Reflection on Project 1

I learned many things about writing during the creation of my own quick reference guide. It's a form of writing that I've never done before, and I'm glad I was able to learn about writing publicly in this way. In the post below, I've written a reflection on the process.

Hartsook Photos. "Mary Pickford-desk." 3-23-1918. Wikipedia.
Public Domain 

What challenges did you face during the Quick Reference Guide project and how did you deal with them?
I thought it was hard to stay neutral while writing about the controversy. Especially since I have strong opinions on common core. To combat that I tried to write the same amount of pros/cons on each side, that way I didn't support one side over another. I also had trouble not citing the QRG the way I would a paper, at first it was hard to get into that rhythm of linking and adding pictures.

What successes did you experience on the project and how did they happen?
I feel like it was easy to find links, since this controversy is recent and well known. I also felt like it was easy to organize the paper. I really like using subtitles to keep my paper organized.

What kinds of arguments, rhetorical strategies, design choices and writing practices did you find the most effective for your project? Why?
Since the QRG was mostly informative, I used a neutral tone and tried to avoid directly biased language. I think this was effective for my paper because it fulfilled the requirements of a QRG. A QRG should be informative, not entirely biased, and this writing strategy helped me achieve that. With regards to design, I tried to break up the text with pictures, as well as put space between paragraphs. I wanted the QRG to read easily, so I tried to make sure it wasn't just blocks of text.

What kinds of arguments, rhetorical strategies, design choices and writing practices did you find were not effective for your project? Why?
Since the QRG is an informative piece, I didn't include a lot of views from one side over the other, as I would in an opinionated paper. That would not have been effective in creating an informational paper. I also thought that making long paragraphs would not have been an effective strategy, since many people would lose focus and move to a new paper or article.

How was the writing process for this project similar to other school writing experiences you’ve had in the past?
I still had to go or and find a lot of sources to use, but in addition to that had to find pictures as evidence or as a way to break up the text as well. I also thought that the actual content of the body paragraphs was similar to body paragraphs I've written for school before, in that they follow an argument or present information in a certain way.

How was the writing process for this project different from other school writing experiences you’ve had in the past?
In the QRG, I did not use in text citations like I have pretty much done all of high school. The links were very different and sometimes hard to remember to include. Including pictures is also different than the writing I've had to do. When writing the QRG, I had to have every source up so that I could look through them and find one that would apply at that moment. I also had to go back over and add links wherever I should have cited, so that I could still be credible.

Would any of the skills you practiced for this project be useful in your other coursework? Why or why not?
The QRG taught me how to write an informal public paper, which could be useful later if I have to write anything in a similar style. It may not help me later in college when most of my classes are mathematics, because public papers won’t be used as much then. For the next semester or two, and especially in any gen eds I take, the skills I learned will be useful when writing or responding to others, however, later I may not need these skills.

Reflection:

While reading Jon's and Allison's blogs, I learned that some of us had similar problems while writing our QRGs. Like Jon, I had trouble staying on one side over the other, it was difficult to not include my own bias. I agreed with Allison that evaluating sources was a big skill that I improved throughout the project, that didn't occur to me while writing the reflection above. Their posts made me feel somewhat lucky in that I was interested in my controversy as well as had an easy time finding sources on it. Allison struggled with that somewhat, and I know that I got lucky in having a controversy that is so well known and published on.