In this essay, the authors chronicle the overhauling of their English department's rubric design, curriculum, and portfolio in order to emphasize a wider range of "real-world" writing. The authors share that in the process of their overhaul, they redefined their identity--how they thought of themselves and how they wanted to approach teaching and assessing writing. Their current "dynamic" rubric allows them to provide useful and easily understood feedback for their students on an incredibly wide range of individual assignments, a challenge with which all English teachers grapple constantly. The newly created rubric also represents important philosophical changes in their teaching and assessing of writing. The process and the rubric itself helped them to solidify shared core values for all instructors and create a universal yet flexible evaluation system for all composition classes. The dynamic rubric is especially helpful for end-of-term evaluation, where fairness for all students requires some level of consistency in final portfolio evaluations across sections. Through this article, the authors hope to share their sense of enthusiasm with readers and encourage them to re-examine their curriculum, portfolio, and rubric design. (Contains 8 figures.)