While reading through “Portfolio Keeping,” I was reminded of when I had to make a research portfolio for my AP Research class last year. This class requires you to do a year-long research project, which all culminates into a 20-minute oral presentation and a 5000-word research paper. This was one of the most academically intensive classes I had ever taken in high school because the whole process of doing a research project was new to me. But once I had submitted all of my finished work to College Board, I was told to make a portfolio of the research process. Luckily, I had stayed very organized throughout the year and labeled every document I had ever made for the project and kept them in a folder labeled “AP Research.” Therefore, it was easy to gather any straggling materials and officially put my portfolio together.

At the beginning of the year, my teacher suggested we keep a journal and take a few minutes after every class to write about our progress. Since I regularly keep a diary, I found that this would be a great way for me to keep track of my progress and to rant about anything stress-inducing (which was pretty much all of it). This journal ended up being my best resource when putting together my final portfolio. I made this journal the central hub of my portfolio and I could refer to it any time I needed to know what I did on a specific date (I labeled each entry with a date). It also served as a reference for my portfolio evaluator (in this case, my teacher) because whenever I mentioned working on a specific document, my teacher could go back into my folder and view it as needed.

All in all, I enjoyed the process of making this portfolio and even viewing it after I’ve finished the whole project. I had never done a project like this before, so this organized documentation makes me feel proud of all I accomplished in AP Research. I hope that whatever portfolio we create for this class will be just as exciting to me. I do know that I can refer back to my prior experience of making a portfolio when creating a new one in the future.