Reflection on Project 1

In this post I will be examining some of the challenges I faced while completing Project 1. 

What challenges did you face during the Quick Reference Guide project and how did you deal with them?

The biggest challenge I faced was summarizing some of the research and also finding specific articles. I had an idea in my head ahead of time of what sources I wanted to use and how to present my QRG but I first had to find those sources. Once I found them I had to narrow down on what quote to use and how to summarize the overall idea of the article.

What successes did you experience on the project and how did they happen?

I found it surprisingly easy to format my QRG. A lot of my ideas flowed together naturally and when I was writing I didn't have to go back as much to reword something or move around a quote. I think that's because when I was researching my sources I sort of planned how I would use them.

What kinds of arguments, rhetorical strategies, design choices and writing practices did you find the most effective for your project? Why?

I am a heavy planner so researching my sources and writing my annotated bibliography helped give me a general sense of how to plan and write my QRG.

What kinds of arguments, rhetorical strategies, design choices and writing practices did you find were not effective for your project? Why?

I needed to work on presenting an argument without seeming biased or inserting  my own personal opinion. I also didn't find some of the grammar exercises extremely useful because they were 1) pretty boring and 2) I had written my QRG in such a way that my revision was mostly rewording a couple sentences and reorganizing paragraphs and not so much the nitty-gritty details of making sure the subject and verb makes sense.

How was the writing process for this project similar to other school writing experiences you’ve had in the past?

In my AP Government class last year we kept a blog exactly like we're doing now. I also took journalism in high school so the QRG was also a lot like writing journalism articles so it came very naturally to me. I've also written an Annotated Bibliography before.

How was the writing process for this project different from other school writing experiences you’ve had in the past?

This was different because I had to use a multitude of sources including graphs, social media, images and text in order to support some of my arguments.

Would any of the skills you practiced for this project be useful in your other coursework? Why or why not?

I've learned to analyze the credibility of the author because some sources can be very unreliable as demonstrated in the exercises and blog posts we've done. Also I've found that knowing how to properly cite an image is extremely useful.

Kaufmann, Bert. "Autumn trees in Dresden." 10/14/08 via Wikipedia. Creative Commons License.

EDIT:

I read both Victoria's and Casey's reflections on their QRGs. I like how Victoria brought up that it taught her how to convey information faster and in a more understandable way. I now realize that is something else I have learned. I am glad I chose a topic that is somewhat easy to understand and the source material is not too hard. Casey sounded like he had a hard time understanding some of the material which made difficult to write.