Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Reflecting More on My Writing Process

1. I definitely faced a lot of challenges this semester, not only in this class but in multiple. These challenges, as they apply to my writing process, made it difficult for me to give 100%. In my self-assessment for Project 1, I mentioned how it is hard for me to revise and edit my own work. I used to feel like something I created, be it writing, videos, art, etc. was as good as it would get right after I finished. I felt like I would say what I mean and that never needed to change, I would just read through for grammatical errors and that was it. But

2. Project 1 felt really long for me, but I definitely did the most thorough planning for it, but a lot of the planning I did seemed useless when creating my final project. Project 2, however, taught me how to make my planning more efficient and useful, and it allowed me to create the detailed outline that I needed to write my essay. By the time I got to Project 3 I could really see how my editing skills had evolved. My video for Project 3 was cut down by 4 minutes from my initial film, and that equates to a healthy amount of writing. It made me realize the importance of purging things and ordering things in a way that would make my work as effective and influential as possible.

3. Before this class I hadn't really considered anything besides physical writing to be a "genre" of writing. Learning the conventions of all the different genres helped me realize how the smallest things could subtly add so much to a statement or argument, and it also showed me how choosing a certain genre can be very important depending on what your topic is.

4. My editing skills that I have acquired from this course will definitely play a major roll in my future writing. In the past, with scientific writing, I would seriously just try to put as much information as possible into a lab report to make it look like I worked really hard, but I've realized that putting unnecessary information into it is pointless. Sure it might make my report a page longer, but a page of BS isn't going to help much.

5. My most effective moment was definitely writing my script for Project 3. In all honesty, the first two projects kind of felt like all the other writing assignments I've had in the past, only because I went into the processes with that expectation. I wasn't excited about it, I cared about my topics at first but that wore off in a week or so, and I wasn't even writing for myself I was writing because I had to. But Project 3 was so fun for me, and even though I hadn't realized the skills I was acquiring during 1 and 2, I really got to see how I could put them to use in Project 3 and I am so proud of my final product.

6. I wouldn't really say that any moment was ineffective, because even when I felt like something was pointless it just taught me what I didn't need to do, or I would realize later that it wasn't pointless after all. Maybe peer review was the least effective, because I didn't participate in all of them. Every time I have peer reviewed, or been peer reviewed, in the past I never felt like I got any useful information, and I never really felt like I was helping anyone all that much. The best critiques I got were from my friends and roommates, people that I know would actually care about my writing and be honest. Every time I get peer reviewed by a stranger I can't help but think "what if they're an idiot and I'm just going to listen to them" and I'm afraid that they're going to convince me to change something and that will make my writing worse. Maybe it is because I'm a junior and I know most of the people peer reviewing me are freshmen, or maybe it stems from a deeper issue haha, but really just never expect peer review to benefit me at all.

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