My name is Christian Mayhew. I spend most of

                                                                                                        my time cheerleading. I am on a competitive

                                                                                                        all-star team that travels all over to different states competing. Cheerleading is a big part of who I am because I have been doing it since I was 7 years old. The picture to the right is of me my senior year tumbling at a football game. Football has been a big part of my life as well because my family is a big football family. Being into football helped me make my decision to come to UNCC because it wasn’t far from home, and a lot of my friends had come here to play football. Now I am a sophomore at UNCC, and I am studying to get an undergraduate degree in Exercise Science. As for the part of my life that pertains to writing, this is my first time taking a writing class at UNCC. My previous writing experiences were all in high school English classes or through community college while I was in high school. Before this class, I did not consider myself a writer because the only time I wrote was for academic purposes. Coming into this class, I had two goals. The first goal was to merely pass this course and get the credits that I need. The second goal was to be able to organize my ideas about an academic topic on paper in a way that makes sense to the reader and made me successful in the classroom. The problem was that neither of these goals addressed writing as a whole or who I was as a writer. After taking this class, I have come to realize that writing is not only in books, papers, etc., but a lot of pieces can be considered writing. Videos, pictures, and social media are examples of writing that I partake in everyday, allowing me to now consider myself a writer. This class has made me realize that writing is more than just passing a course or getting a good grade on a paper. Writing is an art that allows everyone to express themselves in any way they want to. This e-portfolio shows the progressions that I have made as an academic writer during this class as well as the thoughts and ideas that have begun to shape me as a writer.