Reflection on Project 1

Now that my Quick Reference Guide has been published, I can reflect on the project as a whole. Below I have answered some questions pertaining to the process, including some of my successes and some of my struggles.

York, Chelsea. "Screenshot from my computer". September 25,2015.

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

• When originally choosing my topic I soon realized that it was a bit too new. Since geoengineering is still being extensively researched by scientists, there is no significant presence of it in social media. After digging a lot deeper and spending a lot of time searching I was finally able to find at least a couple of examples of social media presence.

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

• The plethora of websites provided to us made it fairly easy to find credible sources. As previously stated, since geoengineering is still in its prime, it has been extensively researched by scientists. Most of the sources I found were from individuals with some sort of background in the field of science.

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

• The use of headings and subheadings were especially helpful for formulating the QRG. Knowing beforehand what subtopics I wanted to address made it easier to avoid writing large walls of text. The process of peer review was also helpful because it gave me an outside perspective of what could use more work. I tend to keep my writings to myself and revise everything on my own, but I found the comments very helpful.

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

• Personal arguments and personal pronouns were not effective for this project. The goal was to present information while still remaining unbiased, so the use of opinions couldn't really be implemented. Another issue I dealt with was having paragraphs that were too wordy. Learning to cut back on length while still keeping the meaning intact was a bit of a struggle. However, after reading through the clarity section and revising my sentences I found it to be doable.

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

• The only other time I've really had another project similar to this was when I was doing my Senior Exit Project for high school. We were told to focus on a specific controversy based on the career we had chosen to shadow, so I had prior experience in narrowing down controversies. For this project we were also taught how to look for scholarly sources, so using sites like Academic Search Complete wasn't completely mind boggling.

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

• The tone of a QRG was a lot less formal than I was used to dealing with. Majority of my writing assignments in the past had to be very formal and not deviate from the third person. Another thing that was different with this particular assignment was that I had a lot of creative freedom. Even when I was able to choose my own topic I still had to follow a certain format. This project gave me the liberty to choose how I would display my subtopics, and what images I would choose to put in. 

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

• Many of the skills practiced for this project will be useful in my other coursework. Before starting this project I never really took into account the credibility of the individual writing an article. The way I established credibility was by simply looking at the url, and if it wasn't from Wikipedia it was fairly credible. Now I know that establishing credibility of the author makes the text that much more effective. Writing the QRG and doing most of the process work through blogging taught me how to correctly cite my sources in my disciplines format. This will be very useful later on when I will have to write papers for my major.

Reflection:

Looking through Casey's blog post, I saw that we both initially struggled with understanding our topics. We both chose issues that are developing rapidly, and there was constantly new information being released. Unlike Casey, I was not as comfortable with breaking up my paragraphs, as I still have a tendency to be too wordy.

Victoria's blog post showed me that I wasn't the only one who had to rewrite their QRG. We both found it easier to write out everything we were thinking before adding any headings. Doing this project has taught me that if I find myself getting stuck I should just write everything out. It is much easier to revise something that is finished rather than sitting there and pondering on what I should do.