Doing it Messy - An IDOL Mentor’s First Portfolio

Here’s my current portfolio. 

Two years of polish and I still feel like it needs work. Just the other day someone pointed out a typo in my About section. But even with imperfections (that I see!), I'm proud of it and grateful I worked so hard to build it up.  

But if this is your first cohort, you’d be comparing yourself to the wrong map.

And that’s what I told my mentees this week. 

Here is my first portfolio. 

After eight weeks and one badge, this is what I had to show for it. 

This is how I got my first remote ID job.

It needs so much polish—and a facelift—but I am proud of Mandy 2020. 

I was in daily trauma at my workplace, attempting to support my family on one income in the middle of a pandemic with an autistic daughter who was spending 3rd grade in an online classroom, AND trying to change my career. 

Messy was all I had left.

Give yourself permission to show up for yourself in the ways that you can. 

Do it messy. 

The rest can sort itself out.

If you’re curious, here’s a brief explanation of my revision choices:

• I chose to move to Weebly so I could have more options in web page formatting.
• I realized including my creative writing was more filler than helpful. No hiring manager or recruiter has time to read all of that. Maybe I could have kept flash fiction or had an animated story-piece, but it wasn’t needed as it was.
• My branding was all over the place. Every color and font I liked became my darlings. And, as any writer knows, one must kill their darlings. So I edited it down significantly so that the website could showcase my work more than get in the way.
• I revised my Herbalism 101 job aid. (The first version has icons for each taste, as though the learner doesn’t know what tastes are--ha! Again, revising it down to the essentials seems to be an area of growth for me.)
• I revised the Herbalism course in general--I found a better, more minimalistic template to use. It felt more modern and less clunky. Also, some of the slides I had in the eLearning weren’t needed. 
• I streamlined my resume. Instead of keeping everything, I only kept work that I actually wanted to do in the future (not list everything I could do--imagine that!). I also dropped the logo. Gave me more room.
• Added pieces that feel like better examples of my work now - storyboards, microlearning, multimedia pieces... 
• Removed weaker pieces & added new learning badges

Written by: Mandy Brown

💜Mandy Brown (she/her) is a fiercely neurodivergent, all-boats-rise kind of person who loves emojis and would be happy to connect with you on LinkedIn. 😉