Mind Map, and now this ePortfolio were all connected to the ideas in the texts we studied. Three readings in particular shaped how I understood my work and helped me grow as a writer: Dustin Edwards’s “Framing Remix Rhetorically,” Henry Jenkins’s “If It Doesn’t Spread, It’s Dead,” and Kathleen Blake Yancey’s “The Value of Purposeful Design.” While these texts influenced each project I completed, they also reshaped the way I analyze, compose, and reflect. In many ways, this ePortfolio is where all three readings come together.
One of the biggest concepts that influenced my thinking this semester was remix. Honestly, it became my favorite concept we covered. Before this class, I mainly associated remixing with music or with copying something and changing a few parts. Edwards completely changed my understanding. He describes remix as a rhetorical, intentional, and transformative act, one that involves selection, analysis, assemblage, and repurposing. Once I understood remix in this way, I began viewing writing and media through a different lens. Instead of seeing a text as something static, I started paying attention to how it was built and how its pieces could be reshaped.
This transformed the way I approached my fairytale retelling. I didn’t just rewrite the story of Mother Gothel, but instead I used AI to shift the point of view, explore her psychology, and complicate her role as a villain. This helped me understand Edwards’s idea of genre play, because I took a familiar genre and reworked it to challenge the audience’s expectations of who Gothel is and why she behaves the way she does.
Edwards’s idea of assemblage also reshaped how I think about composition. My Arroz Caldo magazine spread blended cultural storytelling, design, visual elements, and cooking which are all pieces that originally belonged to different contexts. But together, they formed something meaningful and personal. Only after revisiting Edwards’s ideas did I realize I had created an assemblage by combining visual, emotional, and textual components. His explanation helped me see writing as something bigger than a single mode. Even in more traditional assignments or in classes outside of WEPO, I now think about how I’m assembling ideas, sources, tone, and structure. This mindset has made me more intentional about every choice I make while composing.
Remix even shaped how I understood the Mind Map assignment. That task required my partner and I to gather concepts, definitions, and ideas from all the course readings and connect them in new, meaningful ways. In that sense, we were remixing! And even now, this ePortfolio is a remix: I’m bringing together experiences, reflections, and multimodal materials into one cohesive space. Edwards didn’t just influence the products I created. He transformed how I understand the act of writing altogether.
While Edwards changed how I analyze and compose, Jenkins changed how I understand the circulation of writing in digital spaces. In “If It Doesn’t Spread, It’s Dead,” Jenkins argues that modern media depends on spreadability; on people sharing, transforming, and responding to content. This idea made me rethink the role of the audience while writing. Instead of thinking of a reader as someone who passively receives my work, I began imagining how different audiences might interpret, reuse, or connect with it. Jenkins helped me see my Mother Gothel remix as part of a much larger cultural conversation about villains, retellings, and the evolution of stories. Even though my piece wasn’t a meme or a viral post, the idea of spreadability still applied because it contributed to a genre that constantly transforms. Jenkins helped me understand that writing, media, and art continue through the people who engage with it.
Even though my retelling wasn’t a meme or a viral TikTok, the concept of spreadability still applied. Creative transformations circulate because people connect with them, build on them, or see something new in them. Jenkins helped me see that writing, media, and art continue to live through the people who engage with them. This realization pushed me to think more carefully about clarity, tone, and accessibility. If writing can spread, then I need to be conscious of how different audiences might interpret it.
Yancey, on the other hand, shaped how I design and reflect on my writing. In “The Value of Purposeful Design,” she argues that design and reflection work together and that writers make deeper meaning through the choices they make about structure, layout, and organization. Her text helped me understand that the way I present my work is just as important as the work itself. This directly shaped how I approached my ePortfolio. Instead of just uploading my projects in the order I completed them, I thought about how readers would move through the site and what the sequence would communicate about my development.
Yancey also highlights the importance of connecting different learning contexts such as classroom writing, personal experiences, and real world communication. This influenced how I wrote the reflections in my portfolio. Instead of simply explaining what I did, I tried to connect my rhetorical choices to my background, goals, and the skills I gained throughout WEPO this semester. Yancey showed me that writing is shaped at every level from the moment we choose our words, to how we structure our ideas, and to the final way we present our work to others.
Together, these readings helped me see writing not as isolated assignments but as a connected, purposeful, and reflective process. Edwards taught me to analyze writing through the lens of remix and assemblage. Jenkins helped me understand how writing circulates and takes on new meaning through audiences. Yancey pushed me to think about design as a form of reflection and intention. Ultimately, this course helped me see writing in a completely new light and helped me learn to think like a writer in a digital world.